Philosophile

|''Type:''|file|
|''URL:''|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com|
|''Workspace:''|(default)|

This tiddler was automatically created to record the details of this server

|''Type:''|file|
|''URL:''|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info|
|''Workspace:''|(default)|

This tiddler was automatically created to record the details of this server

|''Type:''|file|
|''URL:''|http://tw.lewcid.org|
|''Workspace:''|(default)|

This tiddler was automatically created to record the details of this server

|''Type:''|file|
|''URL:''|http://www.tiddlytools.com|
|''Workspace:''|(default)|

This tiddler was automatically created to record the details of this server

{{tableindex{
|[[Test1]]|[[Test2]]|[[subtopic3]]|
}}}

<!--{{{-->
<div class='toolbar' macro='toolbar closeTiddler closeOthers +editTiddler > fields syncing permalink references jump'></div>
<div class='01macro='tiddler 01subtopicMenu'></div><div class='title' macro='view title'></div>
<div class='viewer' macro='view text wikified'></div><div class='tagClear'></div>
<!--}}}-->

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
It really is a bad business. The power of instinct and drive to sex and food, the necessity of reproduction and survival, driven by an incredibly complex mechanism of hormones and neural function, is so great that copulating frogs cannot be separated without killing them. The same is true for food when an animal is starving.

We human beings are hardly different. It's true we have hugely expanded functions: the cognitive, so that we know what we are doing when copulating or competing for food; the aesthetic, which means the pleasures of food, sex, and an enormous variety of other sensations are available to the hormonal/neural mechanism of desire; and the desire itself, which becomes modulated, subtle and diverse.

It's still a bad business. It's bad on all three fronts: the cognitive because we know what's going on and remember; the aesthetic because the pleasure is not good enough or permanent; the desire, because no matter how diverse, subtle, and extended, always ends in disappointment, sleep, or (thanks to the cognitive) disgust.

So it truly is a bad business. Buddhism realized it, accepted defeat, and sought nirvana—a confused state of oblivion and bliss. The Abrahamic religions thought victory could be achieved, the problem solved. But look at the misery and mess they created for themselves and each other, and all the lies and self-deception! Hinduism? It seems the conception is there, but at least from my experience in India and what I have read, the insight of Buddhism is ignored and the understanding is swept away into smug vagueness—the kind that tolerates the caste system, the poverty, thievery, and filth in that country. Ashoka, the Buddhist ruler two thousand years ago, apparently tried to make Hinduism a little more sensible.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
Dreams are sometimes so fascinating and enjoyable. In this one, from which I awoke just now at three in the morning, I was trying to catch the subway which connected one part of London with another, a sort of shuttle like that at 42nd Street in New York. The train arrived, oddly only a single trolley car, opened its doors and immediately started to close them. I was lucky to jump across some tracks, get my fingers in and pull them open. Somewhat flustered I took a seat next to a young professional-looking man who smiled in a friendly way, explaining that sometimes the trains act that way.

The car emerged from its tunnel into a valley of high mountains, sort of like Switzerland and the Indian Himalayas combined, but the odd and wondrous thing was that all the mountains had been carved, like Rushmore, but into figures, sculptures, and reliefs of a vaguely religious nature, almost like altar pieces. The sun shone brightly on everything and the colors were a lovely set of pastels.

A self-appointed guide at the end of the car began explaining to us these wonders of Indonesia, obviously very proud of this his home country. I began expressing my appreciation and suddenly became aware of an arm resting on the back of my seat just touching my shoulders. I turned and saw it was a girl next to me, not really attractive, but pleasant looking, who seemed a little down and out, a struggling New Yorker. I blushed and stammered, "I talk too much, don't I." She said no, and I got the feeling that she was just trying to meet someone, to talk to me in her lonely city life.

We emerged from the car after leaving the beautiful valley, and she confusedly said she was broke, and could I give her $1.45. I said, "Of course," and somehow she was then able to pick up her mail, which I put on a shelf in front of her. It consisted of some cards and notes, damaged in the mail, and I was glad to see she wasn't alone in the world.

Just before I awoke I was considering whether to invite her back to my apartment because she seemed to have no place to go, but I was also troubled at the thought of starting a new relationship that would eventually prove futile and unsatisfying. But I felt her loneliness and isolation myself.

That's all. An entertaining dream—especially the beautiful mountain valley that burst on us when the trolley emerged from the tunnel—rather like Hans Castorp's dream in the "Snow" chapter of Mann's //Magic Mountain//.

I don't think dreams have any deep meaning of a Freudian kind. Rather, they are pieced together, often with a creativity we don't know we have, from odd fragments of events or thoughts that briefly held our attention or impressed us in the last day or so, or even a few years back. We can sometimes catch a glimpse of them in a glimmer of free association when recalling the dream. But I think there is nothing more than that in dreams. They are rather like works of art.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
There is a squirrel outside my study window behind the air conditioner in process of dying. It is the aggressive squirrel with the chopped off tail that I have watched for a couple of years and who last year took charge of my tomato plants. Once I chased him to the front yard and threw a shoe at him.

But now he is in process of dying. An hour ago he was at the bird bath drinking, and then staggered away like the black squirrel I saw a few months ago, also in process of dying. Probably they both ate poison put out for rats.

So it takes me back to Eberhart's poem "The Groundhog," and further back, more aboriginally I guess you could say, to my first dog, rescued from the pound and given to me as "mine" by my mother when I was very young, maybe five or six, and which was run over on Mill Creek Lane. I never forgave the human race or existence itself for that death and heartbreak.

Here I am at seventy four, watching that squirrel behind the air conditioner arranging itself for death, and I still don't forgive. And the rage is the same. Buddhists originally must have felt it and concluded it was better never to have been born and somehow if born better to get back to that state.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
There was a small Hispanic child—a girl of about three—sitting cross-wise from me on her mother's lap on the bus coming home from the Korean Korner friday. She was looking around with that curiously vacant, wondering stare that infants and young children have, and caught my eye, which brought her attention to a focus. Instead of averting my eyes and letting her go back to vacantly wondering-wandering, I decided to keep looking. Then slowly, with a sort of smile, I pursed my lips and stuck them out. She watched, and then started doing the same. I stopped and smiled just a little. She stopped too. Then I did it again and she followed. Then she did it by herself, looking as though she expected me to follow, which I did. That excited her and she half turned and tried to get her mother's attention (who knew something was going on but didn't want to get involved, though she was trying not to smile). As they got up from the seat at their stop, the child waved bye to me with the happiest smile, and continued to look after me with the same big smile as the bus started off.

Of course it was a happy experience. One wonders what an infant's world is like—one is obliged to wonder, because one can't remember one's own. But the desire to imitate seems very basic, and the capacity to recognize another's face and identify its parts with the corresponding parts of one's own face by a sort of empathy seems to develop very early. That's a remarkable global psychic achievement.
!

!
In the early 1960s I taught English at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, Korea. I asked students to write their autobiographies in English as a "term paper," even if it was only a brief paragraph.

In one of my last classes before returning to the United States in the winter of 1963, I found the following essay by student No 8331, Lee Yang Ja, in the stack of papers on my desk. 

This is her essay as she typed it, with her own corrections and emendations in ink. 


''Click __[[HERE|YJL-001]]__.''
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
Yesterday, Sunday, at the National Gallery a friend bought a little Christmas present for her niece. The cashier was a young slim girl, sloping shoulders and tender breasts, blondish hair, skin pallid, dressed in black. While she was doing the transaction I just had to say to her, "You could have been a model for Vermeer." She seemed confused, but happy. I added, "That may be the nicest compliment you will ever receive in life." She blushed furiously through her pallor.

I am very glad I paid her that compliment. It's simply a recognition of beauty. Vermeer, of course, did more than just recognize and pay it a compliment.
!

<!--{{{-->
<div class='toolbar' macro='toolbar closeTiddler closeOthers +editTiddler > fields syncing permalink references jump'></div>
<div class='AAuse' macro='tiddler AAuseSubtopicMenu'></div><div class='title' macro='view title'></div>
<div class='viewer' macro='view text wikified'></div><div class='tagClear'></div>
<!--}}}-->

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!

We make an assumption that in the aesthetic mode things have an absolute value. Art is taught that way; in fact it couldn't be taught at all if that weren't so. The instructor in a drawing class tries to get the student to see that such and such a line has a particular quality, and if you use a different kind of line it is "wrong" and won't work. The same is true of words in poetry and prose, rhythm, timbre, melody, and harmony in music.

On the other hand, there is an equally strong conviction and tradition that value—the particular quality of a thing—is relative, depending on experience and context. Tastes in food (literally) and art (metaphorically) change over time and over cultures. What is "right" at one time and in one culture is "wrong" in another.

Both convictions are certainly correct, but I don't think the aesthetic mode depends upon it. The aesthetic mode is the psyche's capacity and need to identify objects—sensations and experiences (whether of food and sex or art)—that it identifies as important, beautiful and "right," and therefore desirable. (One can argue that one finds things beautiful or right //because// they are desirable; and indeed the relations between desire and its objects in the aesthetic mode are complicated and troublesome, as I have appreciated over the years.)

The point is that whether the objects of focus in the aesthetic mode have absolute or only relative value, the mode remains a basic function of evolved organisms. They will not survive and flourish without it, any more than they will survive and flourish without the cognitive mode. They must value things and know how to obtain them. The challenge for the aesthetic mode, as with the cognitive mode, is for its activities and results to become universal: for all objects in experience—indeed, experience itself—to be rich and important, to be desirable, and to build one's umwelt and biography that way; to make one's existence a work of art. For the cognitive mode it is to understand existence in a singe network of connecting concepts.

All of this is what I was struggling with in Classical Dialogues, and I think was not too far from the mark.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
Over drinks earlier this evening with a friend at Clyde's in Chinatown we were talking about the effects of alcohol, and it suddenly struck me as obvious: alcohol heightens the psyche, highlights its dimensions. In sobriety it is often hard to tell one person from another, how one person's psyche differs from another's. After all, in sobriety everyone recognizes they are on a common stage and therefore dedicate their psyches to performing the play being enacted, which everyone understands pretty much the same way.

But when drink takes hold, the psyche of each unfurls itself, or is tempted to. The angry person lets his anger out. The happy person does the same. The paranoid person's paranoia shows, and so on.

Taken to its roots, alcohol enhances and likely releases the basic mechanisms of the psyche, largely repressed or controlled in sobriety. Those mechanisms are, of course, the modes of consciousness. The aesthetic is enhanced: colors, sounds, the content of experience, is highlighted and intensified. The cognitive is enhanced: connections between ideas are made, sudden thoughts and intuitions appear as if from nowhere. And of course desire and impulse are intensified, playing off both the aesthetic and cognitive, often to their detriment, but not always.

But sobriety returns the next morning, and with it the repression and regularity of the psyche and its modes of operation, maybe midst the pain and annoyance of hangover. But there may also be the memory of the enhancement, and that can also cause problems.

Anyway, bad people show their natures and motives under the influence; good people also show their natures under the influence. It's usually hard to tell them apart in the encounters of daily life.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
So often you hear the phrase, "So-and-so fought alcoholism all his life." In most cases, I think, it would be truer to say, "So-and-so fought a point of view all his life that led to alcoholism." That point of view, of course, is an expression of particular sorts of natures, and not by any means a purely cognitive or intellectual matter. The psyche is a very mixed bag, and certain sorts of mixes lead to heavy use of alcohol, just as they lead to heavy smoking or tobacco use. In our current culture we downplay the content of consciousness almost to the point where it becomes a mere symptom of something else: some physiological problem, some medical problem. One's actual point of view, in this framework, stands for nothing in itself. When we ask why a person thinks something, we are often asking what in his body or his environment caused him to think it rather than something from within the content of his consciousness itself. This is almost always the case in psychology.

What is the point of view that leads to alcoholism, the point of view that one is really fighting? The details vary, but I think it almost always centers on the futility of life, gloom, pain, suffering, pointlessness, the very familiar message that weaves itself throughout the history of philosophy and religion. Fighting it consists in the struggle for relief, or more strongly put, happiness within understanding. Alcohol and nicotine give temporary solutions, or at least relief; but the price, also temporary, is heavy and neutralizes that solution. The same is true for sex. Also the multiple diversions we throw ourselves into.

The fight is for happiness, which is no simple matter for an intelligent, informed, sensitive person who has paid attention to his own experience.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
In the Castle at the Smithsonian (where I renewed my membership this afternoon) there is an adjoining room containing representative selections from each of the museums. There is also a brief film of the Smithsonian's contributions to space exploration, with photographs synthesized from the Spitzer space telescope of a galaxy 40 million light years (I think that was the number) from our own. Andromeda, the closest, is 1.2 million or so.

The film ends with what it calls "The Big Question: Are We Alone?" It's a perfectly ridiculous question, but typically revealing. Of course we aren't alone. The same chemistry and physics exists throughout the universe. Our whole belief in what the Spitzer and Chandra telescopes reveal depends upon it. If the physics and chemistry are the same throughout the universe, then so too must be the biology. So, obviously, we are not alone.

But at 40 million light years—or even 1.2 million—we are of course "alone"; relativity and the constraining speed of light being what they are see to that.

We just can't get our imaginations around all this. Consequently we can't raise it into a religious perspective. The astronomers can't; they just say, "Cool!" and teach it that way. People with genuine religious sensibilities degrade the phenomena by putting them into familiar terms they can understand; they ask, "Are We Alone?"

Well, I complain. But when I speak of "genuinely religious people" I mean people who need to raise their understanding to the level of their sensibilities. That is always what I have meant by synthesizing and harmonizing the cognitive and the aesthetic dimensions of the psyche, both of which are biological functions and therefore part of this vast universe, present everywhere within it in organisms separated from each other by all those millions of light years.

"A world in a grain of sand" takes on far greater dimensions than Blake thought or wrote.

In a nutshell: If the physics, chemistry, and biology are the same throughout the billions of light years our telescopes can reveal, then all biologically grown beings possessing minds having cognitive and aesthetic dimensions must be somewhat the same. The psychology follows from the biology. The question is whether other such beings elsewhere in the universe have managed their psyches better than we have. The answer must surely be yes, in view of the billions of galaxies, stars, and planetary systems that exist.

Our challenge—rather our obligation—here on earth is to blend our psychology, biology, chemistry and physics into something very nice, some fulfillment of the universe. Teilhard de Chardin would be very happy; the idealist would be happy; the materialist—the type that grinds out technology on the discoveries of the scientists who are after something "cool"—might just be indifferent.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
Today, Saturday, sees the first snow of the year coming down in wet clots. I am keeping the apartment temperature in the low 60s, and wear the down vest, which I washed last week at the Laundromat across from Giant, together with the cotton blanket, both of which I brought back from Korea in 1997. I am having leftover kimchi chige for lunch, with gakdoogi and cold rice, but have put off the pleasure of eating—now it is 3 p.m.—to enjoy a few vodkas, the closest thing in the West to soju.

So it is all Korea this afternoon, looking out the window at the snow from a cold apartment, wearing the down jacket, with warm kimchi chige, cold rice, and gakdoogi waiting in the kitchen.

And then I think of Lee Yang Ja’s autobiography written in January 1963 as a “term paper” assignment for students in my English classes at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. She writes, “Through the window the snow has been falling thick and fast. Can it be a great misfortune that I have no one to talk, to give something from heart and no place to go like this snowing?” Then she launches into her autobiography—eight pages of single-spaced typing, when the best any of the rest of the students could manage was barely a page or even a paragraph.

I never met Lee Yang Ja, because the “term papers” from all classes were simply deposited on my desk, and I had to grade them quickly before leaving for the States. When I came to hers I was stunned, but it was winter break, there was no time, I had to get to Pusan to catch a freighter, and I must have been in a great state of confusion.

It is a great regret of my life not having met Lee Yang Ja, and I think I have been in love with her all these years. But that is the way life is, our biographies all pieced together of fragments, distantly related in time, but held together by memory, regrets, desires, broken circumstance.

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
There was an old woman at Whole Foods the other day picking out dried orange peels or something while I was getting my oatmeal. Suddenly she gave out a little squeak when she dropped one on the floor, and then put it back into her bag. I said, "You shouldn't pick it up, it's dirty." She replied, "I'm from New England; we never throw anything away."

Later while I was looking at the beer shelves trying to figure out something for Adam visiting Washington again, she came by with her cart and said, "That's a good one," pointing to a German beer, "Augustine Brewery" or something like that, for $13. So I bought it.

After I went through checkout I went back to locate her to thank her I guess, maybe just to communicate and say I wouldn't buy such expensive beer except for my stepson who was coming on Tuesday. She said she liked the beer, had been to Munich where they say something like "Weise wurst, dunckel bier, bleiben hier…"—something like that.

She had the smell that old people have. But she had a nice smile, which must have been quite lovely when she was young, and actually still was.

Thinking back on it, I think she might have been the old woman a few years ago getting off the bus and slipping a transfer into my hand to save me a fare, a trick the young people used then.

I think she must be ninety years old. But still, she is as ravishing in a way as that twenty-something young married woman smiling and preening on the D2 bus coming back from the film yesterday.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces]]
!
This is the text for Still Another
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!

An article in Lapham's Quarterly quotes Malebranche's paraphrase of Descartes on animal consciousness: They "eat without pleasure, cry without pain, grow without knowing it; they desire nothing, fear nothing, know nothing."

That's a pretty good statement for clarifying the definition of consciousness as //awareness of awareness//. To eat, cry, and grow involves response to stimuli from the environment; and to respond to stimuli there must be sensation—i.e. awareness. But pleasure, pain, thinking, desiring, and knowing involve awareness of that awareness. Such awareness requires memory and plasticity, neural functions far more complex than those involved in simple awareness.

This definition of consciousness as awareness of awareness also makes plain that consciousness is not something discrete that makes a sudden appearance in evolution and distinguishes humans from other animals. It's obviously the product of a continuous development in neural complexity.

Take these house sparrows and mourning doves outside my window, for example. They hop to the edge of the bird bath, dip their bills in and drink. If the water is frozen or the bath empty, they peck once or twice, hop down and resume pecking for seed. It's as if it made no difference. If they felt the pain of thirst and desire for water, they would behave differently I think—for example, by remaining there pecking at the ice and becoming more agitated. But the impulse bringing them to the edge of the bath and the sensation of pecking ice are instantly over and the bird goes on to further streams of impulse and sensation.

The same is true of their "fighting": there is a flurry, much noise, and in a few seconds it is over and the birds fly off or go back to pecking for seeds, sometimes right next to their "opponent" of a second ago. No prolonged impulse and sensation, no memory of it; therefore no pleasure and no pain; and therefore no consciousness.

/***
|''Name:''|AnnotationsPlugin|
|''Description:''|Inline annotations for tiddler text.|
|''Author:''|Saq Imtiaz ( lewcid@gmail.com )|
|''Source:''|http://tw.lewcid.org/#AnnotationsPlugin|
|''Code Repository:''|http://tw.lewcid.org/svn/plugins|
|''Version:''|2.0|
|''Date:''||
|''License:''|[[Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License|http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/]]|
|''~CoreVersion:''|2.2.3|

!!Usage:
*{{{((text to annotate(annotation goes here)}}}
* To include the text being annotated, in the popup as a title, put {{{^}}} as the first letter of the annotation text.
** {{{((text to annotate(^annotation goes here)}}}

!!Examples:
Mouse over, the text below:
* ((banana(the best fruit in the world)))
* ((banana(^ the best fruit in the world)))

***/
// /%
config.formatters.unshift({name:"annotations",match:"\\(\\(",lookaheadRegExp:/\(\((.*?)\((\^?)((?:.|\n)*?)\)\)\)/g,handler:function(w){
this.lookaheadRegExp.lastIndex=w.matchStart;
var _2=this.lookaheadRegExp.exec(w.source);
if(_2&&_2.index==w.matchStart){
var _3=createTiddlyElement(w.output,"span",null,"annosub",_2[1]);
_3.anno=_2[3];
if(_2[2]){
_3.subject=_2[1];
}
_3.onmouseover=this.onmouseover;
_3.onmouseout=this.onmouseout;
_3.ondblclick=this.onmouseout;
w.nextMatch=_2.index+_2[0].length;
}
},onmouseover:function(e){
popup=createTiddlyElement(document.body,"div",null,"anno");
this.popup=popup;
if(this.subject){
wikify("!"+this.subject+"\n",popup);
}
wikify(this.anno,popup);
addClass(this,"annosubover");
Popup.place(this,popup,{x:25,y:7});
},onmouseout:function(e){
removeNode(this.popup);
this.popup=null;
removeClass(this,"annosubover");
}});
setStylesheet(".anno{position:absolute;border:2px solid #000;background-color:#DFDFFF; color:#000;padding:0.5em;max-width:15em;width:expression(document.body.clientWidth > (255/12) *parseInt(document.body.currentStyle.fontSize)?'15em':'auto' );}\n"+".anno h1, .anno h2{margin-top:0;color:#000;}\n"+".annosub{background:#ccc;}\n"+".annosubover{z-index:25; background-color:#DFDFFF;cursor:help;}\n","AnnotationStyles");


// %/

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
I looked up from my desk a few minutes ago and saw a squirrel outside the window, the same one I noticed two or three weeks ago that had some kind of neurological disorder—perhaps it ate poison put out for rats—and would stagger and lose its balance. Its condition got worse as I saw it periodically. But today it was in far worse shape, not just staggering, but even falling on its side as it tried to eat. It was clearly starving, I guess unable to climb trees for shoots, and stayed a few feet from me as I put out more seed, which it ate voraciously, trying to stand, staggering, sometimes falling.

It is pathetic and overwhelming. That has always been my feeling, from the first dog I had as a child that was run over on Mill Creek Lane, to the fish in the tanks of Korean markets struggling to the surface for oxygen while they await their end, and back again to a bat that expired in my hand as a child. The pathos is overwhelming and infuriating.

But then we have to put it into perspective. The neural systems of these animals, so capable in doing what they must, do not have the memory and flexible function to put their condition into our experience and recognition of fear, pain, suffering, and pathos. The squirrel ate in a normal way, though more frantically because it apparently was starving, responded to birds and stimuli the usual way, and in fact did everything as usual, except for the staggering and falling, which seemed to matter not at all to it.

Nature is not kind. Nor is it unkind. It just is its extraordinary complex process. If it were unkind, it would have given the squirrel neural capacity to recognize its condition and suffer from it. But it hasn't. To us it has given that capacity, but in that capacity there is the ability to avoid or otherwise deal with it. Nature's "benign indifference" (in Camus' wonderful phrase) is also very creative, and turns out to be benign after all.

…Now it is pouring rain, the squirrel has left, and I am sorry and very, very sad just the same.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
Robert Burns wrote, "O wad some Power the giftie gie us/To see oursels as ithers see us." I was (admonishingly) reminded of that several times in high school by my English teacher, Marian Douglas. 

Well, he and she were wrong. It is no gift at all. In fact it is pretty much the way we live our lives, interpreting and representing ourselves as we think others see us, and trying to improve their view of us. So there ends up no "us" at all if we are successful. In current culture the "others" is not just the others with whom we are in daily contact—our teachers and classmates at school, our colleagues at work—but the images of others created by the ever increasingly powerful media. The others that see us are not just people in the flesh, but imagined people fleshed out for us by the media.

It would be better to forget the others and see ourselves as we are. But of course "who we are" is a much bigger puzzle. It involves real understanding—our biology, our brains, our environment—everything in the metaphysics we now know. It's a philosophical problem, not a trashy self-disrespecting problem of seeing ourselves as others see us.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
The most astonishing and unfathomable fact is that we human beings, our biographies and experience, our tales of history recorded since Herodotus (and even earlier in Asia), all are made up of atoms and molecules and the forces that structure them. Even our minds—as Democritus surmised—are made up of them and their structured interplay.

This is a new metaphysics, almost incomprehensible, even though we know its pieces and many of the structures among them. It is incomprehensible because we have no idea how to fit our experience, our biographies, and our history—the things most familiar to us—into it. But we are challenged to do so, because we know our experience, our consciousness and minds, and the biographies and history they create, is produced and continuously generated by those structures, pervasive throughout the galaxies and throughout the history of existence. Our own biographical histories are, of course, the tiniest of fragments of existence, but probably the most complex and, we would like to believe, the most magnificent of all. But when we try to assert our biographies and experience above this existence, we trivialize it.

I think Heraclitus and some others 2,500 years ago had a sense of this, and isolated themselves, becoming what we now call misanthropes. I think, however, they may have loved human beings—at least human existence—far more than their critics.


!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
At the Hirshhorn

Yesterday at the Hirshhorn there was an intern—turns out a student or graduate of William and Mary—who offered to answer any questions I might have about the exhibit "ColorForms" on the lower floor. There was a room of Rothko paintings, and next to it a large white room with strings of red and blue yarn stretched from ceiling to floor in different patterns. The intern suggested I walk into a space between three sets of them arranged in a sort of enclosure, and the sensation, immediate and striking, was of being in a room of mirrors. It was quite astonishing.

The work was created by someone named Fred Sandback, and as the intern and I talked I mentioned that Rothko had committed suicide. She said, yes he had, but he had an aneurism, the doctor told him he shouldn't paint such large pictures because of the physical exertion, and he was old and being deprived of his meaning for living. So, her implication was, suicide is okay, normal in a way.

I mentioned to her that from the information on the wall about Sandback that he died rather young and I wondered if he also had committed suicide. She answered, almost in whispered embarrassment, that he was "bipolar."

Well, that took care of that. We don't need an exploration of his thoughts and mind, his experience and his way of looking at the world (certainly fascinating judging from his yarn creation); he suffered from a disease, like Rothko's aneurism. Everything is thus explained and perfectly satisfactory. Art is here, disease is there, both have explanations; consult the expert for each.

It's strange that in this age when the scientific metaphysics has emerged triumphant that so much fraud and deceit—and bad education—should be perpetrated in its name or under its mantle.

Actually, an even stranger symptom of that is Harold Morowitz's book //The Emergence of Everything//. He ties everything together in the most amazing simplification and distortion of the evolution of consciousness and its cultural expressions in history in order to reach his desired conclusions. For example, he represents Teilhard de Chardin's puzzlement about how mind/spirit could emerge from and be "matter" at the same time as a "Gibbs equation about energy" ("change in Gibbs free energy is equal to change in enthalpy minus temperature times change in entropy"). That is simply nuts.

But it is an expression of what happened at the Hirshhorn with the intern. People like Morowitz become experts in some area of existence, and then think they can extend it to explain all the other areas of existence.

Morowitz, however, is especially disappointing. His expertise is very great, and I looked to him for some insight into what Teilhard, disappointing in his own way, was after. Instead, I find something not just unworthy of the scientific metaphysics but almost cuckoo, and in a simple naive way quite arrogant.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!

Feynman writes in the first volume of his Lectures On Physics (38-6):

"So we now understand why we do not fall through the floor. As we walk our shoes with their masses of atoms push against the floor with //its// masses of atoms. In order to squash the masses of atoms closer together, the electrons would be confined to a smaller space and, by the uncertainty principle, their momentum would have to be higher on the average, and that means high energy; the resistance to atomic compression is a quantum-mechanical effect and not a classical effect."

We can't get our imaginations around this. I don't mean the explanation, though that is hard enough; I mean the sheer numbers and sizes involved.

But that is always and has always been the way with God and our attempts to imagine and conceptualize him, at least in true religion. God speaking from the whirlwind is a trivial and rather childish metaphor. But the whirlwind—here, the compression of atoms Feynman is talking about—is not. Nor is, or should be, the God in the metaphor, for they are one and the same. Spinoza was right, though with the wrong metaphysics. So were the Hindus with their Brahma and Parabrahman. Of course our metaphysics too may prove ultimately wrong. But that is part of what is meant by saying God and Nature outshoot our imaginations.

We are part of this vast unimaginable "~God-Nature complex," and belong within it. Think of what I wrote in "David's Ashes" and the Chuangtsu quotes. We belong, and still belong when we die. We are just going home, as a friend once put it, though in reference to her traditional Christian view of things.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!

I just read another article from Arts & Letters Daily raising the usual problem of the "mystery" of consciousness and the impossibility of its emergence from "mere matter"—this time in reference to Thomas Nagel's new book, //Mind and Cosmos//.

It would help the discussion if it were restricted, at least in the beginning, to the word "awareness." We human beings are aware of things—for example, the sparrow outside the window, the cold floor, and so on; there is no problem with that. But we can also easily agree (one would think) that other organisms, certainly vertebrates, are also aware of their surroundings (though in point of fact it is their umwelten that they are aware of). The house sparrows are aware of me and the seed I sprinkle for them each morning; when they see me coming out the back door they fly to the fence and wait for me to finish. Dogs are aware of squirrels and chase them up trees. It's simply obvious and indisputable.

Then one can bring in the word "consciousness" as simply //awareness of awareness//. What is different about it? Nothing at all, except that it involves memory—the ability to store awarenesses, and plasticity, the ability to mix and mingle memories of awarenesses with current awareness—experience—in innumerable ways, and store the results as further memories for further consciousness to deal with.

There is no "mystery," except the staggering, unimaginable complexity of the process (which is mystery enough).

Perhaps there is mystery in the production of awarenesses themselves—"qualia" or "sense data." If so, it is not a mystery invoking our special place in the universe, but a mystery that includes sparrows and dogs, and maybe even //Aplysia// and von Uexk&uuml;ll's wood tick.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!

In "A Conversation With Daniel Dennett" in Edge magazine, Dennett engages in the same beating up on anti-evolution fundamentalists as Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Barash engage in. Dennett just follows suit in the name of philosophy.

Well, truth is just one dimension of the human psyche. If truth brings you death, you avoid it, hate it, and do life preserving things instead of accepting it. As Hume put it: you will choose the destruction of the world to a scratch on your finger.

These people—Dawkins, Dennett, et al—don't believe that, or profess not to, even though if they reflected on their own lives and the decisions they have made and continue to make, they would see that it is true. They would have to uneducate themselves a bit—try to disassociate themselves and their psyches from the university education they chose because it was enjoyable and easier than alternative ways of making a living. "Veritas" suited their psyches, was a noble calling, a respected flag to march under.

So they dismiss the fundamentalists and their psyches, and that young monk I mentioned elsewhere who said of the monastery's apricot tree, "We take good care of it because it takes good care of us." They not only dismiss him; they despise him.

I'm sure that young monk wouldn't dismiss and despise them, and could teach them quite a lot about the other dimensions of the psyche. But I have no doubt they wouldn't listen to his instruction, just as they assume he doesn't listen to theirs.

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
If one wants to understand the human hand, one studies it anatomically and physiologically; one studies its bones, tendons, muscles, nerves, blood flow, sensory receptors, and so forth. But if one wants to understand its "biography," how it functions in the life of a particular person, one has to understand what it does, has done, and is capable of doing: it plays the violin, swings a hammer or baseball bat, writes stories with a pencil or computer, and so forth. One needs to understand the hand in relation to its environment. 

The same is true for the mind. One needs to study the brain, its anatomy and physiology, using whatever tools are available, from gross anatomical description to electrodes and MRIs. But like the hand, the brain functions by interacting with its environment, which includes the rest of the body. Indeed, both the hand and brain were evolved and shaped by doing so. One cannot understand their structures without understanding these functions—the  "biography" of the particular hand or brain of a particular person.

When it comes to the health of both, the doctor or psychiatrist asks (or should ask), "What have you been doing with them?" If a person says he has been trying to drive a nail with his fist, the cure is to stop; it damages the hand. The same is true of the mind, except the problems are more complex because the brain is more complex than the hand.


!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
I’ve noted many times that birds’ eyeballs don’t move in their sockets like seahorses or ours, and so they have to move their heads back and forth and up and down to create a visual world. (For example, the row of house sparrows on the fence outside my window now is motionless, except for the heads which are in constant jerky motion.)

It seems to me that this characteristic, which would be quite crippling for mammals and other sedentary or slow-moving creatures, makes perfect sense for animals that fly and must negotiate the world as they whisk through the air—for example, among branches of trees and bushes or through the openings in chain-link fences. Their bodies rather than their eyes are creating the motion that focuses objects in the environment. Movement of their eyes in their sockets would be much too slow and clumsy to negotiate the instant responses necessary in mid-flight to manage the environment. The drawback, of course, is that when they are perched they have to move their heads constantly to structure their environment. Of course their neural centers controlling or enabling vision must function very differently from animals whose eyes can move.

I think Jakob von Uexküll would have loved this example, had he thought of it, of an //umwelt// created from vision which must be quite different from our own (even if the anatomy of the eye is much the same). One might wonder whether a tree a bird sees as it sits on a fence cocking its head back and forth, up and down, looks the same as when it flies among its branches.

!

!
Bits and Pieces consists of excerpts from a journal I have kept over the years. Most of the entries I selected relate to the philosophical perspective I outlined in "Science As Philosophy." Others I include merely because I think them interesting.
# [[Two Corruptions at the Smithsonian]]
# [[Dante and Science]]
# [[At the Hirshhorn]]
# [[Irresistable Fundraisers]]
# [[Kant and Metaphysics]]
# [[Psychology's Predicament]]
# [[Biography and Brain]]
# [[Bird Eyeballs]]
# [[Complexity]]
# [[Destruction]]
# [[Philosophy and Language]]
# [[Psychic Condition]]
# [[Satisfying Metaphysics]]
# [[A Korean Autobiography]]
# [[Sex and Surfeit]]
# [[A Dying Squirrel]]
# [[God and Nature]]
# [[Alone In the Universe]]
# [[Old Age]]
# [[Comforting Doubt]]
# [[A Bad Business]]
# [[Mind In the Big Bang]]
# [[Hands and Brains]]
# [[Frameworks of Existence]]
# [[Music of the Spheres]]
# [[Time]]
# [[Spinoza and Science]]
# [[Alcohol]]
# [[An Old Woman]]
# [[Mystery and Skepticism]]
# [[Playing Chamber Music]]
# [[Synesthesia]]
# [[The Noosphere]]
# [[Irritating Philosophy]]
# [[Feynman Hypnotized]]
# [[Depression]]
# [[Control]]
# [[Spinoza and Satisfaction]]
# [[Playing Tchaikovsky]]
# [[Nature and Chess]]

!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces Index|Index: Bits and Pieces]]
!
 1. [[Two Corruptions at the Smithsonian]]
 2. [[Dante and Science]]
 3. [[At the Hirshhorn]]
 4. [[Irresistable Fundraisers]]
 5. [[Kant and Metaphysics]]
 6. [[Psychology's Predicament]]
 7. [[Biography and Brain]]
 8. [[Bird Eyeballs]]
 9. [[Complexity]]
10. [[Destruction]]
11. [[Philosophy and Language]]
12. [[Psychic Condition]]
13. [[Satisfying Metaphysics]]
14. [[An Autobiography]]
15. [[Sex and Surfeit]]
16. [[A Dying Squirrel]]
17. [[God and Nature]]
18. [[Alone In the Universe]]
19. [[Old Age]]
20. [[Comforting Doubt]]
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces Index|Index: Bits and Pieces]]
!
21. [[A Bad Business]]
22. [[Mind In the Big Bang]]
23. [[Hands and Brains]]
24. [[Frameworks of Existence]]
25. [[Music of the Spheres]]
26. [[Time]]
27. [[Spinoza and Science]]
28. [[Alcohol]]
29. [[An Old Woman]]
30. [[Mystery and Skepticism]]
31. [[Playing Chamber Music]]
32. [[Synesthesia]]
33. [[The Noosphere]]
34. [[Irritating Philosophy]]
35. [[Feynman Hypnotized]]
36. [[Depression]]
37. [[Control]]
38. [[Spinoza and Satisfaction]]
39. [[Playing Tchaikovsky]]
40. [[Nature and Chess]]
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces Index|Index: Bits and Pieces]]
!
41. [[A Happy Experience]]
42. [[Intentionality]]
43. [[Evolution and Perfection]]
44. [[Proust]]
45. [[Alcoholism]]
46. [[Discarding Books]]
47. [[Perfecting Ourselves]]
48. [[Epistemology]]
49. [[Squirrels and Engineers]]
50. [[Immortality]]
51. [[Peppered Moths]]
52. [[Epistemology Again]]
53. [[Cooked Food]]
54. [[Qualia]]
55. [[A Nice Compliment]]
56. [[Subjectivity and the Umwelt]]
57. [[Feynman On Death]]
58. [[Astonishing and Unfathomable]]
59. [[Humans In Art]]
60. [[Zen and the Scientific Metaphysics]]

!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces Index|Index: Bits and Pieces]]
!
61. [[Another Dying Squirrel]]
62. [[C. P. Snow]]
63. [[Deadly Sins]]
64. [[Purpose in the Universe]]
65. [[Monarch Butterflies]]
66. [[Hyperconsciousness]]
67. [[The Nerve Cell]]
68. [[Music]]
69. [[Hypothesis and Experiment]]
70. [[Sex and Ideology]]
71. [[Mysticism]]
72. [[Gravity]]
73. [[Jury Duty]]
74. [[Psychology]]
75. [[Teilhard de Chardin]]
76. [[Joy and Grief]]
77. [[Outside Ourselves]]
78. [[Structure and Probability]]
79. [[Tears in the Heart of Beauty]]
80. [[Health Care]]
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces Index|Index: Bits and Pieces]]
!
81. [[Wittgenstein]]
82. [[Using Our Gifts]]
83. [[Thomas Berry]]
84. [[Growing Up]]
85. [[Just-So Stories]]
86. [[Invisible Universe]]
87. [[Maya]]
88. [[Sensations]]
89. [[Cosmic Poetry]]
90. [[Japanese Gardens]]
91. [[Nature's Deepest Laws]]
92. [[Neural Development]]
93. [[Revisiting Classical Dialogues]]
94. [[Umwelt Knowledge]]
95. [[Robins]]
96. [[A Dream]]
97. [[David's Ashes]]
98. [[Origins of Religion]]
99. [[Sublimation]]
100. [[As Others See Us]]

!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces Index|Index: Bits and Pieces]]
!
101. [[Absolute and Relative]]
102. [[Atoms and Shoes]]
103. [[Awareness of Awareness]]
104. [[Beating Up On Fundamentalists]]
105. [[Boundaries]]
106. [[Ultimate Concern]]
107. [[Loving Plants and People]]
108. [[Nature's Designs]]
109. [[Parents and Children]]
110. [[Primary and Secondary Qualities]]
111. [[Thrown Into the World]]
112. [[Animal Consciousness]]
113. [[Religion]]
114. [[Reincarnation]]
115. [[The Philosophy of Democritus]]

!

!Classical Dialogues
''Preface''
When I wrote these dialogues thirty years ago I did not consciously model them on Plato's //Republic//. However, they turned out to be similar in at least two respects. First, they tend to oversimplify complex problems and overstate proposed solutions to them. This is partly due to the dialogue form of presentation, and has the consequence, perfectly understandable, that those who disagree likewise tend to oversimplify and overstate their objections. This is certainly the case with Karl Popper's attack on Plato in //The Open Society and Its Enemies//.

The second similarity is that the //Republic// and //Classical Dialogues// use social issues to lead into broad questions regarding human nature and knowledge, and indeed the nature of existence itself. Both realize that the elements of existence are interconnected, and believe the task of philosophy is to understand in a general way the nature of these interconnections. This traditional idea of the function of philosophy was abandoned by most professional philosophers in the twentieth century.

Mark Titus
April 2011
!!!
!!Browse Chapters:
* [[Chapter 1: Freedom and the Necessities of Life|Chapter 1 - Freedom and the Necessities of Life]]
* [[Chapter 2: Competition|Chapter 2 - Competition]] 
* [[Chapter 3: Cooperation|Chapter 3 - Cooperation]] 
* [[Chapter 4: Human Nature|Chapter 4 - Human Nature]] 
* [[Chapter 5: Private Enterprise|Chapter 5 - Private Enterprise]] 
* [[Chapter 6: Education and Excellence|Chapter 6 - Education and Excellence]] 
* [[Chapter 7: Religion|Chapter 7 - Religion]] 

!!Download Chapters for eReader viewing:
* iPhone: [[Full PDF|CD/CD-iphone.pdf]]
* iPad: [[Full PDF|CD/CD-ipad.pdf]]
* Kindle: [[Full PDF|CD/CD-kindle.pdf]]

<html><!--
!!Browse Chapters Here (web PDF pages):
* [[Front Pages|CD-001]] 
* [[Chapter 1: Freedom and the Necessities of Life|CD-005]] 
* [[Chapter 2: Competition|CD-028]] 
* [[Chapter 3: Cooperation|CD-043]] 
* [[Chapter 4: Human Nature|CD-068]] 
* [[Chapter 5: Private Enterprise|CD-105]] 
* [[Chapter 6: Education and Excellence|CD-130]] 
* [[Chapter 7: Religion|CD-167]] 
--> </html>

!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!

It occurs to me that the capacity of neural systems to create boundaries—as in the famous studies of vision in the horseshoe crab //Limulus//—is a good example of the basic function of neural systems in converting analog stimuli from the environment into sensations. Light striking the eye of //Limulus// is a perfect analog gradient; it is the neural system that creates a discrete boundary within it.

This is how Gordon Shepherd describes it in his textbook //Neurobiology// (p. 241):

"Under these conditions [exposure of the eye to a test pattern containing a region of light and dark] the impulse discharges of the eccentric cells near the light-dark boundary were modified so that they did //not// faithfully reflect the real luminosity of the stimulus; the eccentric cells on the light side of the border fired faster, whereas those on the dark side fired slower, than expected. There is thus an enhancement of contrast in the activity of the eccentric cells near the border."

That "enhancement of contrast" is in effect (or in reality) a conversion of analog stimulus into digital form.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
There's a great hullabaloo now, and some hand-wringing, over the fiftieth anniversary of C. P. Snow's "Two Cultures"—the literary and the scientific. There seems to be general agreement that the gap between them has increased, though there is the usual quibbling about whether he got it right, since he was neither a prominent scientist nor prominent novelist.

A basic part of the problem is that the natural world—the world investigated by physics, chemistry, and biology—is far more complex than ever thought; every new discovery seems to unveil new complexity. But at the same time, the "literary" culture, which includes what is generally called the humanities, has also become more complex; there is more of it as the years pass, and more people contributing to it in one way or another. There is more history, more art, more music, more differentiation of religious ideas, more everything of the //umwelt// and its expansion and expression.

So there is more specialization, not just in the "scientific" culture, but the "literary" one as well. And, of course, that creates barriers of communication even within the two cultures themselves.

The second part of the problem has to do with the failure of philosophy to continue its tradition. That's the most important part of the problem. We are all human beings, with the same organs and capacities. Some turn out to be scientists and others novelists, depending on their talents and interests, the balance and strengths of their capacities. But they are still human beings with the psychic furniture and capacity common to all.

Philosophy came along first, addressing this commonality intellectually: How are we to understand the universe and human existence, and find in that understanding a way to a worthy and satisfying life?

Well, time passed—more people, more culture, more revealing of complexity. But philosophy held its own as the unifying discipline, even into the nineteenth century, when the study of nature revealed its true complexity and the inevitable specialization showed itself with the phrase "natural philosophy."

Philosophers in the twentieth century, rather than take up the challenge and tradition of unification of culture, dropped the ball. They not just dropped it, but embarrassed themselves and humiliated the tradition by developing a specialization of their own based on the discovery that mathematics and logic are pretty much the same. So they quibble and posture among themselves, oblivious to the really important questions and consequences raised by Snow's lecture and book.

How is philosophy to solve the problem? It seems quite simple. It has to understand that the problems of metaphysics and epistemology have successfully been addressed by science (at least for the foreseeable future); but the problem of values—the worthy and satisfying life—has been addressed by the "literary" culture for 2,500 years with little success. Philosophers should be the ones to connect the two.
!

[[<Previous Page|Book01]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-002]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-01.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-001]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-003]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-02.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-002]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-004]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-03.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-003]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-005]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-04.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-004]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-006]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-05.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-005]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-007]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-06.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-006]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-008]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-07.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-007]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-009]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-08.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-008]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-010]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-09.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-009]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-011]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-10.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-010]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-012]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-11.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-011]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-013]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-12.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-012]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-014]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-13.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-013]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-015]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-14.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-014]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-016]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-15.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-015]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-017]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-16.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-016]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-018]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-17.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-017]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-019]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-18.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-018]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-020]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-19.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-019]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-021]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-20.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-020]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-022]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-21.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-021]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-023]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-22.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-022]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-024]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-23.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-023]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-025]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-24.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-024]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-026]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-25.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-025]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-027]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-26.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-026]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-028]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-27.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-027]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-029]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-28.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-028]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-030]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-29.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-029]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-031]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-30.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-030]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-032]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-31.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-031]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-033]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-32.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-032]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-034]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-33.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-033]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-035]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-34.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-034]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-036]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-35.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-035]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-037]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-36.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-036]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-038]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-37.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-037]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-039]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-38.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-038]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-040]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-39.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-039]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-041]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-40.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-040]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-042]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-41.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-041]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-043]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-42.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-042]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-044]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-43.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-043]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-045]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-44.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-044]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-046]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-45.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-045]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-047]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-46.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-046]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-048]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-47.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-047]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-049]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-48.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-048]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-050]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-49.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-049]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-051]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-50.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-050]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-052]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-51.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-051]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-053]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-52.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-052]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-054]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-53.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-053]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-055]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-54.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-054]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-056]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-55.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-055]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-057]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-56.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-056]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-058]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-57.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-057]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-059]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-58.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-058]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-060]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-59.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-059]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-061]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-60.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-060]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-062]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-61.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-061]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-063]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-62.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-062]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-064]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-63.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-063]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-065]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-64.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-064]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-066]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-65.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-065]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-067]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-66.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-066]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-068]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-67.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-067]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-069]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-68.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-068]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-070]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-69.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-069]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-071]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-70.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-070]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-072]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-71.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-071]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-073]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-72.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-072]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-074]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-73.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-073]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-075]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-74.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-074]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-076]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-75.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-075]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-077]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-76.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-076]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-078]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-77.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-077]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-079]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-78.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-078]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-080]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-79.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-079]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-081]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-80.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-080]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-082]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-81.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-081]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-083]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-82.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-082]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-084]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-83.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-083]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-085]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-84.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-084]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-086]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-85.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-085]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-087]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-86.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-086]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-088]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-87.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-087]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-089]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-88.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-088]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-090]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-89.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-089]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-091]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-90.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-090]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-092]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-91.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-091]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-093]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-92.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-092]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-094]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-93.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-093]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-095]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-94.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-094]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-096]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-95.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-095]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-097]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-96.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-096]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-098]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-97.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-097]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-099]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-98.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-098]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-100]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-99.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-099]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-101]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-100.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-100]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-102]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-101.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-101]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-103]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-102.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-102]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-104]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-103.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-103]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-105]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-104.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-104]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-106]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-105.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-105]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-107]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-106.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-106]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-108]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-107.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-107]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-109]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-108.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-108]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-110]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-109.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-109]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-111]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-110.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-110]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-112]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-111.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-111]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-113]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-112.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-112]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-114]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-113.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-113]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-115]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-114.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-114]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-116]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-115.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-115]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-117]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-116.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-116]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-118]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-117.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-117]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-119]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-118.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-118]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-120]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-119.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-119]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-121]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-120.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-120]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-122]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-121.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-121]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-123]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-122.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-122]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-124]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-123.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-123]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-125]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-124.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-124]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-126]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-125.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-125]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-127]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-126.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-126]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-128]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-127.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-127]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-129]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-128.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-128]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-130]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-129.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-129]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-131]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-130.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-130]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-132]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-131.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-131]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-133]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-132.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-132]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-134]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-133.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-133]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-135]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-134.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-134]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-136]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-135.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-135]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-137]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-136.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-136]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-138]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-137.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-137]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-139]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-138.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-138]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-140]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-139.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-139]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-141]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-140.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-140]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-142]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-141.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-141]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-143]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-142.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-142]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-144]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-143.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-143]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-145]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-144.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-144]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-146]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-145.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-145]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-147]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-146.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-146]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-148]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-147.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-147]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-149]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-148.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-148]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-150]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-149.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-149]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-151]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-150.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-150]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-152]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-151.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-151]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-153]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-152.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-152]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-154]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-153.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-153]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-155]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-154.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-154]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-156]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-155.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-155]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-157]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-156.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-156]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-158]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-157.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-157]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-159]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-158.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-158]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-160]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-159.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-159]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-161]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-160.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-160]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-162]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-161.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-161]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-163]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-162.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-162]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-164]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-163.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-163]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-165]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-164.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-164]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-166]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-165.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-165]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-167]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-166.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-166]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-168]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-167.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-167]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-169]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-168.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-168]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-170]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-169.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-169]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-171]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-170.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-170]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-172]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-171.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-171]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-173]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-172.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-172]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-174]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-173.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-173]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-175]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-174.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-174]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-176]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-175.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-175]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-177]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-176.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-176]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-178]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-177.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-177]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-179]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-178.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-178]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-180]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-179.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-179]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-181]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-180.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-180]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-182]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-181.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-181]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-183]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-182.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-182]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-184]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-183.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-183]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-185]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-184.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-184]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-186]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-185.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-185]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-187]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-186.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-186]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-188]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-187.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-187]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-189]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-188.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-188]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-190]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-189.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-189]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-191]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-190.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-190]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-192]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-191.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-191]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-193]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-192.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-192]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-194]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-193.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-193]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-195]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-194.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-194]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-196]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-195.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-195]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-197]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-196.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-196]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|CD-198]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-197.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|CD-197]] | [[Main ToC|Book01]] | [[Next Page>|Book01]]
<html><img src="CD/www/Page-198.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

/***
''Name:'' CalendarPlugin
''Version:'' <<getversion calendar>> (<<getversiondate calendar "DD MMM YYYY">>)
''Author:'' SteveRumsby

''Configuration:''

|''First day of week:''|<<option txtCalFirstDay>>|(Monday = 0, Sunday = 6)|
|''First day of weekend:''|<<option txtCalStartOfWeekend>>|(Monday = 0, Sunday = 6)|

''Syntax:'' 
|{{{<<calendar>>}}}|Produce a full-year calendar for the current year|
|{{{<<calendar year>>}}}|Produce a full-year calendar for the given year|
|{{{<<calendar year month>>}}}|Produce a one-month calendar for the given month and year|
|{{{<<calendar thismonth>>}}}|Produce a one-month calendar for the current month|
|{{{<<calendar lastmonth>>}}}|Produce a one-month calendar for last month|
|{{{<<calendar nextmonth>>}}}|Produce a one-month calendar for next month|

***/
// //Modify this section to change the text displayed for the month and day names, to a different language for example. You can also change the format of the tiddler names linked to from each date, and the colours used.

// // ''[[Changes]] by ELS 2005.10.30:''
// // config.macros.calendar.handler()
// // ^^use "tbody" element for IE compatibility^^
// // ^^IE returns 2005 for current year, FF returns 105... fix year adjustment accordingly^^
// // createCalendarDays()
// // ^^use showDate() function (if defined) to render autostyled date with linked popup^^
// // calendar stylesheet definition
// // ^^use .calendar class-specific selectors, add text centering and margin settings^^

//{{{
config.macros.calendar = {};

config.macros.calendar.monthnames = ["Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec"];
config.macros.calendar.daynames = ["M", "T", "W", "T", "F", "S", "S"];

config.macros.calendar.weekendbg = "#c0c0c0";
config.macros.calendar.monthbg = "#e0e0e0";
config.macros.calendar.holidaybg = "#ffc0c0";

//}}}
// //''Code section:''
// (you should not need to alter anything below here)//
//{{{
if(config.options.txtCalFirstDay == undefined)
  config.options.txtCalFirstDay = 0;
if(config.options.txtCalStartOfWeekend == undefined)
  config.options.txtCalStartOfWeekend = 5;

config.macros.calendar.tiddlerformat = "0DD/0MM/YYYY";  // This used to be changeable - for now, it isn't// <<smiley :-(>> 

version.extensions.calendar = { major: 0, minor: 6, revision: 0, date: new Date(2006, 1, 22)};
config.macros.calendar.monthdays = [ 31, 28, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31];

config.macros.calendar.holidays = [ ]; // Not sure this is required anymore - use reminders instead
//}}}

// //Is the given date a holiday?
//{{{
function calendarIsHoliday(date)
{
 var longHoliday = date.formatString("0DD/0MM/YYYY");
 var shortHoliday = date.formatString("0DD/0MM");

 for(var i = 0; i < config.macros.calendar.holidays.length; i++) {
   if(config.macros.calendar.holidays[i] == longHoliday || config.macros.calendar.holidays[i] == shortHoliday) {
     return true;
   }
 }
 return false;
}
//}}}

// //The main entry point - the macro handler.
// //Decide what sort of calendar we are creating (month or year, and which month or year)
// // Create the main calendar container and pass that to sub-ordinate functions to create the structure.
// ELS 2005.10.30: added creation and use of "tbody" for IE compatibility and fixup for year >1900//
// ELS 2005.10.30: fix year calculation for IE's getYear() function (which returns '2005' instead of '105')//
//{{{
config.macros.calendar.handler = function(place,macroName,params)
{
   var calendar = createTiddlyElement(place, "table", null, "calendar", null);
   var tbody = createTiddlyElement(calendar, "tbody", null, null, null);
   var today = new Date();
   var year = today.getYear();
   if (year<1900) year+=1900;
   if (params[0] == "thismonth")
  {
      cacheReminders(new Date(year, today.getMonth(), 1, 0, 0), 31);
      createCalendarOneMonth(tbody, year, today.getMonth());
  } 
  else if (params[0] == "lastmonth") {
      var month = today.getMonth()-1; if (month==-1) { month=11; year--; }
      cacheReminders(new Date(year, month, 1, 0, 0), 31);
      createCalendarOneMonth(tbody, year, month);
   }
   else if (params[0] == "nextmonth") {
      var month = today.getMonth()+1; if (month>11) { month=0; year++; }
      cacheReminders(new Date(year, month, 1, 0, 0), 31);
      createCalendarOneMonth(tbody, year, month);
   }
   else {
      if (params[0]) year = params[0];
      if(params[1])
      {
         cacheReminders(new Date(year, params[1]-1, 1, 0, 0), 31);
         createCalendarOneMonth(tbody, year, params[1]-1);
      }
      else
      {
         cacheReminders(new Date(year, 0, 1, 0, 0), 366);
         createCalendarYear(tbody, year);
      }
   }
  window.reminderCacheForCalendar = null;
}
//}}}
//{{{
//This global variable is used to store reminders that have been cached
//while the calendar is being rendered.  It will be renulled after the calendar is fully rendered.
window.reminderCacheForCalendar = null;
//}}}
//{{{
function cacheReminders(date, leadtime)
{
  if (window.findTiddlersWithReminders == null)
    return;
  window.reminderCacheForCalendar = {};
  var leadtimeHash = [];
  leadtimeHash [0] = 0;
  leadtimeHash [1] = leadtime;
  var t = findTiddlersWithReminders(date, leadtimeHash, null, 1);
  for(var i = 0; i < t.length; i++) {
    //just tag it in the cache, so that when we're drawing days, we can bold this one.
     window.reminderCacheForCalendar[t[i]["matchedDate"]] = "reminder:" + t[i]["params"]["title"]; 
  }
}
//}}}
//{{{
function createCalendarOneMonth(calendar, year, mon)
{
  var row = createTiddlyElement(calendar, "tr", null, null, null);
  createCalendarMonthHeader(calendar, row, config.macros.calendar.monthnames[mon] + " " + year, true, year, mon);
  row = createTiddlyElement(calendar, "tr", null, null, null);
  createCalendarDayHeader(row, 1);
  createCalendarDayRowsSingle(calendar, year, mon);
}
//}}}

//{{{
function createCalendarMonth(calendar, year, mon)
{
  var row = createTiddlyElement(calendar, "tr", null, null, null);
  createCalendarMonthHeader(calendar, row, config.macros.calendar.monthnames[mon] + " " + year, false, year, mon);
  row = createTiddlyElement(calendar, "tr", null, null, null);
  createCalendarDayHeader(row, 1);
  createCalendarDayRowsSingle(calendar, year, mon);
}
//}}}

//{{{
function createCalendarYear(calendar, year)
{
  var row;
  row = createTiddlyElement(calendar, "tr", null, null, null);
  var back = createTiddlyElement(row, "td", null, null, null);
  var backHandler = function() {
      removeChildren(calendar);
      createCalendarYear(calendar, year-1);
    };
  createTiddlyButton(back, "<", "Previous year", backHandler);
  back.align = "center";

  var yearHeader = createTiddlyElement(row, "td", null, "calendarYear", year);
  yearHeader.align = "center";
  yearHeader.setAttribute("colSpan", 19);

  var fwd = createTiddlyElement(row, "td", null, null, null);
  var fwdHandler = function() {
    removeChildren(calendar);
    createCalendarYear(calendar, year+1);
  };
  createTiddlyButton(fwd, ">", "Next year", fwdHandler);
  fwd.align = "center";

  createCalendarMonthRow(calendar, year, 0);
  createCalendarMonthRow(calendar, year, 3);
  createCalendarMonthRow(calendar, year, 6);
  createCalendarMonthRow(calendar, year, 9);
}
//}}}

//{{{
function createCalendarMonthRow(cal, year, mon)
{
  var row = createTiddlyElement(cal, "tr", null, null, null);
  createCalendarMonthHeader(cal, row, config.macros.calendar.monthnames[mon], false, year, mon);
  createCalendarMonthHeader(cal, row, config.macros.calendar.monthnames[mon+1], false, year, mon);
  createCalendarMonthHeader(cal, row, config.macros.calendar.monthnames[mon+2], false, year, mon);
  row = createTiddlyElement(cal, "tr", null, null, null);
  createCalendarDayHeader(row, 3);
  createCalendarDayRows(cal, year, mon);
}
//}}}

//{{{
function createCalendarMonthHeader(cal, row, name, nav, year, mon)
{
  var month;
  if(nav) {
    var back = createTiddlyElement(row, "td", null, null, null);
    back.align = "center";
    back.style.background = config.macros.calendar.monthbg;

/*
    back.setAttribute("colSpan", 2);

    var backYearHandler = function() {
      var newyear = year-1;
      removeChildren(cal);
      cacheReminders(new Date(newyear, mon , 1, 0, 0), 31);
      createCalendarOneMonth(cal, newyear, mon);
    };
    createTiddlyButton(back, "<<", "Previous year", backYearHandler);
*/
    var backMonHandler = function() {
      var newyear = year;
      var newmon = mon-1;
      if(newmon == -1) { newmon = 11; newyear = newyear-1;}
      removeChildren(cal);
      cacheReminders(new Date(newyear, newmon , 1, 0, 0), 31);
      createCalendarOneMonth(cal, newyear, newmon);
    };
    createTiddlyButton(back, "<", "Previous month", backMonHandler);


    month = createTiddlyElement(row, "td", null, "calendarMonthname", name)
//    month.setAttribute("colSpan", 3);
    month.setAttribute("colSpan", 5);

    var fwd = createTiddlyElement(row, "td", null, null, null);
    fwd.align = "center";
    fwd.style.background = config.macros.calendar.monthbg; 

//    fwd.setAttribute("colSpan", 2);
    var fwdMonHandler = function() {
      var newyear = year;
      var newmon = mon+1;
      if(newmon == 12) { newmon = 0; newyear = newyear+1;}
      removeChildren(cal);
      cacheReminders(new Date(newyear, newmon , 1, 0, 0), 31);
      createCalendarOneMonth(cal, newyear, newmon);
    };
    createTiddlyButton(fwd, ">", "Next month", fwdMonHandler);
/*
    var fwdYear = createTiddlyElement(row, "td", null, null, null);
    var fwdYearHandler = function() {
      var newyear = year+1;
      removeChildren(cal);
      cacheReminders(new Date(newyear, mon , 1, 0, 0), 31);
      createCalendarOneMonth(cal, newyear, mon);
    };
    createTiddlyButton(fwd, ">>", "Next year", fwdYearHandler);
*/
  } else {
    month = createTiddlyElement(row, "td", null, "calendarMonthname", name)
    month.setAttribute("colSpan", 7);
  }
  month.align = "center";
  month.style.background = config.macros.calendar.monthbg;
}
//}}}

//{{{
function createCalendarDayHeader(row, num)
{
  var cell;
  for(var i = 0; i < num; i++) {
    for(var j = 0; j < 7; j++) {
      var d = j + (config.options.txtCalFirstDay - 0);
      if(d > 6) d = d - 7;
      cell = createTiddlyElement(row, "td", null, null, config.macros.calendar.daynames[d]);

      if(d == (config.options.txtCalStartOfWeekend-0) || d == (config.options.txtCalStartOfWeekend-0+1))
        cell.style.background = config.macros.calendar.weekendbg;
    }
  }
}
//}}}

//{{{
function createCalendarDays(row, col, first, max, year, mon)
{
  var i;
  for(i = 0; i < col; i++) {
    createTiddlyElement(row, "td", null, null, null);
  }
  var day = first;
  for(i = col; i < 7; i++) {
    var d = i + (config.options.txtCalFirstDay - 0);
    if(d > 6) d = d - 7;
    var daycell = createTiddlyElement(row, "td", null, null, null);
    var isaWeekend = ((d == (config.options.txtCalStartOfWeekend-0) || d == (config.options.txtCalStartOfWeekend-0+1))? true:false);

    if(day > 0 && day <= max) {
      var celldate = new Date(year, mon, day);
      // ELS 2005.10.30: use <<date>> macro's showDate() function to create popup
      if (window.showDate) {
        showDate(daycell,celldate,"popup","DD","DD-MMM-YYYY",true, isaWeekend); 
      } else {
        if(isaWeekend) daycell.style.background = config.macros.calendar.weekendbg;
        var title = celldate.formatString(config.macros.calendar.tiddlerformat);
        if(calendarIsHoliday(celldate)) {
          daycell.style.background = config.macros.calendar.holidaybg;
        }
        if(window.findTiddlersWithReminders == null) {
          var link = createTiddlyLink(daycell, title, false);
          link.appendChild(document.createTextNode(day));
        } else {
          var button = createTiddlyButton(daycell, day, title, onClickCalendarDate);
        }
      }
    }
    day++;
  }
}
//}}}

// //We've clicked on a day in a calendar - create a suitable pop-up of options.
// //The pop-up should contain:
// // * a link to create a new entry for that date
// // * a link to create a new reminder for that date
// // * an <hr>
// // * the list of reminders for that date
//{{{
function onClickCalendarDate(e)
{
  var button = this;
  var date = button.getAttribute("title");
  var dat = new Date(date.substr(6,4), date.substr(3,2)-1, date.substr(0, 2));

  date = dat.formatString(config.macros.calendar.tiddlerformat);
  var popup = createTiddlerPopup(this);
  popup.appendChild(document.createTextNode(date));
  var newReminder = function() {
    var t = store.getTiddlers(date);
    displayTiddler(null, date, 2, null, null, false, false);
    if(t) {
      document.getElementById("editorBody" + date).value += "\n<<reminder day:" + dat.getDate() +
                                                                                         " month:" + (dat.getMonth()+1) +
                                                                                         " year:" + (dat.getYear()+1900) + " title: >>";
    } else {
      document.getElementById("editorBody" + date).value = "<<reminder day:" + dat.getDate() +
                                                                                       " month:" + (dat.getMonth()+1) +
                                                                                       " year:" + (dat.getYear()+1900) + " title: >>";
    }
  };
  var link = createTiddlyButton(popup, "New reminder", null, newReminder); 
  popup.appendChild(document.createElement("hr"));

  var t = findTiddlersWithReminders(dat, [0,14], null, 1);
  for(var i = 0; i < t.length; i++) {
    link = createTiddlyLink(popup, t[i].tiddler, false);
    link.appendChild(document.createTextNode(t[i].tiddler));
  }
}
//}}}

//{{{
function calendarMaxDays(year, mon)
{
 var max = config.macros.calendar.monthdays[mon];
 if(mon == 1 && (year % 4) == 0 && ((year % 100) != 0 || (year % 400) == 0)) {
 max++;
 }
 return max;
}
//}}}

//{{{
function createCalendarDayRows(cal, year, mon)
{
 var row = createTiddlyElement(cal, "tr", null, null, null);

 var first1 = (new Date(year, mon, 1)).getDay() -1 - (config.options.txtCalFirstDay-0);
 if(first1 < 0) first1 = first1 + 7;
 var day1 = -first1 + 1;
 var first2 = (new Date(year, mon+1, 1)).getDay() -1 - (config.options.txtCalFirstDay-0);
 if(first2 < 0) first2 = first2 + 7;
 var day2 = -first2 + 1;
 var first3 = (new Date(year, mon+2, 1)).getDay() -1 - (config.options.txtCalFirstDay-0);
 if(first3 < 0) first3 = first3 + 7;
 var day3 = -first3 + 1;

 var max1 = calendarMaxDays(year, mon);
 var max2 = calendarMaxDays(year, mon+1);
 var max3 = calendarMaxDays(year, mon+2);

 while(day1 <= max1 || day2 <= max2 || day3 <= max3) {
 row = createTiddlyElement(cal, "tr", null, null, null);
 createCalendarDays(row, 0, day1, max1, year, mon); day1 += 7;
 createCalendarDays(row, 0, day2, max2, year, mon+1); day2 += 7;
 createCalendarDays(row, 0, day3, max3, year, mon+2); day3 += 7;
 }
}
//}}}

//{{{
function createCalendarDayRowsSingle(cal, year, mon)
{
 var row = createTiddlyElement(cal, "tr", null, null, null);

 var first1 = (new Date(year, mon, 1)).getDay() -1 - (config.options.txtCalFirstDay-0);
 if(first1 < 0) first1 = first1+ 7;
 var day1 = -first1 + 1;
 var max1 = calendarMaxDays(year, mon);

 while(day1 <= max1) {
 row = createTiddlyElement(cal, "tr", null, null, null);
 createCalendarDays(row, 0, day1, max1, year, mon); day1 += 7;
 }
}
//}}}

// //ELS 2005.10.30: added styles
//{{{
setStylesheet(".calendar, .calendar table, .calendar th, .calendar tr, .calendar td { font-size:10pt; text-align:center; } .calendar, .calendar a { margin:0px !important; padding:0px !important; }", "calendarStyles");
//}}}

[[Back to Table of Contents|Book01]]
!

''Visitor:'' If we are to talk about improving community life, we will have to decide whether to approach our subject from the standpoint of the real or the standpoint of the ideal. I mean, shall we begin with a description of present society, or shall we take the opposite approach, forgetting things as they are, and describe what seems to us a good society? It makes a great difference.

''Citizen:'' Yes, I am sure it does. But since we hear so much about the faults of present societies, it might be well to start from the ideal.

''Vis:'' We should construct a utopia?

''Cit:'' Yes, if you choose to call it that.

''Vis:'' Well then, suppose we paint a picture of what seems to us a perfect society, and when we are finished people merely shrug their shoulders and say they don't like it, that it is not to their taste.

''Cit:'' Of course that is a possibility.

''Vis:'' Or perhaps the opposite will happen and they will be taken in and fall in love with the picture.

''Cit:'' That may happen too.

''Vis:'' But then our efforts will have been wasted, for we were unable to get a rational hold on them. They are free to accept or reject it simply according to taste. We would like to get hold of their reason and sense of fact as well as their taste, and compel assent -- at least so far as thinking can do it.

''Cit:'' Then you prefer to begin at the opposite end with an analysis and criticism of present day society?

''Vis:'' Of course if we take that approach, we will have to consider not just our own impressions, but also the opinions of those who have studied society from various professional angles.

''Cit:'' You are referring to the writings of political scientists?

''Vis:'' Yes, and sociologists and psychologists too. And there are legal experts, newspaper columnists, television commentators, urbanologists, anthropologists, and economists to consider as well. In fact there seems to be hardly anybody who doesn't have some observation to make about present day society, and I don't think we would ever get from all this information to the question that we want to ask.

''Cit:'' About the nature of a good society or community?

''Vis:'' Yes. What we usually get from these observers and students of society is a description of some existing law or institution or bit of social behavior, followed perhaps by some criticism and recommendation for change. But we never know whether to follow the recommendation because they have not told us what they consider to be a good society and how the change would help create it.

''Cit:'' Are you saying that every student and critic of society should preface his criticism with a picture of a good community as he envisions it? That is certainly unreasonable.

''Vis:'' Not just his criticism, but his description as well. For unless we know what he understands by the word "community" we have no way of knowing whether his descriptions and observations are relevant or even meaningful. If we don't know what the purpose and function of a community is, how can we decide whether some piece of legislation or social behavior is relevant to the issue of community life?

''Cit:'' I am afraid I don't follow you.

''Vis:'' Consider a simpler case. Suppose you read a detailed description of some object made of wool and wood - that it is about three feet tall and held together with screws and bolts, and has various carvings and designs on it. And suppose after such descriptions, the author starts complaining about it - that some people put their feet on it, others hang clothes on it, some sit on it, and still others think it has no use whatsoever, is an eyesore, and should be thrown in the garbage or hidden from view. Would you not feel at a loss and not know whether to agree or disagree?

''Cit:'' Yes, of course.

''Vis:'' For you would not know what was being talked about, even though each description made sense and, so far as you could tell, was perfectly accurate?

''Cit:'' Yes, that is a peculiar fact - to both know and not know what is being talked about.

''Vis:'' And you would not know how to respond to the various criticisms - whether, for example, the thing should be sat on or hidden away in a closet?

''Cit:'' No, I would not.

''Vis:'' But at last you are told that it is a chair that is the subject of all this talk and criticism. Suddenly everything falls into place, isn't that so?

''Cit:'' Yes - and I would feel a little silly.

''Vis:'' On the contrary, you would feel angry. For you had been burdened with a mass of detail and forced to choose between different courses of action when the most important piece of information had not been supplied - the basic definition of what you were dealing with.

And isn't the same true in discussions about politics and community life? How can one decide whether there should be legislation governing abortion or segregation if there is no firm conviction distinguishing community concern from personal choice? Or how can one reach an opinion on such complex issues as government spending unless he is prepared to define the role of government responsibility in society? Or what use is it to take polls of public opinion unless everyone agrees that government decisions should translate majority opinion into law? If everyone has a different definition of community in mind, or no definition at all, then there will be no end to political argument and squabbling.

''Cit:'' Well, it is probably true that much more time is spent arguing particular issues instead of comparing different visions of the purpose of a community.

But you seem to have brought us to an impasse: If we can't talk about improving community life without first imagining an ideal community or listing the shortcomings of existing communities, then how are we to proceed?

''Vis:'' I think that we can borrow a little from both approaches. Suppose we began by asking what all men want or expect from community life. Wouldn't that be a question of fact and start us out firmly in the real world?

''Cit:'' Yes, although I doubt that you would find much agreement among them.

''Vis:'' But suppose we did find one or two things that all people in a community agree they expect from their fellows. Wouldn't that constitute an acceptable definition of the function of the community?

''Cit:'' Yes, I suppose it would.

''Vis:'' And the community which satisfied the expectations shared by its members would lack that arbitrariness that we associated with ideal or utopian visions by the very fact that it is a community that all want and all expect?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And the community members would speak easily and naturally enough about these expectations as their individual and community rights, would they not?

''Cit:'' Yes, that would be natural.

''Vis:'' But at the same time, they will not find it easy to build such a community - it is likely to exist as an ideal towards which the people and their government work step by step. It is an ideal vision rooted in reality - the admitted desires of the people.

''Cit:'' Yes, such an idea of a good community would seem to have elements of the ideal and the real.

''Vis:'' Then have we slipped out of our dilemma?

''Cit:'' I really can't be sure, because the issue seems so complex. But at least we have got you finally into a position to answer my question and to give me your idea of how a community ought to be constituted. You propose first to tell me what it is that all men expect from life together in a society - is that correct?

''Vis:'' I had in mind rather to ask you.

''Cit:'' I can say right now that I have no idea. But once you have an answer to that question - which we agree is a question of fact - you will go on to ask what type of community will best fulfill those expectations. Is that correct?

''Vis:'' Yes, we will attempt to build the utopia that all people wish for themselves.

''Cit:'' And how do you propose to discover what everyone expects from their community? Would you conduct a public opinion poll like the Gallup and Harris people?

''Vis:'' You mean present everyone with a list of possible expectations and see whether they agree on any one or two of them?

''Cit:'' Yes, that would be the way such polls are conducted.

''Vis:'' The list would have to be very long in order to be sure the relevant items were included. And even then we couldn't be sure that the common expectation or most important one was included, could we?

''Cit:'' No, we couldn't.

''Vis:'' And what is worse, the items would have to be briefly described, since otherwise the questionnaire would go on forever; and such brief descriptions would be variously interpreted, so that we could not be sure of real agreement, even when people answered the questions the same way. You know how people disagree on the meaning of happiness, even though all think it is a goal of life?

''Cit:'' Yes, but perhaps the poll could be more specific than asking some question about happiness.

''Vis:'' But even so, I think we would have a problem. I can remember, for example, an opinion poll that was taken to discover the level of cultural interest among your citizens. The results seemed to show that Americans were very interested in such things as theater, painting, and dance; and everyone thought that this gave strong evidence that Americans were not as boorish and materialistic as they were reputed to be. But it is likely that the poll proved no such thing.

''Cit:'' I don't understand. Wouldn't the fact that people say they are interested in theater be evidence that they are really interested in theater?

''Vis:'' Why should it? No one would want to admit, especially in writing, that he is indifferent to cultural activity, would he? He may never have attended a concert or theater performance in his life, but this would hardly prevent him from saying that he would go to more cultural events if they were offered - especially if they were cheap.

''Cit:'' That is probably true.

''Vis:'' And "theater" would mean different things to different people. Some would include high school plays, dinner theater, children's skits, and even television serials; but perhaps only a very few would restrict their definition to the serious art form you take it to be.

''Cit:'' Very likely.

''Vis:'' So because "theater" is such a vague term to many people, and because no one wants to show himself opposed to culture, the poll would tell us that Americans are deeply interested in cultural activity, and would like to have more theater available in their communities.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And that is likely to bring arts administrators, theater managers, and other cultural enthusiasts onto the stage demanding government support for the theater. And if they are successful, every town gets a subsidized company - most of them playing before empty houses.

''Cit:'' That is to be expected.

''Vis:'' But only because the poll showed a consensus of opinion where there really was none?

''Cit:'' Yes, in this case it would be so.

''Vis:'' Then perhaps we need not worry too much about looking for our consensus in some other way.

''Cit:'' What way do you suggest? I don't see how we are to discover the opinions people have on something without asking them.

''Vis:'' Suppose you were an office clerk or government employee chained to a desk for most of the day. Isn't it likely that you might dream of escaping your drab routine and settle down to a life of leisure and sunshine in the South Seas or some such place?

''Cit:'' That is a natural enough fantasy.

''Vis:'' Or that you and your wife were caught up in the mad rush of city life; wouldn't it be natural to plan a move to a small New England town where you could live more sanely?

''Cit:'' Yes, there are many dreams people have regarding a better life than they live. But they are dreams, not expectations, and everyone has his own vision, so I don't see where you hope to find agreement.

''Vis:'' But suppose we say to the young clerk or government worker: Yes, you may now go to the South Seas and your island of sun; however, there will be no security or protection from a savage tribe of natives there and there will be no physicians or medicines. Do you think he would still choose to make the trip?

''Cit:'' No, not if he has any sense.

''Vis:'' And the young couple planning their escape from city life: suppose we inform them that in the quaint New England town of their dreams, their children will not be permitted to attend school or receive any kind of education from the community; nor, unfortunately, will they be allowed electricity or fuel to get them through the winter. Do you think they would reconsider their plans?

''Cit:'' Of course. But the things you mention are necessities or near necessities of life. Our dreams of the good life presuppose that they are provided.

''Vis:'' Yes, that is just the point. The dreams we have of a better life always rest on the assumption that the necessities will be taken care of - things like shelter, food, and clothing; security from outsiders and some of our neighbors; medical care and education. No matter where we live or with whom, we must have these things, must we not?

''Cit:'' Yes, of course.

''Vis:'' But the necessities will vary from place to place, and from group to group. I mean in a large city, mass transportation will be more essential to life than it will be in a smaller town. And in a tropical climate, clothing and shelter will be more easily taken care of and deserve less attention than in colder parts of the country. Nor will security and protection of property be such a problem in some areas as it is in others. So there will be no hard and fast rule as to what counts as a necessity of life; we will have to look at particular conditions in the community, isn't that so?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Still, there will always be some things that we must have as conditions of life, things without which a life worth living is not possible. That we can take to be certain and obvious, can we not?

''Cit:'' Yes, of course.

''Vis:'' And we can say that these are things which all men ask for and expect from a community or their society in general? I mean no one can build his own house, make his own clothing, provide all the transportation he will need in the course of his life, and so forth, without relying heavily on the services of others. He must look to the community for their provision.

''Cit:'' Yes, he must.

''Vis:'' Then I think we have found what we were looking for without too much trouble. Can we say now with confidence that all men share an expectation that from life in community the necessities of life will be provided? And can we say that this expectation is the basis for their claim that they have a right to these things?

''Cit:'' Yes, this seems obvious enough now. The fact that people rise up in outrage when policemen or doctors threaten to strike seems to testify to the strength of this expectation, and they often argue that people who perform essential services to the community have no right to withhold them.

''Vis:'' Then let us regard this fundamental point as settled. However, we don't want to make the mistake of thinking of these necessities as the most important things in life.

''Cit:'' Why would that be a mistake? Could anything be more important than the necessities?

''Vis:'' We say too that properly functioning kidneys, lungs, and heart are necessary to sustain life; but does that make them important?

''Cit:'' Why yes, certainly.

''Vis:'' Then do we watch over and nourish them, listening with satisfaction to the beating of our hearts, congratulating ourselves on regular visits to the bathroom or an ability to blow up a balloon in one breath?

''Cit:'' No, that would be silly.

''Vis:'' And the reason it is silly is that a condition or cause of something is not always the value or importance of that thing. The proper functioning of the heart, kidneys, and lungs is a cause or condition of life, but no one in good health regards these processes as the value or purpose of life.

''Cit:'' Yes - I see the point.

''Vis:'' And if we see someone always worried about his body, we think he must be an invalid who deserves our pity, because he must spend his entire life concerned with those things that the rest of us can set aside while we pursue things of greater interest and importance. He is like someone who would like to play music, but must spend his whole time tuning his violin.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Or he might be an invalid of a different sort. There are people who are always jogging and exercising their bodies, building their muscles and stuffing themselves with vitamins and potions meant to give them perfect health so they can stay alive forever. These are the ones who spend their lives getting hold of a Stradivarius violin and tuning it perfectly; and then at their final gasp, they play for us some simple child's song. They too are invalids, but of an opposite sort from the first, wouldn't you say?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Because both types of invalid take the means for the ends, the one out of necessity, the other out of choice?

''Cit:'' Yes, they are unfortunate in different ways.

''Vis:'' And shall we say the same thing of the necessities that we expect to obtain from life in a community? Food, shelter, and clothing; security, medical care and education; - these are conditions of life that no one can provide wholly for himself, but which must come from the community, as we agreed. And we should properly call a community which had to scramble and struggle the whole time to provide them a sort of invalid community, should we not?

''Cit:'' Yes, that would be an apt description.

''Vis:'' And a community which did provide them, but was never satisfied would also be an invalid community. For it would not be content with warm clothing in the winter, but would have to have furs and elegant fashions. General medical care would not be enough, and each person or family would insist on its own private physician. Instead of public transportation and small private cars, each citizen would demand an upholstered limousine and a fine garage to park it in. Such a community would be handsomely tuned, but would produce no music, just as the other community could produce no music because it couldn't get itself tuned at all.

''Cit:'' But is that really so? Why must a community be confined to providing only the drab necessities of life? Why should its food be bread and soup, when a banquet can be had without much trouble? And why should we walk around in winter in plain overcoats looking like mummies from the same tomb when fashion and variety can delight everyone? We don't expect from a community merely the support of life, but the means to a good life as well. Everyone agrees that an improved standard of living is desirable, and that means turning a hovel into a comfortable home and food into cuisine.

''Vis:'' And I suppose you would say now that the overmuscled invalid we were talking about a moment ago is also an object of envy?

''Cit:'' No, such persons obsessed with their bodies and health are ridiculous.

''Vis:'' But suppose they do not just sit around admiring themselves and being admired, but use their bodies to perform great athletic feats. That would not be so ridiculous, would it?

''Cit:'' No, not if they became fine sprinters or wrestlers or dancers.

''Vis:'' Such people have begun with what is necessary for life, but have improved upon it and so nourished it that it has become a work of art - something desirable and enviable.

''Cit:'' Yes, I think that can fairly be said.

''Vis:'' But not everyone wants to be a runner or dancer. Some will be satisfied merely with good health, and want to put their energies elsewhere.

''Cit:'' Yes, of course.

''Vis:'' And in our community, some will want expensive and fashionable clothes, limousines, and other such refinements; but others will be happier with hobbies like bird watching and cards, or perhaps just reading and conversation with friends.

''Cit:'' Yes, there are many ways to pursue the good life.

''Vis:'' You mean many different opinions about what constitutes the good life?

''Cit:'' Yes, that is what I meant.

''Vis:'' And each person should have the opportunity to pursue his idea of the good life, so far as possible?

''Cit:'' Yes, everyone expects that right.

''Vis:'' Then it appears we have stumbled onto a second great class of expectations that people look to their community to provide. In addition to the necessities of life, people expect the community to furnish the opportunity and ingredients of the good life.

''Cit:'' Yes, I think we must add this second expectation.

''Vis:'' But the community's role in satisfying this expectation must be different from the other, wouldn't you think? After all, the need for things like food, shelter, education, and medical care is universal and shared by everyone; but as we said, people differ widely on their conception of the good life. Some would pursue wealth, others travel, still others study and music, and some would just like to be left alone. We can't expect the community to provide for the wishes of everyone, can we - especially if the things desired are unrealistic and very expensive?

''Cit:'' No, of course not. Perhaps we should ask from the community only the freedom and opportunity to provide these things for oneself.

''Vis:'' Yes, that would be my thought too. The good life is each person's own responsibility, and all he has a right to ask from the community is the freedom to go about it as he wishes and to do the best he can. And those who have a common goal can pursue it together as a sort of sub-community within the larger community.

''Cit:'' Yes, this seems very reasonable.

''Vis:'' And can we speak of the individual's right to freedom and opportunity to pursue the good life with the same confidence that we spoke of his right to the necessities of life?

''Cit:'' Yes, he has a right to both.

''Vis:'' And are they universal expectations? Do all men assume the existence of these two rights and insist on them?

''Cit:'' Yes, I should think they would, at least when they stopped to think about it. But I think we have only identified what men have always talked about in terms of the two areas of public and private interest. The public interest concerns the provision of things without which life would be impossible; and private interest concerns everything else.

''Vis:'' I hope that we do have this bond with tradition. But suppose the two spheres come in conflict? Which of the two rights shall be sacrificed?

''Cit:'' The only conflict I can imagine would arise when someone's idea of the good life deprived someone else of one of the basic needs of life. Is that what you mean?

''Vis:'' Yes. For example, someone's pursuit of what he imagines to be the good life might result in loss of life to another - or perhaps loss of income to provide food and clothing for himself and family.

''Cit:'' Obviously, in such a case the private right would have to be checked. The necessities of life must supersede private rights, even if, as you were arguing, they are not the aim of life.

''Vis:'' And what shall we say about the private right to do immoral or destructive things - I mean engage in prostitution, gambling, excessive drinking or drug use, or to indulge in vulgar forms of entertainment, like cockfighting and pornography? Such activities are part of the good life for some people at least, and do not seem to deprive others or themselves of the necessities of life.

''Cit:'' How can you say they are part of the good life for some people? Such things are disgraceful.

''Vis:'' But we had agreed to give each person in the community complete responsibility for his own conception of the good life. Are we to turn around now and grumble that some people refuse to conform to our ideas of what things are good and bad?

''Cit:'' But really, some things ought at least to be discouraged.

''Vis:'' Well, perhaps. But for the time being are we going to stick by our intention of providing the freedom for each individual to pursue the good life as he envisions it, or shall we withdraw it?

''Cit:'' I suppose at this point we can't very well withdraw it.

''Vis:'' Not if we still want to build our community on the expectations of its citizens. For our citizens expect to believe and act the way they choose according to their own best lights, just so long as others are not deprived of the necessities of life.

''Cit:'' Yes, we agreed to that.

''Vis:'' Then let's stand firm by our principles and hope that as we evolve our community these matters will sort themselves out in some way.

''Cit:'' I hope they will.

''Vis:'' Now shall we draw a little sketch of ourselves in a community which satisfies the two basic expectations that we share with everyone else? We already have an idea of the necessities that must be available - food, shelter, and clothing; convenient transportation; education and medical care. Is there anything else?

''Cit:'' Yes, we expect to have security from the violence of our neighbors and from outsiders.

''Vis:'' Now if any of these things are lost or denied us, we have a right to be angry and to blame the community, do we not? For our expectations are no different from anyone else's, and to be denied what everyone admits we have a right to would be obviously unjust.

''Cit:'' Of course; but you make it sound as though everything will be simply handed to us. We will have to work for what we have, won't we?

''Vis:'' Naturally the community must provide for itself. However, we would not like our work to become a burden so that our second community right is interfered with. I mean we want to have the means and leisure to pursue the good life once the work required to provide community necessities is finished.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' So we can't expect just a few people to carry the burden of work while the rest do nothing except receive the benefits of clothing, food, and the rest. The burden should be shared more or less equally, don't you think?

''Cit:'' Yes, of course.

''Vis:'' Now what about the other area of community life - the sphere of individual freedom and pursuit of the good life? How do you think you would go about it?

''Cit:'' Probably about the same as I do now: talking with people I enjoy, traveling occasionally, gardening a bit, watching television - maybe learning to play golf.

''Vis:'' Some of these activities, such as golf, would be rather expensive, and we must be careful that they are not paid for out of funds required to provide for general necessities. Isn't that so?

''Cit:'' Yes, we have already agreed that all activities in the private sphere have no claim on community effort.

''Vis:'' Therefore to pay for a hobby such as golf, we would expect you and your fellow golf enthusiasts to get together, purchase ground, design a course, buy clubs and other equipment, and do whatever else is necessary to support your passion.

''Cit:'' Well, yes, I suppose so. It would be expensive and require many people to share their resources; but I guess it could be done. Perhaps we could find a wealthy patron or founder.

''Vis:'' Someone with much more money than anyone else? I wonder where he would come from, since we have decided that the burden of providing the necessities of life for the community is to be shared equally.

''Cit:'' Won't there be opportunities in our community for people to become wealthy through business ventures or speculations? After all, many people believe the good life consists in the accumulation of personal wealth.

''Vis:'' But we also said that no one has a right to do things that will deprive anyone else in the community of the necessities of life. Therefore we must not allow wealth that is gained by siphoning the necessities off into one's own storehouse. Wealth not accumulated at the expense of community needs, however, will be quite acceptable. Doesn't that fit with our plan?

''Cit:'' Yes, but I am afraid if we completely close off the path to personal riches we are going to end up with a rather drab and uniform sort of community that no one will want.

''Vis:'' Well, we will have to see how wealth is best handled later; whatever the solution, we mustn't allow our two great human rights to be violated.

''Cit:'' No, but we should like to avoid drabness and uniformity too.

''Vis:'' To be sure. But we have yet to see how our community is to be built. It may turn out that the difficulty of the task will require the very best from community members, and create greater goodness and satisfaction than they might have hoped for themselves even if their dreams of a life of riches and luxury were realized.

''Cit:'' Does that mean you will forbid personal riches in our community?

''Vis:'' No, I only mean that we know very little as yet about how best to build a community, and where the sources of variety and satisfaction lie in life.

!
[[Classical Dialogues TOC|Book01]]
!

[[Back to Table of Contents|Book01]]
!

''Visitor:'' Our problem now is how to create a certain kind of ideal community - one which is ideal in the sense that it is what all people seem to want, rather than one forced upon them from the imagination of some philosopher or community planner. It is a community providing all the necessities of life in which each member has a share. And it provides opportunity and place for an unlimited variety of activities which its citizens feel give them satisfaction - their own little place in the sun. But neither the necessities nor gratuities (as we may call the second class of things) simply drop from heaven; community members must provide them for themselves. The question is how they are to go about doing this.

''Citizen:'' You mean what form of political and economic organization they will have?

''Vis:'' I really meant what principle would best guide them to their goal; for I think all political and economic systems rest on some basic principles about what is best for human beings, and most efficient in giving them what they desire.

''Cit:'' But I would think there are many such principles, and the one most suitable to a community would depend on its circumstances - factors such as climate, food supply, natural resources, and so forth.

''Vis:'' That may be so, although every community is expected to fulfill the functions we have been discussing. Let's suppose our community is a small town or village located at the side of a large lake, whose fish are the main source of food and income. The question is how community members are to go about catching the fish and selling what they do not consume themselves. Shall they cooperate or shall it be every man for himself?

''Cit:'' That would depend, I think, on how abundant the supply of fish is. If there are plenty and they are easy to catch then each person or family could just as well catch his own.

''Vis:'' And each could take a surplus to market or package it for export?

''Cit:'' Yes - for personal income.

''Vis:'' This would then be a very individualistic community, not unlike the United States in earlier times. Resources are so abundant and available that there is no need for cooperation in providing for the necessaries of existence.

''Cit:'' Correct.

''Vis:'' Now it is easy to imagine one of these individualists who is more energetic and skilled at fishing than his neighbors deciding to better his lot. After feeding his family he has a large surplus which he hauls off to market in some neighboring community. With his profits he buys several boats and bigger nets, hires his neighbors' sons or crews from the outside, and so catches even more fish. And off to market he goes again and pretty soon has quite an empire.

''Cit:'' Yes, that would be the natural course of things.

''Vis:'' And his neighbors decide that it is easier and more profitable if they quit fishing for themselves and go to work for this entrepreneur. Isn't that likely to happen?

''Cit:'' Yes, very likely.

''Vis:'' But we must not imagine that there is only one energetic and clever individualist in the town. There will be others competing to catch fish and market them abroad at high prices.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And the competition will be fierce. Each entrepreneur will try to build the biggest fleet, sell the most fish at the highest prices, hire the best men, and do whatever he can to corner the market. And what will happen next?

''Cit:'' What?

''Vis:'' We can't expect the fish to hold up very well under this kind of stress. Pretty soon the lake will be nearly fished out.

''Cit:'' Of course.

''Vis:'' And then all kinds of unpleasant things will start to happen. Prices of fish will rise, employees will be laid off work or have their wages cut, some fleet owners will go bankrupt, and the whole community will be threatened with disaster.

''Cit:'' But we have forgotten to mention the role of government in our description. Surely the town mayor or council or whatever officials the people have will have seen this disaster coming and taken actions to prevent it.

''Vis:'' And where do you suppose the government will have come from?

''Cit:'' Where?

''Vis:'' Why from the ranks of the entrepreneurs, of course. For if any one of them is clever enough and ambitious enough to build an economic empire, surely he will see that political power will keep it secure. And his wealth will help him where his ambition falls short. Besides, is anyone else likely to be interested in governmental affairs?

''Cit:'' Probably no one. But I must say, you certainly have brought our little community to disaster in a very brief time!

''Vis:'' And by disaster we can only mean that the community no longer fulfills the two functions community members expect from it - provision of necessities and freedom of opportunity and space for each person to pursue the good life. For a man who is unemployed or working for a pittance will not have the means to supply himself and his family with the necessaries of life; and without these any hope of seeking the good life is out of the question. Such a situation is quite properly described as a disaster, don't you agree?

''Cit:'' Yes indeed.

''Vis:'' But we have not discovered the root cause of the problem in this community.

''Cit:'' How do you mean? We have mentioned unemployment, poverty wages, shortage of fish.

''Vis:'' These are more a part of the evil effects than their cause. We must discover what it is about the organization that brings them about. You know that a good physician does not cure a serious disease by treating its symptoms or superficial effects, no matter how uncomfortable the patient is. He goes to the root cause, whether it be some virus or malfunctioning of the body.

''Cit:'' Yes, of course.

''Vis:'' And the good physician can identify the root cause only because he knows how a healthy body functions. For the cause of a serious disease is always some interference with the basic condition or principle of health.

''Cit:'' I know this is an old analogy that you are drawing upon between physical health and the health of a community. But I wonder whether it is still applicable.

''Vis:'' Well, if someone has cancer there are various superficial ways to treat it - with surgery, chemicals and radiation, for example. But these methods can only arrest the disease, because they do not affect the root cause. And the root cause is a distortion or malfunction of a principle of health - the ability of body cells to grow and reproduce properly. This distortion or malfunction cannot be truly understood until the process of normal growth and cellular reproduction is understood. Isn't that the reason so much money and effort is expended on basic cancer research?

''Cit:'' Yes, so we are told.

''Vis:'' But until such basic understanding is reached, we must be satisfied with the hit-or-miss, tampering approach - surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Or reducing the pain - a kind of forgetfulness of the whole problem.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' But we may be thankful that in medicine there is enough foresight and patience to pursue the root causes of the problem, which are connected with basic principles of physical health.

''Cit:'' Then you think that the problem in our fishing village is like a cancer which is not to be cured in any simple way?

''Vis:'' I think unemployment, low wages, a shortage of food and other ills of that kind are only symptoms of a corruption of the principle of health in the village; and that principle, which we have repeatedly stated, consists in the provision of the necessaries of life to each community member and the freedom and opportunity for each member, once the necessaries are supplied, to pursue the good life as he sees it. We must now decide what happened in the village to ruin this perfect state.

''Cit:'' We could blame it on the fish, I suppose, for not breeding fast enough.

''Vis:'' Not fast enough, at any rate, for the purposes of our village entrepreneurs. We must look carefully, I think, at the role of these community individualists. At first they were like everyone else, were they not - fishing for their own needs or participating in the community fishing industry, if that cooperative arrangement was the village's means of taking care of its needs?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And each one had an equal share in the industry - I mean as much to eat as his neighbor and as much income as they for his own personal use.

''Cit:'' Yes, we assume that.

''Vis:'' But his free time and income he chooses not to spend in gardening or travel or golf or drinking with his friends in the village tavern. Instead he decides, as we have seen, to make something of himself.

''Cit:'' You are not mocking his energy and enterprise, are you?

''Vis:'' No indeed. We have already mentioned his ambition and cleverness, and should add courage to the list of his virtues. And compared to those who spend their time and find the good life in sleeping and drinking, we must tender him our greatest admiration. But we must notice one important thing about his use of leisure time.

''Cit:'' What is that?

''Vis:'' That it is spent in meddling with things necessary to the community's subsistence. For as soon as he began to expand his fishing enterprise other individualists were motivated to do the same, with the result that the few entrepreneurs reaped huge profits while the lake became fished out and the rest of the community was pushed into dependency and near poverty.

''Cit:'' But we had said in the beginning that we would allow each man to fend for himself, since fish were plentiful and cooperative effort was not required.

''Vis:'' Yes, and that appears to have been a mistake. Even when there is an abundance of resources, it appears that those which are necessary to life must be carefully guarded and kept out of the hands of individual citizens. For if they are not, our community will turn into a pack of jackals snarling over nature as if it were a bloody carcass.

''Cit:'' That is an ugly description of the individualists whose virtues we were admiring just a moment ago.

''Vis:'' I was thinking not so much of them as the whole citizenry. For when the necessities of life are endangered the most violent emotions of people are brought out. Imagine what happens when the entrepreneurs are competing over the fish in the village lake - we can't think that will be a pretty sight, can we? If nothing is to prevent it they will try to steal from one another, or sabotage each other's fishing, especially as the lake becomes fished out.

''Cit:'' Yes, if there is no law to prevent it.

''Vis:'' And they will try to squeeze the highest prices for their catch, both abroad and from their fellow citizens, so that they will be resented by the community.

''Cit:'' Very likely.

''Vis:'' But they will be envied too, because they are rich while everyone else is poor, having to spend their income on necessities.

''Cit:'' Which are controlled by the entrepreneurs, of course.

''Vis:'' Yes, and they will resent them even more because they have to work for them as well as buy their food from them. They are utterly dependent on a person they envy and resent at the same time. Such a group of people is really not so different from a pack of jackals, is it?

''Cit:'' No, I suppose not.

''Vis:'' And when the individualists are not fighting among themselves over profits they will have to take care of this envious, resentful horde. And how do you suppose they will manage that?

''Cit:'' Through handouts, holiday bonuses, and things like that I imagine.

''Vis:'' Yes, but there are more subtle and permanent ways as well. They will talk about loyalty to the company and the virtues of hard work, and honesty - for we can't suppose resentful, envious employees will be above loafing and stealing, can we?

''Cit:'' No.

''Vis:'' And they will say to them: We are fortunate and rich, but you too, through energy, ambition, and initiative, can be a success. But of course this will be hypocrisy, because what the entrepreneur least desires is more competition in the industry. So it is all a lie and deception.

''Cit:'' It would appear so.

''Vis:'' Thus our community has turned into an anti-community. Everyone is competing and struggling against everyone else. And it is a particularly vicious struggle, because it is over the necessities of life. And what has become of the leisure and opportunity to pursue the good life?

''Cit:'' If what we are imagining is accurate, it will be turned over to the struggle to survive.

''Vis:'' Yes, we will probably hear that phrase often. The successful will be boasting to one another, and the envious unsuccessful will be repeating, that all life is a struggle for existence. They will say that nature is that way, and human existence is no different. We are all jackals, they will say with a smirk.

''Cit:'' But surely there will be some leisure and means to escape from this savage round of life.

''Vis:'' Yes, and how will it be spent? The rich will want to exhibit their wealth, for that is the symbol of their success and their virtue. They will buy up whatever is to be had, and import the rest for show and pleasure.

''Cit:'' Probably.

''Vis:'' And their working horde will try to do the same, since they have by now been well schooled in envy of the successful. As everyone competes in the struggle for existence, everyone will compete in the struggle for pleasure.

''Cit:'' But surely there will be those who retire from the daily struggle to more civilized and satisfying activities.

''Vis:'' No doubt. But there will not be so many of these as we may suppose. For our citizens have not been merely working for their living, but competing for it. Many will be so exhausted and unnerved that they will simply sleep - or perhaps drink themselves into peace.

''Cit:'' Not surprisingly.

''Vis:'' Others with greater endurance and a taste for the competitive struggle will spend their leisure along the same lines as their work - building things, starting a new business or enterprise as a hobby, and so forth. For it is natural that one who enjoys the work of providing for existence will spend his leisure hours similarly occupied with the materials sustaining life. A person who both works and plays in such a manner would quite properly be called a materialist, don't you think?

''Cit:'' That is the way he is known.

''Vis:'' But we mustn't forget one large group of citizens who have no taste for the competitive life of our little community. Half of them will find a little niche somewhere in the fishing industry, do their work honestly and quietly without trying to get ahead. They will live a little on the outside of the main community, so to speak.

''Cit:'' Yes, and I imagine be regarded with contempt or mere toleration by those who are more ambitious.

''Vis:'' But the other half will be more vocal in their distaste for the aggressive style of life. They will complain about having to compete for food and employment, saying that the community should cooperate and work together to provide the necessaries of life; and they will say that leisure has become worthless under such a form of life.

''Cit:'' Such people will not make very cooperative citizens to be sure.

''Vis:'' Yes, they will be regarded as troublemakers and malcontents. The entrepreneurs will not want to hire them, and their fellow citizens under the yoke of resentment and envy and blind loyalty will hate them, calling them loafers who think the community owes them a living. Even their parents will revile them, and they will be driven from the community.

''Cit:'' Yes, they will be treated harshly.

''Vis:'' But in one respect their plight will be no worse than everyone else's. For they will have lost the freedom to pursue the good life, that freedom which is one of the two great benefits of a healthy community.

''Cit:'' I would have thought that their resistance to the aggressive life of the community would have given them greater freedom.

''Vis:'' On the contrary. You know how people who spend all their energy and talent in resistance become themselves like what they hate. Won't our malcontent become filled with resentment and jealousy and fear when he feels that everyone despises him as a troublemaker? And out of spite and frustration won't he become the loafer that his neighbors accuse him of being?

''Cit:'' Yes, I suppose that may happen.

''Vis:'' And is such a person free to pursue the good life that he originally craved?

''Cit:'' Of course not.

''Vis:'' But the worker who comes home exhausted and overwrought from the competitive struggle is not free either.

''Cit:'' Not when he can think of nothing except rest or escape into drink or some mindless entertainment.

''Vis:'' And even the materialist - the person whose work in providing the necessities of life is also his pleasure; I mean the one who is always building furniture or a new room on the house, or fixing some gadget or other - is he a free man or more like the ant who can't stop improving on its nest?

''Cit:'' Well, he at least feels that he is doing what he wants.

''Vis:'' And so would the ant if he could talk. But neither the one nor the other is free if the only thing he knows how to do and is forced all his life to do is to struggle in providing the necessities of existence.

''Cit:'' Yes, such narrowness causes distortion of judgment.

''Vis:'' And it is this same distortion of judgment which will make the majority of community members violently defend their way of life, when in fact they are like prisoners in a cave who think they are living a good life in the world as it truly is. For having begun their community life in the light of an expectation that the community could provide the necessities for all, and the further expectation that each could thereby obtain the leisure and freedom to create the good life, our citizens have unwittingly betrayed themselves. But the descent into the darkness has been so gradual, and the struggle to exist so intense, that they have forgotten their original desires and think life as they are living it is the good life. They defend their pain as pleasure and their bondage as freedom.

''Cit:'' It appears, then, that the root cause of the cancer in this fishing community was the policy of allowing each man to fend for himself in obtaining the necessities of life.

''Vis:'' Yes, out of that policy was born the individualist who became the instrument of destruction. In supposing freedom to lie in each member fending for himself, the chains of slavery were being forged, a slavery more refined and punishing than physical slavery.

''Cit:'' And is there nothing to be done when a community has taken this miserable road?

''Vis:'' You mean is there a cure for the disease? Of course there is. But first the patient must be convinced that he is sick, or his pain must surpass endurance.

''Cit:'' Our little village is certainly not short on endurance!

''Vis:'' No it is not. And it is also true that the sooner a disease is treated, the easier and more effective is its cure.

''Cit:'' If so, then we cannot be very hopeful for the future of this village.

''Vis:'' No, we cannot.

[[Back to Table of Contents|Book01]]
!

''Visitor:'' But suppose we organize the fishing village on some other principle than competition - for it seems clear that letting citizens fend for themselves in providing the necessities of life has many evil consequences, does it not?

''Citizen:'' Yes, it is abundantly clear. But what other principle do you have in mind?

''Vis:'' Why the principle that lies hidden in the very midst of our idea of citizen rights - the principle of cooperation. We agreed that all people expect the necessities to be provided in a community, did we not?

''Cit:'' Yes, we agreed on that.

''Vis:'' And since that expectation is universal - shared by all men - it is the justification for their belief that they have a right to the necessities. If all men expect something, it is natural for them to speak of their right to that thing, is it not?

''Cit:'' It seems so.

''Vis:'' But to say that the community will provide the necessities is the same thing as saying that its individual citizens will provide them to one another.

''Cit:'' Yes, the meaning appears the same.

''Vis:'' But is this anything else than a recognition that community activity means cooperative activity? People acting as a group to satisfy their mutual expectations is simply a definition of cooperation, is it not?

''Cit:'' Yes, I suppose so. But I must confess that these kinds of argument always make me uncomfortable. They remind me of the theories of the old political philosophers, which were always impossible to follow, and never seemed to have any effect on social life anyway; and too it seems that many people are willing to admit the correctness of an argument, but then turn right around and forget it or do something entirely contrary to its point. In any case, and for whatever reason, rational argument seems to be a musty relic of the past - at least so far as social matters are concerned.

''Vis:'' Well then, perhaps we should abandon the attempt. It is satisfying in some way, however, to think of the idea of community as involving in its very meaning the idea of cooperation - don't you think?

''Cit:'' To the two of us perhaps; but to the individualists and most village members we have just been talking about, cooperation as a principle of social organization would require some other stronger kind of justification than linguistic niceness.

''Vis:'' No doubt. Suppose then we try to show them that cooperation is a much more efficient principle in satisfying community expectations than competition and economic free-for-all. Don't you think efficiency in reaching a desired goal will carry weight with them?

''Cit:'' I am sure it should.

''Vis:'' And suppose we can also show that cooperation is more likely to make people happy, and to enable them to pursue their idea of the good life much more effectively. It was clear to us that people living under intense competition were seriously handicapped in this respect, was it not?

''Cit:'' Yes, we mentioned the restrictions imposed by greed, fatigue, resentment, and envy.

''Vis:'' Then our task is clear: we must now reconstruct our fishing village according to this better and more efficient principle, and feel confident that both the individualist and those who are his victims - the resentful, envious hangers-on - will wish to cooperate with us in building it.

''Cit:'' And suppose they do not? Suppose the individualist agrees that all people have the expectations we have described, and some of them - the tender-minded he will call them - offer a more efficient alternative to competition and individual struggle; but still he doesn't want to change. After all, he has an empire that he himself struggled to build, and wishes now to enjoy and protect.

''Vis:'' What shall we say to him? Perhaps something like this: You choose to live in a jungle. One day, when the predator becomes the prey, and you find yourself and your goods faced with destruction, you will be fortunate if you are pitied and rescued; but having lived only by a law of lawlessness, you can scarcely expect anyone to share your surprise and sense of injustice.

''Cit:'' There are some who would withhold pity and rescue too.

''Vis:'' Yes there are. But let us get on with our task of reconstruction. If we are to have a fishing industry based on cooperation, we should identify the jobs that must be performed. Not everyone will be engaged in hauling in the nets, will they?

''Cit:'' No; the boats will need pilots and crews who know the waters and best fishing grounds.

''Vis:'' Yes, and there will be fish to clean, pack, and distribute to community members. In fact, there will be quite a large number of jobs to be taken care of. For where are the boats and nets to come from? Someone will have to make them, and that requires carpenters, machinists, and skilled net makers. And since machinists need metal, there will have to be some kind of heavy industry; and carpenters will have to have wood, so there will be forestry; and net makers have to use hemp or some kind of fiber, so there will be agriculture of some sort. We cannot really talk about fishing without bringing in a whole group of other necessary occupations, can we?

''Cit:'' No, it appears not.

''Vis:'' And there will have to be some good heads in the community to make all the necessary coordinations, planning how much steel or iron is to be produced, how many nets are needed, what the most efficient procedures of distribution will be, and how everything is to be managed. There is no reason why the industry has to be backward and primitive in this age of technology and sharp organizational practices.

''Cit:'' No.

''Vis:'' But we have decided to try to operate the industry on a principle of cooperation. Since everyone consumes the fish, everyone who is able to work should participate in the industry in one way or another. With all these associated activities on which fishing depends, there should be something suitable for everyone, should there not?

''Cit:'' Yes, there seems to be a lot of work. But your description is beginning to call up two pictures in my mind, neither of which is very appealing.

''Vis:'' Shall I guess what they are?

''Cit:'' Please do.

''Vis:'' The first shows a swarm of peasants marching to the hemp fields with a hoe on each shoulder and a gusty song on their lips in praise of the community and their happy lives. And in the distance you see the fishing boats returning with the day's catch, the sailors hanging from the rigging with the same joyous song on their lips. Is that one of the pictures?

''Cit:'' Well, it wasn't quite so ridiculous, but I must admit it was something like that.

''Vis:'' And the other shows the inside of a smoky factory, where in the darkness and clamor of machinery we can barely discern row upon row of grimfaced, exhausted workers in grey caps hunched sullenly over their benches.

''Cit:'' Yes, that was the other - but again without all your absurd elaborations.

''Vis:'' Well, they are familiar pictures, or perhaps I should say, cartoons. I assume we are to interpret them as accusing the community of regimentation, uniformity, and long, dreary hours on the job. Is that their meaning?

''Cit:'' Yes, I think it is. The picture of the happy peasants is merely a whitewash of the grim reality.

''Vis:'' How then shall we answer the criticism? Shall we begin with the question of hours? How long do you think community members will have to work each day to take care of the necessities of life in their village? Do you think four hours a day or twenty hours a week on the average would do it?

''Cit:'' Four hours! That would be quite a trick!

''Vis:'' Why should it be so difficult? Remember, since cooperation is our guideline, everyone able to work will participate in the production of the necessities of life. Therefore there will be no unemployed citizens creating an extra burden for those who do the community's work. In a cooperative economy we don't have to worry about booms and busts, and the army of dissatisfied and desperate unemployed which it is always on the verge of creating.

''Cit:'' Putting the unemployed to work in any society would obviously increase the work force.

''Vis:'' And what about those who could work and would like to work, but cannot find the reason or opportunity? I mean housewives who are through raising their children and left with nothing interesting or useful to do; or college students who vacillate between boredom and hysteria when they are not at their studies. Don't you think they would welcome a chance for a little useful work to offset the routine of intellectual work?

''Cit:'' Yes, many of them would - but four hours a day or twenty hours a week would be too much, I think.

''Vis:'' Of course. Their main work is to become educated. But the greatest addition to our work force will come from the ranks of those who in other societies are engaged full time in the production of luxuries and articles of pleasure for only a few individuals. There are people whose days are spent in such tasks as devising new styles of razor blades or toys to go into boxes of breakfast cereal, or in putting up billboards to help a manufacturer of superfluities sell his items. For didn't we say that since everyone shares in the consumption of the necessities of life, everyone should share in their production?

''Cit:'' Yes, but who then will produce the luxuries and extras of life? We don't want only bare necessities.

''Vis:'' Of course not; and we will have to find a way to provide the niceties of life to those in the community who desire them. But we mustn't confuse the right to the necessities, which is universal and therefore requires a total community cooperation, with the right to pursuit of the good life, which will take different forms for different people, and therefore is not a community responsibility. Luxuries belong to the second class, and we must find an opportunity for those who want them to produce them for themselves. But that does not relieve them of their responsibility to contribute to the community's need for food and the other requirements of life, since they too must have them. Someone who spends his entire working life in the production of luxuries or materials for private pleasure is as much a drone on the general community as a person who is unemployed; neither contributes to what is necessary to sustain it.

''Cit:'' Well then, let's add this group of citizens to our work force, just so long as we don't forget to find a way to produce the good things of life too for the village.

''Vis:'' We won't forget. Haven't we agreed that what is necessary to life is not what is good in life, but only a condition to what is good?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Then let's see how else we might go about assuring that the working day in the village is kept to a minimum. Speaking of luxuries, we should be careful not to allow them to infect the fishing industry. The boats need not be dressed out like summer cruise ships, and our office buildings need not pretend to be cultural landmarks or to be furnished like penthouses. Everything should be convenient and attractive, without falling into excess - for luxury, as we have said, is but one among many private interests. And if we can keep such things to a comfortable minimum, we will have eliminated all the labor necessary to produce and maintain them; and the savings can be put into a reduced work day for our citizens.

''Cit:'' Yes, this would be an additional savings.

''Vis:'' Also we can eliminate the many forms of waste that competition causes. Isn't it obvious that one well organized fleet of boats will be much more efficient in catching fish than a hundred small boats tearing around the lake trying to catch fish just for themselves? For they will forever be getting in one another's way, fishing over the same grounds, and otherwise duplicating each others' efforts. And all the associated activities such as packing and marketing fish, hiring employees, repairing boats: isn't it much simpler and more efficient to have one group of capable people handling each of these jobs rather than a dozen trying to do each one?

''Cit:'' Yes, even in competitive economies, entrepreneurs understand the efficiency of size and central control.

''Vis:'' Then we should have it in the village - not to build some person's fortune, but rather to save working hours for our community members.

And what about the waste caused by competitors withholding techniques or information from one another, or allowing fish to spoil in order to force market prices up, or otherwise deceiving one another so they can keep their hold on business? All such practices are very wasteful, are they not?

''Cit:'' And unethical too.

''Vis:'' Yes, they waste people's time and force them to struggle for the necessary things of life when they can be had without such trouble.

Now what about technology? Is there anything to prevent us from making the fullest use of labor saving devices and fast ways of doing things?

''Cit:'' No.

''Vis:'' Because anything that gives the community its necessities and also saves its members time and unpleasant work we will do our best to have?

''Cit:'' Yes, of course.

''Vis:'' Therefore it would be nothing less than criminal to withhold a labor saving invention, or buy up rights to its use so that one could make a profit in some way.

''Cit:'' Yes, such practices are bad in any kind of decent community.

''Vis:'' But while making the fullest use of technology, we must not carelessly allow it to increase the work load rather than to reduce it.

''Cit:'' How do you mean?

''Vis:'' Sometimes sophisticated equipment is such a pleasure to operate, and causes one to feel so important, that he begins to look around for any opportunity to use it, and ends up making extra work for others. For example, the technique of photocopying may save tremendous time at the writing desk or typewriter; or it may cause people to write a lot of unnecessary stuff and send copies to people who have no desire or need to see them.

''Cit:'' Yes, I suppose technology can add to the burden of work in such ways.

''Vis:'' Now how are we doing with our work day? Have we cut down some hours and made work less burdensome?

''Cit:'' Yes, certainly. But I can't believe we are down to four hours a day or twenty hours a week.

''Vis:'' Well then, shall we eliminate some other useless practices? Will we have any use for all those industries connected with sales, marketing, advertising, and promotion?

''Cit:'' I suppose not.

''Vis:'' Instead of elaborate and expensive advertising, a simple means of information will be adequate, don't you think? And since fishing will be a centralized community activity, we avoid all the deception and silliness of several companies trying to promote their own catch, as though its fish were somehow different from anyone else's.

''Cit:'' Yes, those jobs will be unnecessary.

''Vis:'' And all those middlemen, who push up the price of everything: will they be necessary?

''Cit:'' No, they could go also.

''Vis:'' But instead of creating unemployment, these cutbacks will only enable our community members to spend less time on the necessary work and more time on their private interests.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And what about our managers in the industry - those who coordinate the various jobs and services, and are responsible for each person in the village having enough fish and contributing his small share to the industry?

''Cit:'' You mean the executives?

''Vis:'' Yes, the executives. Are we going to pay them big salaries as they do in competitive industries and have them make ten times the money that a steward or net maker receives?

''Cit:'' Well, such people do have greater responsibility than others.

''Vis:'' Yes they do. Suppose then we give them ten times what everyone else receives. Doesn't that mean the community will have to work ten times harder to provide for them than it works for anyone else?

''Cit:'' Yes, it would appear so.

''Vis:'' So to pay our executives big salaries, we would have to fire some of our workers and force the others to work longer hours for the same money. How else are we to pay for this high priced help?

''Cit:'' I really don't know. But if they are not paid more than others, who else will perform their function? After all, they have a greater responsibility than others.

''Vis:'' But it won't be the responsibility of working day and night to maximize profits for investors and stockholders who are constantly pestering and threatening to fire them, will it?

''Cit:'' No, but there will be pressure just the same, won't there?

''Vis:'' Yes, the pressure everyone else feels: to do a job well and efficiently for the benefit of everyone equally. We don't want to make their lives any more unpleasant than anyone else's, especially since they will not be receiving much more money than anyone else.

''Cit:'' Then you will have them work only four hours too?

''Vis:'' Certainly. Since their function is a large and complex one, they can work in teams, sharing their responsibility and know-how for the good of the community. And if one of them should prove incompetent, he can be transferred to some other type of work where he is more effective and happier. A person who obviously fails at his work is not likely to be very happy, is he - especially when his mistakes are visible to the whole community?

''Cit:'' No.

''Vis:'' Can we conclude, then, that it is feasible to reduce the work day in our village to four hours?

''Cit:'' It seems so; but really, I am no economist.

''Vis:'' Well then let's leave it to our village economists to work it out in detail. But their job should be much simpler than it is in a society where they have to predict and plan economic health on the principle that everyone will act selfishly and try through every means available to make as much money as possible. Economists faced with this task really do have their hands full, and it is no wonder their theories are impossibly complicated and the arguments among themselves very bitter.

But wouldn't you say that in reducing the work day to four hours we have escaped much of the criticism of regimentation and dreariness that the cartoons we mentioned suggested?

''Cit:'' Yes, I think we have. But it seems, then, that you have entirely cut off the path to personal wealth.

''Vis:'' Yes, but only in the area of the necessities of life. We haven't said anything as yet about how our citizens will want to use the great amount of free time they will have, and doubtless many will want to spend it making money and providing luxuries for themselves. But we don't want to mix the two areas of citizen rights by allowing some to gain private wealth from public activities. That principle is fundamental, is it not?

''Cit:'' Yes, we did agree to that.

''Vis:'' And we must never lose sight of it, not for a moment. But let's see how we might remove any remaining elements of regimentation and dreariness from our village. Is there any reason why we have to keep each person working at the same task all his life, or can we encourage him to change jobs and learn new skills? Isn't variety satisfying in itself, and won't it be likely to increase efficiency still further?

''Cit:'' Yes, a person interested in his work is likely to be more efficient.

''Vis:'' Also we don't have to be so solemn and severe with our workers about duty, honesty, hard work, and all that kind of thing. After all, we are only interested in providing the necessities of life, not making investors wealthy. We won't have our sailors singing gusty songs in the rigging, I suppose, but we won't have them hounded by bosses who are obsessed with profits and cost accountability. That is bound to make work a good deal more pleasant, I should think.

''Cit:'' I do too. But there are those who think people work hard only under the whip.

''Vis:'' And they are right, I think - but only when the work is thoroughly unpleasant and there seems no reason for it except to make someone else wealthy. But you don't have to use the whip on a man who works for his family or friends, because love and loyalty are very strong incentives. Don't you think it possible to have something of this type in our fishing village to stimulate our workers?

''Cit:'' Love and loyalty?

''Vis:'' Well, perhaps nothing quite so strong. But a general regard - isn't it possible that the citizens might come to feel a general regard for one another, and a sense of sharing with others and contributing to the life of the community?

''Cit:'' I suppose so. Even in our own competitive society a sense of sharing is shown in all the charitable activity that takes place.

''Vis:'' Well, that was not quite what I had in mind. In your society giving to charities seems to occur either as a business calculation to avoid paying high taxes, or as a sentimental indulgence by goodhearted people. Besides, the need for charity is merely a testimony to a community's irresponsibility. If people's needs are taken care of in the daily functioning of the community, there is no need for such crusades.

What I meant by general regard was rather a conscious recognition that all citizens depend on one another to supply the necessities of life; and that this recognition might take the form of general courtesy and a simple sense of cooperation in all the tasks of their provision. Does that seem like an unreasonable attitude to cultivate?

''Cit:'' Not perhaps among friends, or in a small community where everyone knows one another. I can imagine, for example, how a cook who works all day in a diner can still preside over a church barbeque on Sunday as though he had never enjoyed cooking so much in his life. But that is for friends and he enjoys using his skills for their pleasure.

''Vis:'' Yes, and wouldn't it be fine if he could carry that friendly attitude with him into the diner on weekdays too? Wouldn't it make his job far more pleasant for himself, his waiters, and his customers?

''Cit:'' Oh, to be sure. But I still think you are expecting too much from human nature, especially when you expect all citizens in a community of any size to behave with what you call general regard. In fact, as much as I admire the picture you have drawn, and as desirable and satisfying as such a community would be, I can't help but be skeptical of its feasibility in a society of any size. How could it work in the United States, or even in an area the size of one of our larger states? Wouldn't such massive planning be required that the community would soon be smothered in its own bureaucracy? And how could we be sure everyone was treated fairly, not having to work longer or harder than anyone else? The problems seem to me enormous when the community is so large that most citizens are strangers to one another, and therefore tempted to exploit each other or get away with what they can, as they do in our own society. You have persuaded me of the terrible shortcomings and corruptions in a competitive society, but at least one can say that letting everyone fend for himself keeps bureaucracy and the problems of planning every detail down to a minimum.

''Vis:'' Strange that you should say that, when your newspapers are full of complaints about rampant bureaucracy, and your courts are unable to handle all the litigation that your citizens seem so fond of.

''Cit:'' But even so, your cooperative society would seem to require even more central control than we have in ours. For example, how would you distinguish the necessities from the luxuries and superfluities of life in your community - if, that is, it were as large and complex as the United States? Wouldn't you need a list of every item manufactured, and indeed, a list for every model and make of each type of item?

''Vis:'' Yes, that would create a bureaucratic monster. In fact it may not be so easy even in general terms to draw the distinction between the necessities of life and its superfluities.

''Cit:'' But we have said that it is fundamental to do so, since it is one reflection of the distinction between public or community rights and private rights.

''Vis:'' Shall we spend some time, then, with this problem, and try to clear it up?

''Cit:'' By all means.

''Vis:'' Suppose we use physical health as an example. The health and care of our bodies is a necessity of life, is it not?

''Cit:'' Of course.

''Vis:'' But people disagree over what is necessary to give them perfect health, just as they disagree about the nature of a healthy community.

''Cit:'' Yes, they do.

''Vis:'' On the one side, some people think that without meat at every meal they cannot remain healthy, or if they become sick, that they cannot be cured without the attention of a dozen specialists. Such people tend to turn health into indulgence or a necessity into excess, do they not?

''Cit:'' Yes, they are rather like the invalid we were talking about some time ago.

''Vis:'' Now on the other side, there are some people who insist on eating but once a day or every other day, and then only some tasteless gruel; and when they find themselves tottering around from dizziness, they think it is only the weather or some spiritual insight visiting them, and would never think of seeing a doctor. These people make the opposite error - depriving themselves of what is necessary to health.

''Cit:'' Yes, they do.

''Vis:'' But it is obvious, is it not, that true health lies somewhere between such excess and defect?

''Cit:'' Yes, of course; but our problem is to discover where.

''Vis:'' Yes, that is our problem, for that defines community concern. Asceticism and self-indulgence are personal choices that have nothing to do with the work everyone must share.

''Cit:'' Then how are we to make the distinction? Do we have a panel of physicians define health and the diet necessary to maintain it? Then do we have state managers plan what is to be grown, and exactly how much handed out to each citizen and family? Such a system would be unmanageable and impossibly regimented.

''Vis:'' Yes, and an invasion of individual rights. For the ascetic would not have the opportunity to deprive himself, and the self-indulgent a chance to glut himself.

''Cit:'' Then how do you propose to provide for just what is necessary for health?

''Vis:'' Perhaps there is a simple way. How much money, do you suppose, a person in the United States these days would require to take care of the necessities of life? Please give me a conservative figure.

''Cit:'' It is difficult to say - perhaps eight thousand dollars a year as things now stand.

''Vis:'' Then to avoid any ambiguity, let us make the figure ten thousand, and say that every citizen sharing in the production of the necessities of the community will receive this minimum wage. Won't that solve our problem? For the ascetic will be free not to use his money, so that he can deprive himself in the name of health; and the self-indulgent may use his extra two thousand dollars to buy the rich foods or vitamins he craves, or consult his medical specialists. Doesn't this save us from having to define precisely what is meant by health or the necessities of life in general?

''Cit:'' Yes, I guess it does.

''Vis:'' But at the same time it guarantees that the necessities will be provided for each citizen?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And it gives them flexibility or choice in the definition of what is necessary to sustain their own lives?

''Cit:'' Yes, they can spend their income as they choose.

''Vis:'' Also it enables the community to escape the bureaucracy and regimentation that too tight a control would require. Citizens are simply handed their paychecks and left to spend them as they like. We may assume, may we not, that they will not neglect to feed or clothe themselves?

''Cit:'' Yes, of course

''Vis:'' And if they do not, we may regard that as their statement that such things are not necessary to them.

''Cit:'' Yes, or that they are mad. But do you propose to keep every worker at the same minimum wage?

''Vis:'' We did agree, didn't we, that in a cooperative community no one has a right to more of the necessities than another; and to pay one person more for his share of the effort would be entitling him to more of the goods produced by the community.

''Cit:'' That's true.

''Vis:'' Also we have made income large enough so that no one can complain that he is being deprived of anything.

''Cit:'' Yes, but the ascetic is less likely to complain than someone who is more ambitious for himself. After all, you added the extra two thousand dollars merely to eliminate the problem of having to precisely define the necessities of life. That is scarcely enough to allow someone to raise his standard of living as he may wish.

''Vis:'' You mean to become wealthy?

''Cit:'' No, not even wealthy; I meant just to improve his lot or get ahead in life.

''Vis:'' But haven't I promised that we will find a way to enable those who want luxuries to get them? Do you want to permit some group's preference or idea of the good life to invade the public sphere again? I thought we had settled that question, and resolved to keep the public interest restricted to the necessities.

''Cit:'' Yes, I haven't forgotten. But it disturbs me nevertheless to think that no matter what community job a person has, and no matter how hard and efficiently he performs, he will come home with only the same money as his neighbor, who may be a loafer and an incompetent. It seems to me that some incentive besides regard for the community will be necessary to make it function well.

''Vis:'' Then what do you suggest?

''Cit:'' Those who have jobs of greater responsibility and those who perform better than others or earn seniority should receive more money.

''Vis:'' How much more?

''Cit:'' Enough to provide the necessary incentive to keep everyone working as well as he can, and to enable him to better his condition.

''Vis:'' But not so much, I assume, that everyone will begin clawing at one another as they do in a competitive system.

''Cit:'' Correct.

''Vis:'' Then shall we establish a range of ten to twenty thousand dollars for all jobs performed for the support of the community? Would a two to one ratio provide ample incentive?

''Cit:'' Yes, I think so. And it would encourage people to work up the ladder and therefore increase the stability of the community.

''Vis:'' Then let us do as you recommend. If such financial incentive is necessary to the community and its proper functioning, then perhaps we have not violated our principle separating public from personal interests. But I think we are treading in dangerous waters.

''Cit:'' Surely you don't think that this policy will lead to the violent and bitter struggles of the competitive way of life. Many people would say that a two to one ratio in income was very modest indeed.

''Vis:'' I am sure they would. But we must never allow one person or group to control the things necessary to the life of another. And since money is the chief instrument of such control, I am afraid if we allow it to accumulate in the hands of a few ambitious people in community service, then we are in for trouble.

''Cit:'' But twice the minimum wage is surely not a source of wealth or power!

''Vis:'' Perhaps not.

Well then, have we said enough now to convince a reasonable person that even a large community or state can function smoothly and efficiently on a principle of cooperation? Our citizens work only four hours a day or twenty hours a week, and spend the rest of the time engaged in activities entirely of their own choosing. They receive an income sufficient to cover the necessities of life, and can earn considerably more by mastering their craft and gaining seniority; or they can change jobs as they choose without having to worry about being unemployed and going hungry. But either way, citizens work in cooperation, knowing that without each contributing his share, none shall have what is necessary to life. Does this picture seem unrealistic? Is it so difficult a matter, even in a large state?

''Cit:'' No, it doesn't seem so as I listen to your words. But when I turn back to look on my own society, it does still seem like a romance.

''Vis:'' But why should it?

''Cit:'' Man just seems too vicious, too selfish, too much the animal crawling out of the jungle panting for battle and blood. Can we really do any better for him than to formalize the struggle as we do in the United States, to lay down a few rules which keep him from falling into total savagery, and then for the rest trust to luck and some basic laws like the survival of the fittest and the law of supply and demand?

''Vis:'' But surely there are men of good will, even in a competitive society.

''Cit:'' Yes, but for every man of good will, it seems there are two who plan to exploit or corrupt it. Next to all the mistrust, greed, and coarseness of feeling and conception, your idea of general regard among citizens seems like a frail dream, and I wonder whether we have not allowed ourselves to drift into the cloudy realm of utopia.

[[Back to Table of Contents|Book01]]
!

''Visitor:'' You have chosen a hard vision of man to live under, and if it is a true one, then it must also be true that we have been drifting about in illusion. Do you remember what we were saying about jackals?

''Citizen:'' That when the citizens in the fishing village chose to compete for the necessities, they became like jackals because of their resentment and envy and greed.

''Vis:'' Yes, and we remarked that they were likely to take a perverse pride in the description, justifying their low acts by saying that they are no worse than anyone else, that men are all jackals anyway.

''Cit:'' Yes, I remember.

''Vis:'' But isn't this just a lame excuse, a way of pretending to justify shameful behavior by laying the blame on the nature of man and dreaming up a nature ugly enough to make one's own acts look acceptable by comparison?

''Cit:'' Well, according to science this is no dream. Everyone knows that in nature only the fittest survive, and sociobiologists describe countless examples where animals survive only by ruthless selfishness. Aggression is the rule in the animal kingdom, and according to these scientists it is no surprise that with such ancestors human life is also saturated with brutality and selfishness.

''Vis:'' I don't suppose they also recommend that young mothers eat the placenta of their children, do they?

''Cit:'' Of course not. What are you saying!

''Vis:'' Or that in keeping with the habits of chimpanzees we should pick and eat lice from one another should we find any? Or that young couples should try to tie up their necks like courting grebes, and when they give birth to their first child, throw it into the street if it seems defective in some way?

''Cit:'' Well, that's ridiculous, and I see you are only saying that we do not inherit everything from our animal ancestors. But the point of the biologists is that aggression is so universal and intense in the animal kingdom, especially among the higher animals, that we can expect to find it among men too. It's not as though every habit or behavioral characteristic is also part of man's nature.

''Vis:'' But why just aggression and selfishness? Isn't it universal among female creatures to protect their young and to endanger their own lives to save them? And do competing males make a habit of killing one another over a female? Why not use these characteristics as models for human nature, if we don't have the imagination or courage to decide on one for ourselves?

But how strange our discussion is becoming! Isn't it true that as we look around nature we can see just about anything we choose so far as our own conscious life and choices are concerned? Nature is full of strange and wonderful phenomena, but it is we who select from all that is offered what is most attractive and expressive of human life.

''Cit:'' You are not saying we can believe anything we want to about nature and evolution, are you?

''Vis:'' No, of course not. I was only saying that nature is infinitely expressive, and it is this characteristic about it that is important when we are looking for precedents or examples for choosing values.

''Cit:'' I am not sure I follow you.

''Vis:'' I mean, for example, that a bird fallen from a nest is expressive of helplessness and pathos, or a tree is expressive of majesty, like an oak, or sadness like the weeping willow. Or a mother pushing a deformed young out of the nest seems to be an expression of cruelty.

''Cit:'' Yes. I understand what you mean now.

''Vis:'' Well then, wouldn't you agree that the qualities of aggressiveness, selfishness, brutality, ruthlessness, and so on are likewise expressions of human characteristics which we find in nature, or rather select from the infinite variety of qualities which we might find there? For surely you don't think the creatures of nature are really kind or cruel.

''Cit:'' No; that it is only a way of referring to certain kinds of behavior using human terms.

''Vis:'' Perhaps we should say using the terms of poetry - for is it any less poetic to describe the red-wing fiercely protecting its nest than the oak presiding in majesty over the forest?

''Cit:'' No, except that somehow we feel closer to the bird.

''Vis:'' Maybe it is that we feel closer to fierceness.

But let me suggest to you that these evolutionists and sociobiologists whom you mentioned are pulling a hoax on us. They begin by sneering at all the poets who find beautiful symbols in nature, who find it full of the expression of human soul and spirit: mere sentimentality and anthropomorphism they scoff. Then they turn around and solemnly give us a picture of nature red in tooth and claw, blackbirds singing not for joy, but to warn away other males. They give us not a non-human picture of nature, but an inhuman one, which is no less human than the rhapsodies of the poets and pet lovers.

''Cit:'' Yes, they use human enough language it is true.

''Vis:'' But they escape criticism because theirs is the poetry of cruelty rather than romance and kindliness.

''Cit:'' But would you maintain then that all information collected by science regarding evolution and the behavior of animals is irrelevant to man and the kinds of social institutions he will have?

''Vis:'' Let me ask you the same question regarding the information collected by physiologists and physicians.

''Cit:'' You mean how knowledge concerning the function of our bodies is related to our social institutions?

''Vis:'' Yes, and our behavior.

''Cit:'' That would depend, I suppose. If someone is in good health then you could not deduce anything about his behavior or ideas from his body. If he has some disease or pathological condition, then it might very well show up.

''Vis:'' In pathological behavior, or at least in a greater preoccupation with his health?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' But you certainly couldn't infer that a man will be a farmer or engineer, or have a kindly or hostile disposition from a knowledge of the way his body works.

''Cit:'' No, except of course in the trivial sense that his movements and mental state are in some way a function of his body condition.

''Vis:'' But you could not say the reason why he chose to be a farmer, or what makes a good farmer could be explained by his doctor or a physiologist.

''Cit:'' No, that would be ridiculous.

''Vis:'' Or why he chose to be aggressive or kindly toward a certain person on a certain occasion?

''Cit:'' No, not unless he had some pathological condition.

''Vis:'' And this would have to be shown in detail through x-rays or in some other way?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Then shouldn't we ask the evolutionist and sociobiologist to show us in detail how some particular act or belief is connected with the behavior of a bird or dog? - I don't mean a general similarity, for that is no more than a metaphor. Shouldn't we say: Look now, exactly why can't I or shouldn't I, give half my dinner to my friend here? And if he were to say that in the kingdom of animals and plants creatures don't behave that way, we should think him a fool, shouldn't we?

''Cit:'' Of course.

''Vis:'' And if he were to say that whether I share or not, I am doing the selfish or self-preserving thing, shouldn't we advise him that his words have no meaning, since they apply to two very different kinds of behavior that have very different consequences and reflect very different social relationships?

''Cit:'' Yes, the word selfish in this case appears to mean very little.

''Vis:'' Then I think we had better call a halt to all this foolishness concerning man's nature or biological tendency to behave in such and so a manner. If we want to build a community on cooperation and general regard, I don't think we have to be scared off by these kinds of people. We are concerned with what people themselves want from their community and how they should go about getting it most efficiently; if cooperation or aggression is necessary, we can hardly expect to get good advice from a rutting deer, any more than we could find a reason for industry in an ant hill or beehive.

''Cit:'' I am only afraid to agree with you now because we will appear to be discounting science and all the information collected not just by biologists, but anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and all others who are scientifically studying man and society. It will make us look like cultural atavists trying to build a commune rather than a community.

''Vis:'' We mustn't allow that to happen; but we mustn't let ourselves be drawn along with every fashion and fancy associated with the sciences. The so-called implications of evolution and animal behavior are one such fancy, and I suspect the famous law of supply and demand is another.

''Cit:'' Supply and demand?

''Vis:'' You remember how that law was used in the early days of capitalism to justify fierce economic competition. It was supposed that every man can be expected to behave according to his own economic self-interest - a questionable assumption to anyone but the greedy, I should think. But once that assumption was granted the economic philosophers thought everything else could be left to the law of supply and demand.

''Cit:'' That as demand for some goods increases, the supply will increase?

''Vis:'' Yes, and as the demand is satisfied, supply will also decrease and level off - so that the market becomes self-regulating.

''Cit:'' I don't think the economists would be too pleased with the accuracy of our description.

''Vis:'' Probably not. But see how important the idea of law is in their system. It appears inconceivable to them that a man could choose to be a botanist or writer if this paid less than some other profession, because it violates the law of economic self-interest. And once this simplification of human motivation is accepted, then the law of supply and demand can be simply deduced. Isn't it peculiar that all this solemn pronouncement on economic law should happen without everyone bursting into laughter?

''Cit:'' I see no cause for laughter; even people today appeal to the law of supply and demand quite regularly.

''Vis:'' But isn't it comic to see people happily give up what is most rightfully theirs - their freedom to make decisions and choose what is desirable and just and good - and place it under a mysterious, inviolable law of nature?

''Cit:'' That seems to me hardly comic.

''Vis:'' Perhaps not. But why would people consent to do this? Why give up everything except greed in the management of a society and its marketplace?

''Cit:'' Perhaps it is because such people think a law is more fair and just than a single individual is likely to be.

''Vis:'' And is a law which sends some people into poverty and gives others tremendous wealth, and sends everyone scurrying around trying to make money just or fair? Is it any more human than the law of the survival of the fittest which some would like to foist on us now?

''Cit:'' No, in reality it doesn't seem to be. But then why didn't people laugh at it as you say they should have when it first was presented?

''Vis:'' No doubt the greedy saw that it would nicely serve their purpose. But I think a deeper reason, one which tricked the better thinkers of the time, had to do with Isaac Newton.

''Cit:'' Newton?

''Vis:'' Yes indeed. Newton showed how all physical bodies behaved according to the simple law of gravity, which involved really nothing more than their masses and distances from one another. This was truly a marvelous achievement, to show that all the complexity of nature could be understood as a simple mechanism - a huge clockwork, to use the metaphor of the time.

''Cit:'' But what does this have to do with the economic system of free enterprise and capitalism?

''Vis:'' Only this. If nature could be understood, explained, and simplified by the use of a simple universal law, then it would seem equally marvelous if human life could be similarly understood. So everyone, including the students of the marketplace, was on the lookout for laws, and when one was supposedly discovered, no matter how absurd, unjust, or inhuman, people were all in a rush to honor and obey it.

''Cit:'' The population law of Malthus might be an example.

''Vis:'' Yes, one of the most dismal. But isn't it obvious that there is no compelling connection between Newton's laws and so-called laws of human action unless we so value the idea of law that we want to force it on men? Could there be any other reason why men would bother to accept a law of supply and demand than their extreme admiration for the job laws were doing for the understanding of nature?

''Cit:'' And you think then that the lessons of evolution and animal behavior - the laws of adaptability and survival that hold in the kingdom of nature - are similarly influencing people's ideas concerning the structure of a community?

''Vis:'' Yes, I do. It is not the truths of science that have influence so much as the values and attitudes associated with it that cause us to believe some things. The biologists do not prove that man is cruel or selfish, but we are prepared to believe it and admire our men of science; and therefore we are ready to accept whatever they can offer in the name of evidence.

However, shall we go on discussing the influences of science on human values and choices, or shall we return to our question?

''Cit:'' I am afraid I have forgotten our question.

''Vis:'' We were trying to decide whether man is by nature greedy and selfish, because if he is, then our hopes of a community based on cooperation and general regard would receive a setback.

''Cit:'' Yes, that was it.

''Vis:'' Can we agree that the question is still open, and that we have not received the help from biologists and other students of nature that some people think we might have?

''Cit:'' Yes, I think we may agree to this. But how then are we to proceed?

''Vis:'' Yes, the way does not seem obvious. I wonder whether the obstacle is not just another one of those values of science that we have been talking about.

''Cit:'' How do you mean?

''Vis:'' I mean we are so accustomed to having answers come from the depths of science, from information which is so hidden and at first sight so irrelevant, that we no longer feel confident with the obvious - like a person who can't decide to marry until a psychiatrist has examined his childhood sexuality.

''Cit:'' That's a little silly, but it is true that we do not feel safe in our opinions without professional or scientific sanction.

''Vis:'' Well, let us, at any rate, try to be courageous and see whether we can discover the obvious. In the beginning of our discussion we asked ourselves as representatives of men in general, what we expected from people acting in community, and received what appears to be a good answer. Shall we ask each other now whether in our daily lives we seem to be selfish, aggressive, and unfeeling - or shall we call in the psychologists?

''Cit:'' Well, let's go ahead with it. Sometimes, I must admit, I can be very greedy and selfish.

''Vis:'' And I must say the same of myself. Shall we try to discover the nature of our greed, since that seems to be a dominating element in selfishness, aggression, and many other emotions brought to the surface in a competitive society? What is it made up of?

''Cit:'' It's just a strong desire for something, I suppose.

''Vis:'' Is it distinguished by the object of the desire, or the desire itself? I mean can you identify greed by identifying the things you desire - food, money, pleasure, clothes, and such?

''Cit:'' No, one is greedy for those things. Greed seems to refer to the intensity or amount of desire for something, but the latter may be anything at all.

''Vis:'' Yes, and isn't that what makes it a vice in most people's eyes? Someone is greedy at the dinner table not because he wants more food than everyone else - he may not be the biggest eater - but when he grabs what he wants and can't stand to see another person get what his eyes fasten on and his heart pants for.

''Cit:'' Yes, that is true.

''Vis:'' And wouldn't you say that the extreme limit of greed occurs when desire becomes an obsession and eliminates its object altogether? For example, isn't that what would distinguish an ambitious businessman or moneymaker from a miser? The one has his object firmly in view, while the other has lost sight of it and given himself entirely up to his desire or passion.

''Cit:'' Well, it is true insofar as the businessman remembers what money is for, while the miser seems to have forgotten.

''Vis:'' And is this characteristic of greed not also at the bottom of gluttony, lust, rage, and other extreme emotions? Doesn't sexual desire become lust when it becomes so consuming that no distinction is made between different persons or different circumstances?

''Cit:'' Yes, it becomes a drive without a particular object.

''Vis:'' And the glutton eventually makes no distinction between different kinds of food and drink, but is just bent on devouring whatever he finds in front of him?

''Cit:'' Yes

''Vis:'' Now it is true, is it not, that we feel normal desire turn into greed sometimes - for example, when we are deprived of a thing we wanted or felt we needed, or perhaps when we become too accustomed to have it?

''Cit:'' Yes, it is true.

''Vis:'' And isn't that the reason the very poor are as greedy as the very rich? The one is deprived of the necessities, while the other is satiated with luxuries.

''Cit:'' Yes, they have that in common.

''Vis:'' Let us agree, then, that greed is an extreme form of desire, where it has lost its object, and thus becomes perverted or pathological. But desire itself we can also agree is normal and natural.

''Cit:'' Yes, certainly. Without desire no decisions would ever be made and nothing would get done.

''Vis:'' Consider this now: is desire a single force or drive, or is there a different kind of desire for each thing we desire?

''Cit:'' I am not sure I understand the question.

''Vis:'' I mean that sometimes we desire food and sometimes travel; sometimes we wish to be let alone and sometimes to have visitors; sometimes we want to work and sometimes rest. Is the desire in all of these cases the same or is it different?

''Cit:'' I suppose it is the same, at least if we think of it as a force or motive to act. Of course it may differ in intensity from case to case as we have said.

''Vis:'' But the feelings and experiences which desire entwines, if I may so speak, are tremendously complex, are they not? I mean to get at the root of any particular desire might prove to be a very difficult and lengthy task.

''Cit:'' Yes - a job for a psychologist or psychiatrist.

''Vis:'' He would first of all have to identify the immediate object of the desire, then explore the past history of his subject to find its origin, observe or deduce all the feelings and similar experiences which are connected with the desire, and so forth.

''Cit:'' Yes, something like this goes on in psychological testing and psychoanalysis, I think.

''Vis:'' But the whole fabric is held together by desire, is it not? Likes and dislikes, choices, decisions, preferences, tastes all involve that peculiar feeling of drive or force which we mean by the word "desire."

''Cit:'' As a generalization I think that would be true; but I am sure a psychologist would be less interested in that generalization than in the various patterns of behavior and experiences that involve desire.

''Vis:'' Then in in honor of his studies, let us call ourselves "psychological man," insofar as we are a being who desires things and insofar as our life is a product of desire.

''Cit:'' All right, let us do so.

''Vis:'' Now what about the objects of desire - is there any limit to the things that we may desire?

''Cit:'' You mentioned desire for food, sex, and rest, which concern the basic requirements of life.

''Vis:'' Yes, that is one class of things which it is normal to desire. Also we should include that elusive class of experiences which we call feelings, should we not? Sometimes we desire things which will cause us to have certain feelings - a sense of peace or pleasure perhaps, or sometimes feelings of anger and indignation. It is true, is it not, that sometimes we want to be angry or indignant?

''Cit:'' Yes, human beings can be perverse that way; but I think everyone wants most of all to experience feelings of happiness. Don't you think that we desire all these other feelings because they share somehow in the feeling of happiness, or give one happiness?

''Vis:'' Very likely; it doesn't seem very sensible to deny that men desire happiness. But we desire things other than feelings too. A young man may desire to become a doctor when he grows up, or a basketball player; and people desire to live in certain places and in certain kinds of houses; and someone may wish to drive a Buick rather than a Volkswagen. These are not feelings, but concrete objects or experiences, are they not?

''Cit:'' Yes, they are desired as means to happiness - or rather the feelings of happiness.

''Vis:'' But they are more usually desired as ends in themselves I think. When someone wants to solve a problem or live in a country house, he is not thinking of his happiness, but of the answer to the problem or the way the house will look.

''Cit:'' But he thinks the solution or the house will bring him happiness.

''Vis:'' Yes, when he stops to think of it or must justify his desires, he mentions the happiness that will follow. Shall we say, then, that a person desires many things and hopes at the same time that they will all fit together; I mean he hopes that realizing one object will not have the result of losing another of his objects?

''Cit:'' Yes - if I understand you correctly.

''Vis:'' Take a busy real estate man, for instance; he loves to get hold of nice property, meet people and show them around, share in their pleasure when they find a house to their taste, outbid a competitor, and so on. These activities are all ends in themselves, are they not?

''Cit:'' Yes, but they also give him pleasure or happiness.

''Vis:'' He hopes so, at any rate. But his mind is occupied with the people and property that fill his days - these are the objects of all the decisions that he makes from moment to moment.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And in the end he hopes to retire to the South Seas or live in a castle in Germany, let us say; and there end his life in happiness.

''Cit:'' Something like that, perhaps.

''Vis:'' Then so far as the objects of his desire are concerned, we could say that they form a sort of kingdom of ends. He hopes that they all will fit together in harmony, that pursuit of one end or goal will not conflict with the attainment of another.

''Cit:'' Yes, I think this is true of us all.

''Vis:'' Shall we give a name to the things we desire?

''Cit:'' A name? But we desire so many different things; how can they all have a single name?

''Vis:'' I meant that insofar as they are ends to our desire, things we seek to experience and come to rest in, they are all of a kind. Shall we give them a name in order to recognize this aspect - just as we give the name "chair" to a structure of wood and other materials to identify a function it serves?

''Cit:'' All right, what name do you propose?

''Vis:'' What about the common one? Don't we call things which we seek as ends in themselves "values?"

''Cit:'' I suspect that word means different things to different people.

''Vis:'' Perhaps we can pin it down a little then. Let us call a value any experience or feeling or object in the world which we seek to possess or make a part of our consciousness.

''Cit:'' That is confusing to me.

''Vis:'' Think of a piece of music you find especially attractive and love to hear. Does it not fill your consciousness with its special sense of meaning?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Or if you are looking at a landscape by a fine painter - doesn't it fill your consciousness with its own special meaning also?

''Cit:'' Yes, this too. But do you mean to say that this aesthetic appreciation is of the same nature as the real estate man's experience with his business? That does not seem very likely.

''Vis:'' But it may not be so different in the aspect of its value. The businessman may merely use the objects of his trade - the customers and property - as means to making money or as means only to his own happiness. But we said too that if he is really happy with his work, he has the ability to regard these materials as ends in themselves: he desires to share in the customer's search and to lay his hands on good property. Haven't we decided to call the objects or ends of desire values? And are they any different in this case from the values experienced in listening to music or looking at a painting?

''Cit:'' Well, I can see the similarity, but I certainly feel awkward in comparing the sale of property with the fine arts.

''Vis:'' Yes, because you think of the real estate man as an unscrupulous noisy salesman, which he often is; and the artist and aesthete as a self-indulgent egotist presiding over what happens behind the doors of the museum and concert hall. We can't deny that these differences exist more often than not. Also what happens in art and music and poetry happens with a greater intensity and singleness of purpose than we see in real estate and other kinds of activity, and this makes a difference too. In the arts the one single function is to express or reveal values - to present experiences or things as ends in themselves to be beheld and to absorb the attention. In the world of aesthetics, one contemplates the world and all its marvels and variety; but in other kinds of activities this occurs only sometimes or not at all, depending on how we choose to go about them.

''Cit:'' Then any time one does something as an end in itself, or desires it as an end in itself, he is engaged in art?

''Vis:'' That is my opinion. When I hoe in the garden, or watch a child playing I may be doing nothing different from what I do in seeing a painting by Van Gogh, or in watching the children dance in The Nutcracker Suite or one of Degas' paintings. Of course I may be hoeing in a state of siege against weeds, or watching the children only to see that no one gets hurt. That makes a difference.

''Cit:'' Yes, then your experience is not pursued as an end in itself, but as a means to some further end.

''Vis:'' That is precisely what I mean. Then since we understand each other on this point, shall we honor the artist and musician and poet by calling ourselves "aesthetic man" insofar as we cultivate values and try to organize our life so that it becomes a fabric composed of them?

''Cit:'' That would mean that all our experiences become ends in themselves. Wouldn't that be the complete "aesthetic man?"

''Vis:'' Yes, such a person would himself be a work of art, and the rest of us could behold his life in the same way we hear a symphony or read an epic. But life is not so simple as art, and the problems the poet and composer have in harmonizing values and including only appropriate elements are miniscule compared to the difficulty each of us would have in attempting to compose our lives only from experiences taken as ends in themselves. I mean, Degas has little problem harmonizing his dancing children, but every parent can expect much more difficulty with his own.

But I think we have gone far enough in comparing art to life. Can we add "aesthetic man" to our "psychological man," and say that insofar as we lead our lives by the principle of desire we are the one, and insofar as we organize our lives by the principle of value, contemplating and enjoying experiences as ends in themselves, we are the other? We share in both activities, do we not?

''Cit:'' Yes, but I am wondering about the relation between our two selves. The compulsion and waywardness of desire seem at odds with the calm of aesthetic contemplation.

''Vis:'' Yes, there is irony and tension between the two principles.

But there is one further piece to the puzzle of man's soul that I think we must add before looking at the problem of making him into a harmony.

''Cit:'' What is that? I see now that we are in the midst of a pet theory of yours.

''Vis:'' Do you think that theories are like pets - useless things except to their owners?

''Cit:'' I didn't mean that. But what is the third piece of the puzzle you were about to add?

''Vis:'' I think we must include knowledge in our picture, and add "cognitive man" to the other two aspects of the soul.

''Cit:'' And how does he fit in?

''Vis:'' Think again of the real estate dealer. He has all kinds of desires, like the rest of us, but of course many of them are connected with his business.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And his desires are aimed at various ends - some similar to everyone else's, but some particular to the real estate business.

''Cit:'' Yes, we mentioned his desire to get hold of handsome property and make his customers happy with a good bargain.

''Vis:'' And these could be satisfying experiences in themselves, which gives them their aesthetic identity?

''Cit:'' Yes, they are values to him, along with happiness and other pleasures.

''Vis:'' But knowledge is necessary too, is it not?

''Cit:'' In the conduct of his business?

''Vis:'' Yes, of course; and elsewhere too. He must know how to realize his ends, and this requires knowledge of the law concerning property, closing costs, taxes, and other technical matters. He must also know what people like and how to please them.

''Cit:'' And above all he must have a sharp eye for property values and market trends.

''Vis:'' But all this information and technique - is it anything more than a grasp of the relations existing between one thing and another; isn't that the general character of knowledge?

''Cit:'' Relations between things?

''Vis:'' Yes, I mean the relations between causes and effects, parts and wholes, things occurring before and after other things, relationships of quantity, and so on. Isn't each field of knowledge identified by the relationships it describes among various elements of existence?

''Cit:'' Like a chemist describes reactions between different materials?

''Vis:'' Yes, and a sociologist attempts to discover relationships among people and institutions; or the psychologist between our desires and various kinds of goals.

''Cit:'' We seem to speaking in extremely general terms…

''Vis:'' As indeed we must, if we are to describe the "cognitive man" in each of us. May we not call our ability to discover connections between the elements of our experience a cognitive capacity?

''Cit:'' Yes, I suppose so; but still our description is so vague, or it seems so to me.

''Vis:'' Suppose we were to describe the knowledge of the historian. Wouldn't we have to present all the facts and interrelations among them which he knows about - dates of battles, the birth of religious and social movements, the rise to power of kings and presidents, and everything else that he knows?

''Cit:'' Well, that is historical knowledge.

''Vis:'' And knowledge of the mathematician - is it anything else than a description of the various propositions and theorems in geometry, algebra, the calculus, and all the other branches of the science?

''Cit:'' No, it is not. But now I think we are too particular in our description.

''Vis:'' Then let us go back and say that knowledge consists in the description of the connections among things, the exact nature of which is provided by the individual cognitive disciplines - which we call sciences.

''Cit:'' That certainly sounds formal and official.

''Vis:'' And I hope it sounds plausible. But now that we have the pieces of the puzzle, we must put them together into our portrait of the soul of man - for we are still trying to find out whether he has such an aggressive and corruptible nature that he cannot live in cooperation with his fellows. We need a portrait of psychological, aesthetic, and cognitive man in combination.

''Cit:'' Please proceed; I cannot quite get the shape of the individual pieces to help very much in putting them together.

''Vis:'' Then consider a simple and obvious example. You awoke this morning and soon found yourself hungry; so you went to the refrigerator and in a few minutes had yourself some breakfast, and then went about your daily business.

''Cit:'' All right, that is obvious enough.

''Vis:'' But see how even in this small activity, the three aspects of man are in operation. First comes hunger - which is nothing but the desire for food. And in that desire you experience the psychological component of your being.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And the object of the desire - the end toward which it reaches - is the experience of eating bacon and eggs, or whatever you had for breakfast.

''Cit:'' The aesthetic component.

''Vis:'' Yes, the aesthetic component - but only insofar as you actually pause to taste your food, instead of bolting it. Remember, we said that the aesthetic element consists in experiencing things fully and appreciating their natures as they are presented.

''Cit:'' Yes, I remember.

''Vis:'' Now the third piece of the puzzle, the cognitive component, slips easily into place. You had to be able to predict what would best satisfy your hunger, and to know how to go about fixing your breakfast. These may be trivial tasks, but they constitute knowledge nevertheless, do they not?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Now shall we do some variations on the theme? Or rather shall we shift the balance of the construction, and so as in a kaleidoscope, produce a different pattern?

''Cit:'' I don't follow you.

''Vis:'' I mean let's exaggerate each component in turn and discover the different ways in which you might have gone about breakfast. Suppose we begin by intensifying the psychological component, and turn you into a glutton. In this case you don't care what you eat as long as your craving is indulged; and if you have a competitor at the table, you will quarrel with him and fight over the biggest helping.

''Cit:'' Very likely.

''Vis:'' But suppose the aesthetic component is dominant.

''Cit:'' That is hard to imagine in a case so trivial.

''Vis:'' Why? Wouldn't you become a gourmet, and choose and cook very carefully what you have, trying something different every day? There might be no end to the time you spend every morning in the kitchen, and the delicacies you might prepare for yourself.

''Cit:'' Yes, food can become a minor art form.

''Vis:'' And how might we exaggerate the cognitive component?

''Cit:'' I suppose nutrition might become the major preoccupation.

''Vis:'' Yes, you could become obsessed with a balanced diet, vitamin supply, and all sorts of physiological processes connected with eating. The aesthetic component would shrink to the background, or so change in its values that you begin to savor what is least palatable, like bonemeal, but most nutritious. There would also be changes in the psychological aspect of breakfast too: very likely your new austerity would be felt in less hunger in the morning; or perhaps the opposite might occur - you might become a fanatic over health foods, hardly able to wait for mealtimes to down your potions.

''Cit:'' You have devised a strange number of variations.

''Vis:'' And we might have made up still more, for the relations between the three parts of man are most intricate and influence one another in the most subtle of manners. If there are so many ways for you to approach breakfast, imagine how many more ways the historian or psychologist or biologist might approach his subject, where the elements are far more numerous and complex. He would have pretty much a free hand in the delicacies he could present to his intellectual palate.

''Cit:'' But I would have supposed knowledge to be the dominant element in any of these sciences or scholarly studies.

''Vis:'' To be sure; but even so, there are many opportunities to shape a theory by psychological and aesthetic considerations. We have already mentioned how evolutionary theory and some of the ideas of the sociobiologists seem to be shaped by such influences - especially in their preoccupation with struggle and survival and brutality in nature. We don't have to accuse them of being false to point out that they are heavily anthropomorphic or poetic, and that they tend to emphasize certain aspects of nature that coincide with only a few of our psychological tendencies.

But now I think we can finally answer our question about man's nature - whether it is such that a competitive struggle for existence with his fellows must necessarily follow, or whether cooperation and general regard in a community is natural. What do you say?

''Cit:'' If what you have been saying is correct, I would think that man has no nature except for his capacity to exercise the three elements of personality you have described.

''Vis:'' Yes, and isn't it true that under some circumstances the cognitive disposition is dominant, and at other times the psychological or aesthetic takes control?

''Cit:'' Yes, I can imagine some of these circumstances.

''Vis:'' Now suppose the circumstance is that everyone is competing with everyone else for his food and employment and all the other necessities of existence. Which component of the soul is likely to emerge as the dominant one?

''Cit:'' Clearly, the psychological.

''Vis:'' The desires will be intensified?

''Cit:'' Yes, I would think so. If I am threatened with loss of my job or not having food for myself and my family, I will respond with very strong feelings.

''Vis:'' You would begin to hate those who you believed were depriving you - the farmers, or the supermarket owners, or government in general?

''Cit:'' Very likely.

''Vis:'' And you would find yourself hoarding what little food you can find, and not telling your neighbors where they can get a good buy or find employment - since you will want to get there first?

''Cit:'' Yes, one becomes selfish under circumstances of struggle.

''Vis:'' Selfish, suspicious, aggressive, unfeeling toward others, resentful, and cynical. There is no end, is there, to the list of ugly and destructive emotions that are brought to life when everyone is competing against everyone else for the necessities? Some become more brutal and aggressive, as in war, while others shrink back timidly in resentment and paranoia.

''Cit:'' Such emotions seem inevitable and necessary when conditions are bad enough.

''Vis:'' But is this state of psychological war a natural expression of man's nature? Shall we say that competition follows as a consequence of man's aggressive nature, or is it the other way round?

''Cit:'' It appears to be the other way round - competition has exaggerated the psychological side of man's nature.

''Vis:'' Had men cooperated in the provision of food and the other things of life, and had they insisted on sharing them, we don't need to suppose that such violent emotions and intense desires would have any useful function, and might lie sleeping in the soul.

''Cit:'' But then one wonders why men compete at all - I mean how do the competitive circumstances arise in the first place which plunge men into selfishness and greed?

''Vis:'' That seems to me a question that the historians might best answer. When we were imagining the rise and fall of our fishing village we placed most of the responsibility on the role played by a few entrepreneurs, and I think we were right in doing so.

But I think we are at least safe now in saying that such competition is not a result of man's nature, but rather that competition forms or shapes man's nature in a certain way - it exaggerates the psychological component.

''Cit:'' Wouldn't you say at least that greed and aggression are part of the entrepreneur's nature, and since they were the ones who created the competitive style that in this way a competitive society is the result of man's nature?

''Vis:'' I don't think we need even say that. The activities of these individualists are very often the result of energy, passion for work, and sense of adventure, which according to our classification may have more to do with exercise of the aesthetic side of man's personality than his psychological potential. It is just that in controlling the necessities these people create a situation in which the psychological side of everyone else's nature - and finally their own - is called into action; others are forced to compete and struggle over things which they have a right to and which might have been provided in cooperation.

But we have to fill in the rest of the picture. Remember we were saying that when one element of the soul is exaggerated it changes the shape of the other two; so we must have a look at the "nature" of the man whose desires connected with the necessities of life have become overly intensified. Do you remember what we were saying about the glutton?

''Cit:'' That he has an exaggerated desire for food.

''Vis:'' Yes, but as his desire increases it becomes less discriminating, and soon he will devour anything put in front of him.

''Cit:'' He is like the lecher who makes no discriminations in his lust.

''Vis:'' And both have this in common - that the desire tends to displace the end or object that it originally sought. Desiring becomes an end in itself, so that nothing is satisfying or permanent, and a state of rest or appreciation of an experience is never reached. A person with exaggerated desire is like someone with a permanent itch who must keep on scratching.

''Cit:'' The glutton is never through eating, it is true.

''Vis:'' And the lecher is never through lusting. Indeed, a certain perverse state is reached finally where any satisfaction or rest becomes a torture.

''Cit:'' Dante punished those guilty of such excesses by having them tossed forever in a whirlwind.

''Vis:'' A nice symbol to be sure. But when desire displaces all natural ends or goals, doesn't that mean that the aesthetic part of man's nature has disappeared or shrunk almost to nothing?

''Cit:'' Yes, desiring itself becomes the only object of appreciation.

''Vis:'' But since it is always in motion, always in the whirlwind, there is no calm; and calm is necessary for aesthetic experience, is it not?

''Cit:'' That was what we said.

''Vis:'' So a person who has given himself over completely to wanting and needing and desiring has virtually exterminated the aesthetic part of his soul.

''Cit:'' Yes, it seems so.

''Vis:'' And what ends of desire remain are all connected with himself - for our victim is desiring food, shelter, clothing, and all other things necessary to preserve his own life. Certainly this will make him insensitive to the experiences of other people.

''Cit:'' Yes, selfish people lack empathy or compassion.

''Vis:'' So in a society built on competition for necessities we cannot expect much sympathy for the unfortunate or much toleration for others different from oneself. Without a lively sense of another's experience there cannot be much communication, can there?

''Cit:'' No, I think not.

''Vis:'' But we must not neglect the aesthetics of materialism either; for we can't imagine the aesthetic part of the soul seeing itself so misused that it won't take revenge in some way.

''Cit:'' You mean the material necessities of life will become works of art?

''Vis:'' Certainly. If the main objects of desire are material goods, as they must be when people compete for them, then our aesthetic capacities will turn to them for exercise.

''Cit:'' Revenge, you said.

''Vis:'' Well, it is a sort of revenge against ourselves, I suppose, to see cars, clothes, foods, and all other material means of life become the nourished ends of desire. Is there anything more grotesque than the sight of a family reverently polishing its car on Sunday mornings? Or to see men and women solemnly window shopping for clothes and house furnishing as though they were walking through an art museum? Isn't it inevitable that people who spend their whole lives with material goods will also demand the greatest variety and develop very sharp eyes and discriminating tastes over what really serve simple and basic functions?

''Cit:'' Fashions will become important, it is true.

''Vis:'' An industry, I should imagine. But that which distorts and corrupts the aesthetic principle will have a similar effect on the cognitive aspect of the soul, will it not? Don't you think that people whose desires are directed entirely to the material bases of life will exaggerate the knowledge and wit required to provide for them?

''Cit:'' I don't know whether it will be exaggerated or not, but it will be natural for knowledge to take a practical turn.

''Vis:'' Meaning that knowledge connected with providing the necessities will be especially cultivated and prized.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' There will be special concentration on health care and medicines, engineering techniques, the development of new materials for use in construction and clothing, and that kind of thing.

''Cit:'' Yes, science and technology - these will be the practical areas.

''Vis:'' Therefore, out of all the possible relationships to be discovered in the universe, only those which have immediate effect in satisfying man's material desires will be selected for study, and exploited in technology?

''Cit:'' That will probably happen; but the detailed knowledge of applied science rests on general principles and a larger understanding of nature; so I don't think knowledge will be quite as restricted as you are suggesting.

''Vis:'' I hope you are right and that there will not be such a distortion of our cognitive capacities as we supposed for our aesthetic natures. But don't you think that this larger and more generous kind of knowledge will receive its justification only from its final application in technology to the needs and supposed needs of the society?

''Cit:'' Yes, I should imagine. As we said, only that knowledge which has practical justification, or promises such application, will be sought and respected.

''Vis:'' But is it not a pity to see the great mansion that is knowledge exploited merely for man's physical needs of life?

''Cit:'' That would seem to be merely an aesthetic objection.

''Vis:'' Well, perhaps. But we shouldn't be surprised under such circumstances to see very specialized technology replacing great cognitive visions of the universe - especially since the material needs of life have become aesthetic ends as well. Every corner of man's material life will have its own group of technologists and specialists to tend it, and pretty soon no one will be able to do anything for himself without calling in a professional or expert.

''Cit:'' Who has extremely bad aesthetic tastes. But it appears that we have sketched in the details of our imaginary fishing village as it becomes a fully developed community.

''Vis:'' Yes, it seems inevitable that its life would take this form. For when each person must fend for himself and compete with his neighbor, he must resort to strong desires and feelings if he is to survive; and these will in turn shrink and distort the aesthetic and cognitive capacities of his nature and confine them to the material aspects of life.

''Cit:'' It does indeed seem inevitable.

''Vis:'' And don't you think that these shrunken aesthetic sensibilities will explain the impression of excitement and variety that these community members will have? For the real dreariness of forty or fifty car models, or foods served in thousands of drive-ins, or supermarkets and shopping malls will escape people whose aesthetic sensibilities are confined to material goods. We can't expect such people to respond to anything not connected to their immediate material satisfactions, can we?

''Cit:'' No, I think not.

''Vis:'' And finally, that great sense of freedom our victims in the fishing village were boasting about. Can someone with insatiable desires for material goods be considered free? Is anyone free whose whole consciousness is given over to the nourishment of desire?

''Cit:'' No, he would be like an infant.

''Vis:'' Freedom is a much more complex business than acting on desire. And it is also one of the two functions of the community to provide for it and make room for its exercise.

''Cit:'' Yes, we agreed on that.

''Vis:'' Then let us leave the grim and dreary competitive life, and taking faith in the capacity of human beings to behave decently to themselves and one another, complete our picture of a community built on a principle of cooperation.

''Cit:'' I am ready.

[[Back to Table of Contents|Book01]]
!

''Visitor:'' So far we have only provided our community with food, shelter, clothing, education, medical care, and other such things which are essential to life; but we have not considered how life is to be made worth living.

''Citizen:'' You mean how people will pursue the good life?

''Vis:'' Yes. Our community members work only four hours a day or twenty hours a week to provide for the needs of everyone, and for that they receive, we are supposing, ten thousand dollars a year, eight to cover the necessities, conservatively estimated, and two to provide for whatever they feel they may lack in some area.

''Cit:'' Yes, but we allowed some to earn up to twenty thousand if they prove especially competent and responsible.

''Vis:'' Yes, we did. Also we supposed that the community can run smoothly in providing the necessities if the citizens cultivate and maintain a sense of regard for one another, or a recognition that without every person contributing his share, no one will have what is necessary for life.

''Cit:'' Yes. That was the meaning we gave to cooperation.

''Vis:'' That was the meaning we gave to the very idea of a community. We can also agree now, can we not, that such a sense of regard is not foreign to the nature of man, and that once we root out the principle of competition from the basis of community life, it can be nurtured and may come to seem natural? This no longer seems unrealistic, does it?

''Cit:'' No, human nature seems more flexible than some people imagine.

''Vis:'' Then shall we continue building? - for after all, we have only a picture of the bare bones of a community, the part concerned with the necessities of life. We must now look at the part concerned with the good life - the area of private interest. We said a long time ago that in addition to the necessities, all people expect the freedom and opportunity to pursue their idea of the good life, did we not? And this expectation constitutes the second great right of all community members.

''Cit:'' Yes, we said this.

''Vis:'' But we also said that the community has no responsibility to promote any particular person's idea, or the idea of any group, no matter how large the group.

''Cit:'' Yes, realization of the good life is each person's own responsibility.

''Vis:'' But the community must not interfere either, even if some people find other's ideas distasteful or immoral?

''Cit:'' Yes, so long as they do not deprive others of the necessities. But I must confess that I still feel troubled about permitting any kind of behavior, even if it does not directly interfere with others.

''Vis:'' Well, we promised to address that question in due course. But don't you think that if we can cultivate the sense of general regard we have been talking about, there will be less to worry about in our community than in one where there are impoverished and desperate people?

''Cit:'' Yes, that at any rate is quite certain.

''Vis:'' Well then, how shall we proceed with this question of private interest? Since each person works very little each day, he has plenty of time and some extra money to spend on himself.

''Cit:'' Yes, but the community offers only the necessities of life. What use will he have for his money - except to buy more food and clothes, or to ride around on public transportation?

''Vis:'' Yes, we don't have the niceties yet. But we mustn't forget that the great amount of leisure our citizens have is a wonderful thing in itself. Many will want to spend more time with their friends, visit places they never have a chance to go when they have to work all day, or engage in a variety of activities that require little or no money. You mustn't discount the value of free time in itself.

''Cit:'' No, I don't. But still most activities require material goods of some kind. Where will they come from?

''Vis:'' Don't you think that the citizens will be able to provide many of them for themselves? You mentioned that you would spend some of your leisure time learning to play golf. Isn't it possible that you and your fellow golfers should get together and lay out your own course, as we mentioned awhile back, prepare the ground, grow the grass, keep it watered, and then enjoy together the fruits of your work?

''Cit:'' I suppose it is possible, though not many people are that enthusiastic about the sport.

''Vis:'' Then perhaps they should forego it instead of depending on someone else's enthusiasm to make something that will entertain them. Of course you and your friends may pool your surplus income and pay someone else to do the work.

''Cit:'' Is there anything wrong with that? That is the usual way.

''Vis:'' No, there would be nothing wrong. Instead of using your money for something else, you add to someone else's surplus by having him do the work for you. But I think many people will find it very interesting to participate in the production of what they consume. By planning and building your own course, you might find it adds another dimension to your appreciation of golf. Besides, you will have a lot of time both to work on the course and to use it.

''Cit:'' Yes, that is true. But still I can't imagine actually doing the work myself.

''Vis:'' Because golf is not that important to you?

''Cit:'' Yes, perhaps.

''Vis:'' Then that is your choice.

But we have now identified two ways of providing some of the materials and equipment required for the good life: those who need an item can make it for themselves, or they can pay someone out of their leisure income to make it for them.

''Cit:'' Yes, there are those two ways.

''Vis:'' And it is likely that there will be many people in our community with special skills which they will be happy to sell to their neighbors. After their four hour community job is finished they can seek out people who want to hire them, and pretty soon we will have a flourishing private economy in our community. Everyone contributes four hours a day or twenty hours a week to the needs of the community, and after that those who wish to do so can make arrangements with one another to exchange or sell services. Does this violate any of the principles in our community?

''Cit:'' No, the distinction between public responsibilities and private rights seems to be preserved.

''Vis:'' But someone who dislikes expensive entertainments like golf, and is satisfied with a modest standard of living, will have no need to work beyond his four hours, and will have that much more free time.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And that will be especially valuable if he is a writer or philosopher or birdwatcher. There are such people, you know, who have cheap but very consuming hobbies, and they are always miserable because they have so little time to pursue them. Such people will be perfectly happy with their four hour community service.

''Cit:'' Yes, they will profit from this arrangement in their own way.

''Vis:'' Now then, have we taken care of some of the materials needed for our citizens to pursue the good life? If someone wants to spend his leisure money for a Japanese bathroom in his house, he is bound to find someone in the community with skills as a plumber. Or if it is elegant fashions that are in demand, there will be someone with a flair for design and sewing looking for a way to make a little extra money and use up some free time. There is scarcely a limit to what can be provided at this local community level to create variety and luxury for those who insist on it.

''Cit:'' No, it seems not.

''Vis:'' And isn't this the proper place to let the so-called law of supply and demand rule the marketplace? Citizens are free to demand what they want, and we suppose that this will bring suppliers from the ranks of those looking to earn more money. It won't be dangerous, will it, to allow the marketplace to regulate itself in this area, because the necessities of life will not be threatened?

''Cit:'' No, one does not have to participate in the game in order to survive.

''Vis:'' And because it is a game, we will not lose the sense of community and regard for one another which is so important. Didn't we say that when people have to compete and claw for the necessities of life, they become enemies to one another?

''Cit:'' Yes, the community can remain peaceful.

But you have been talking mainly about services and skills. I can see that we can do many things for ourselves, or hire others better suited to do them for us. But you still have not explained where all the equipment which is needed for most things will come from. I mean, suppose my friends and I actually make our golf course: where will we get our golf clubs or the mowers to keep up the greens, or the building materials for the clubhouse? We can't make these ourselves, or hire someone to make them for us, can we? Or even if we found such people, where would they get the tools and machinery to work with?

''Vis:'' Yes, there is a list of things we will need if we are to be as well equipped as your society is. People will want all kinds of appliances, television sets and radios carrying interesting programs, different kinds of fabrics for clothes, pleasure boats, luxury cars, nice toys for the children, cameras, jogging shoes, custom equipment for camping and roughing it…

''Cit:'' Well, you are beginning to make fun. But even without becoming extravagant, there are many things that are desirable in an advanced community which cannot be provided in the simple ways we have been discussing.

''Vis:'' Yes, of course. Most of this equipment is not much different from the equipment required to supply the necessities of life, is it? I mean the same wrenches and screwdrivers that are to be used by a spare time fix-it man will be required by workmen who build houses and apartment complexes for the community. And the machinery and fuel that runs the community electrical power plants and public buses and trains will be pretty much the same as that used to run power boats, limousines, and air conditioners.

''Cit:'' Yes, public needs and private desires tend to overlap here.

''Vis:'' And we must try to satisfy both?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' But we cannot have a city deprived of transportation or electrical power because everyone in the suburbs is spending the weekend water skiing in their pleasure boats; and we can't have our community workmen short of steel because it is used up in making golf clubs or special fixtures for your house, can we?

''Cit:'' No, we agreed that community needs supersede the desires of individuals.

''Vis:'' Then since the same materials go both places, we will need a special community institution that will be responsible for this area of overlap. Shall we call it the Bureau of Private Enterprise?

''Cit:'' It scarcely matters. But how will it work?

''Vis:'' Let's imagine its role in getting you your golf clubs. We said that you and your friends would not be able to make them yourselves, but would have to purchase them from someone with special skills and equipment.

''Cit:'' Yes, he must.

''Vis:'' But both steel tubing and such equipment are goods that are involved in various ways in providing community necessities - the manufacture of cars and building materials, for example. Therefore we have entered the area of overlap we were talking about.

''Cit:'' Yes, we have.

''Vis:'' So the golf club maker must contact the Bureau of Private Enterprise, as we shall call it, to buy what he needs. And it will be the Bureau's responsibility to coordinate with the various branches of community industry to see whether there are enough materials of the kind needed to make golf clubs; and if there is a surplus - for we can't take away from the needs of the community - then the Bureau will take the golf club maker's order and sell him what he needs. Or perhaps it can direct him to the proper community industry, where the managers there can take care of him.

''Cit:'' That doesn't sound too complex.

''Vis:'' Or suppose someone in the community wishes to start a magazine or newspaper. There will be such people, won't there, who have ideas they wish to spread around? Or they may just be responding to a desire from their neighborhood for news - as your dailies do now.

''Cit:'' Yes, either way.

''Vis:'' Such projects fall within the range of private enterprise, do they not? No such need exists in the community for magazines and newspapers - at least outside the minds of those who are interested in publishing them. And we do not wish to prohibit people from speaking their minds, do we?

''Cit:'' Of course not.

''Vis:'' Well then, such an enterprising individual consults the local branch of the Bureau and finds out how much paper, printing presses, and other necessary materials will cost, takes subscriptions from those who are interested in a magazine or newspaper, puts in his own savings and the savings of those who will be his partners, and off he goes with his project.

''Cit:'' And he will do this in addition to his regular community job?

''Vis:'' Yes, of course. Everyone, as we have agreed, has a responsibility to contribute his share in providing the community necessities; for everyone consumes them. You haven't forgotten the free time everyone will have, have you?

''Cit:'' No. But how will the community be able to satisfy everyone's desires?

''Vis:'' I am sure it won't. But in a country like yours, with its tremendous natural resources, and in a community like ours, where there is little waste and duplication of effort, most people will have a good chance of getting what they want. Of course, as in your own economy, some things will be very expensive.

''Cit:'' Those things requiring large amounts of labor and resources, you mean.

''Vis:'' Yes - large pleasure boats, limousines, and the like. And if individuals can't afford them, then they will have to do without. After all, we can't have one percent of the people absorbing for their own pleasures what is necessary to feed, clothe, and house the rest of the community in a decent manner.

''Cit:'' No, we can't. But won't some people make such large amounts of money in their private enterprises that they can purchase such expensive items, or at least buy so much that there will not be enough left for those who want to play golf or even buy binoculars for bird watching. It does seem that some people will amass a fortune in the private economy.

''Vis:'' Did we say that they would be allowed to amass a fortune?

''Cit:'' Well, no; but we did say that we would let the law of supply and demand operate in this sphere.

''Vis:'' Yes, we did. Perhaps we had better look again at our community's finances. We fixed the minimum income at ten thousand dollars, eight to cover the necessities and two to cover luxuries - or those things some people think are necessities. Everyone is entitled to this income in exchange for his four hour community service, as we said. But if someone should prove especially competent at his work, and should he stick with it and gain seniority, he may increase his income to twenty thousand dollars, and thus have quite a lot more to spend on luxuries. Don't you think both the minimum and maximum income will go much further and make people more wealthy, comparatively speaking, in our community where there is greater efficiency than there is in your society?

''Cit:'' Yes, people should be very well off. But the thought has suddenly occurred to me, where will this money come from?

''Vis:'' What do you mean, where will it come from? The same place money comes from in your own society - the printing press.

''Cit:'' You won't have it based on anything - not gold or something of value? Do you think people will have confidence in mere paper: And how will foreign trade be managed? I don't see how you can have the community print money at will.

''Vis:'' See what irrelevant obstacles you are throwing in our way! If you are a doctor, will you refuse to treat a patient because he doesn't have some trinkets in his pocket in addition to his paper money - and in spite of the fact that you can use his money to buy food for your family? Wouldn't you rather have food than his trinkets?

''Cit:'' Yes, of course; but if no one has confidence in the printed money…

''Vis:'' And why shouldn't they, if it can be exchanged for all goods and services in the community? Of course if someone prefers gold to food, he can use his leisure money to go prospecting and see if there is anything left in California.

''Cit:'' And what about foreign trade?

''Vis:'' What we need from foreign countries we can trade for something we have an excess of. If we are short of oil, we can trade it for lumber or manufactured goods, or anything else we are rich in. If it is gold they want, then we will have to waste time trading our excess with a country that has gold, so that we can give them trinkets for oil. Or we can simply do without. It would be better to be self-sufficient, would it not, than to be at the mercy of some other community?

''Cit:'' Yes, of course.

''Vis:'' Then let us return to our own finances. We want to decide whether there should be a limit on income earned in private enterprise, or whether people should be allowed to try to make a fortune in addition to money earned in community work. Shall we use as an example the man who wants to start a newspaper?

''Cit:'' Alright.

''Vis:'' Let's suppose he is a teacher, and that is the form of his community contribution. But he has an interest in community affairs, and his neighbors encourage him to start a newspaper to keep them informed and to serve as a forum for discussion in the community. So he makes the necessary arrangements - takes subscriptions, finds some partners who want to put in their own extra income, writes to the Bureau for information on purchasing or leasing presses and other equipment, and he is on his way.

''Cit:'' That is the way you described it.

''Vis:'' Now we suppose that his main incentive for such a project is an interest in journalism and public affairs; but it is natural for him to want to make some money out of it too.

''Cit:'' Of course.

''Vis:'' And as long as his interest is mainly in the community, we can expect his paper to serve the intended function - that is, if he is a competent journalist and imaginative thinker.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' But suppose his main purpose is to amass a fortune, to build the paper into a big money maker. Won't he be likely to forget his original purpose and start printing what will increase circulation beyond the bounds of the group which was interested in having a paper in the first place? I mean, won't his pages become filled with violence and gossip and stories meant to appeal to the prurient interests of the public? Isn't that the way to get mass circulation?

''Cit:'' It tends to be in our society, I must admit.

''Vis:'' And when his original subscribers begin to complain, he will rise up indignantly and point out his right to free speech in a free society. But of course that is hypocrisy, because he just wants a large circulation, and knows that vulgar gossip is the way to get it.

''Cit:'' Well, we have allowed our citizens the right to free speech, even if it is hypocritically motivated, and the man does have a right to build up his readership, doesn't he?

''Vis:'' Yes, of course. But if he was interested in violence and prurience in themselves, he should have taken subscriptions originally from those with similar interests, and produced a newspaper of that type. But instead he is forcing such stuff down the throats of everyone, because of his greed. And don't you think his pages will also become so full of advertising from others who are likewise trying to force the products of their spare time activities down the public throat that a reader will barely be able to locate the little news that is in the paper?

''Cit:'' Well, I agree with you that our newspaper man is likely to become corrupted in the way you describe. And I will also agree that the reason behind it is his desire to amass a fortune. But I still cannot see how we can stop him, because he does have the right to free speech, and that gives him the right to build up his circulation. He may be a hypocrite, but he seems to be within his rights as a private citizen.

''Vis:'' Well then, shall we let him go his way?

''Cit:'' I don't know how we can prevent it.

''Vis:'' And pretty soon, by working day and night, he will have his fortune, will he not?

''Cit:'' Yes, I imagine so.

''Vis:'' And meanwhile, what do you think will have happened to his teaching responsibilities? Do you think that he will be performing very well with his students, when all his time is spent raking up vulgar news and trying to build circulation? Won't he be seeing his future fortune before him instead of the faces of young people trying to learn to read and write?

''Cit:'' Yes, I think that will be inevitable.

''Vis:'' And when he does make his fortune, do you think he will want to teach at all? Won't he want to resign or hire a mercenary to put in the time for him, so that he can spend his entire day at the newspaper office or on vacation?

''Cit:'' Yes, that too will be likely.

''Vis:'' Thus he becomes a drone on the rest of the community, spending his whole time on things unessential to the lives of its citizens. We did say, did we not, that since everyone consumes a share of the necessities of life, everyone must contribute a share to their production?

''Cit:'' Yes, repeatedly.

''Vis:'' Then by allowing someone to amass a fortune in pursuing his outside interests, we are permitting an invasion of those interests into the realm of public responsibilities. The more people try to become wealthy through their private activities, the less concern they will have with their public responsibilities, and we will soon have a community turned upside down - plenty of luxuries for some people, and scarcely the necessities for all. In fact we will have returned to our embattled fishing village, wouldn't you say?

''Cit:'' Yes, it would seem so. Then we must give people the right to free speech and activity, but not the right to become wealthy.

''Vis:'' Rather we must not give them the right to interfere with the right of all men - the community - to have the necessities of life. If amassing the kind of wealth we are talking about interferes with community rights, as it seems to, then I think we must forbid it.

''Cit:'' Well, if we limit private enterprise in this way, it appears that all businesses will remain small and local.

''Vis:'' Is that a defect? Wouldn't it be better to travel from state to state and have the variety of different local newspapers, rather than the same syndicated opinions everywhere? And wouldn't restaurants and lodgings reflecting different styles of life be more interesting than look-alike motels and fast food franchises?

''Cit:'' What I meant was that if all such private enterprises are to remain small and local, how will those goods that are almost universally desired, but which are not necessities, be provided? I mean such things as television sets or even binoculars for your bird watchers. These things are difficult and expensive to make, and they will be wanted by people all over the country, and so cannot be produced in some local shop. Where will the capital come from to manufacture them, and how can it be done so that everyone who wants them will have them?

''Vis:'' Well, shall we leave such large problems to our Bureau of Private Enterprise? People there will know better than anyone else in a large country what most citizens want; and if the items are affordable and don't draw away from the necessities, they can arrange for their manufacture. For example, they will select a site for a large factory where there are plenty of people - especially those who may be interested in the product and are looking for some way to increase their income beyond their four hour community job. Such a factory will have to be manned and built by such people, will it not, since we are not talking about a community necessity but a private luxury.

''Cit:'' Yes, that is reasonable.

''Vis:'' And if the Bureau can't find people to produce such items, then the community can do without them. For the number of such people will be an indication of the interest in the item itself. It is one of our principles that, so far as possible, those who want a thing should be the ones to produce and pay for it.

''Cit:'' Yes, that was basic.

''Vis:'' Then can we leave these mechanics of private enterprise to our managers and economists, since we understand the basic principles by which it will operate?

''Cit:'' But we haven't given a limit to private income; you have only said that citizens will not be able to make a fortune in their private activities.

''Vis:'' What do you think would be an appropriate figure?

''Cit:'' I don't know.

''Vis:'' We want it high enough to encourage people to provide for themselves some of the nicer things in life. We need not be afraid to add financial incentive to intrinsic interest, do we?

''Cit:'' No.

''Vis:'' But we want it low enough so that people will not be derelict in their public responsibilities, or want to avoid contributing to the needs of the community altogether.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Then what do you say to a figure like fifteen thousand dollars? Within this limit a man with energy and ambition could do very well for himself in our society, and still not threaten anyone else with loss of necessities or freedom. As a young man he can start earning his ten thousand dollars in some area of community service to his liking, and gradually through industry and competence, work his way up to the limit of twenty thousand dollars. Meanwhile he can be developing some side interest that eventually brings him another fifteen thousand and also provides some of his neighbors with a desired service or material good. Thus after some time he is bringing home thirty five thousand dollars. Wouldn't such an arrangement give him ample opportunity to exercise his ambitions and to get ahead in the world?

''Cit:'' Yes, I think it would.

''Vis:'' And his getting ahead will not grind someone else down into poverty, since everyone able to work will have at least ten thousand dollars from his four hour community service.

''Cit:'' Yes, no one will be competing for necessities.

''Vis:'' And since money will go much further in our community, everyone will be more wealthy, comparatively speaking, than in your society. I mean, for example, that since doctors and hospital administrators cannot demand outrageous fees, medical expenses will take less out of a sick person's income. Since no one is allowed to make huge profits out of the things necessary to community life, the price of such things will remain reasonable, don't you think?

''Cit:'' Yes, they should. But still a roughly three to one ratio in income is not very much to separate the community's wealthy from its poor.

''Vis:'' No one will be poor in this community.

''Cit:'' Perhaps I should say the economic lower class.

''Vis:'' Well, I hope no one in our community will have reason to use that expression either. Since there will not be large differences in income we may expect people to arrange themselves socially on some other grounds than wealth. Won't musicians or farmers or engineers tend to associate with members of their own group, since they have more to talk about among themselves than with the others? Isn't that true even in your own society?

''Cit:'' Yes, it is.

''Vis:'' Therefore when citizens sort themselves into classes and social clubs, it will be on the basis of interest and taste rather than money?

''Cit:'' Yes, that would be the natural way.

''Vis:'' And the differences between a farmer and a doctor will not be hostile and bitter, because they only reflect the differences between agriculture and medicine. Since both professions are necessary to the survival of the community, it shouldn't be difficult for farmers and doctors to be tolerant of one another and to maintain that sense of regard which we thought to be essential to a cooperative community. Isn't it possible to disagree with someone else without arrogance and hate?

''Cit:'' Of course.

''Vis:'' But when the chief difference between people is money, then it is not so likely. For the wealthy always know that they have power over the poor, and that causes arrogance; and the poor know that they live at the mercy of the wealthy, which makes them resentful and fearful. But where this barrier does not exist, people will be free to associate according to differences that are much more interesting and true to their natures and skills. Won't that make for much more openness and harmony among people?

''Cit:'' Yes, I am sure it will. But I meant something else when I remarked that a three to one ratio in income was not very much to separate people from one another. You know, when a child is in school or a young man is fresh out of college, he likes to think that the horizon is limitless, that he can do anything and become anything he chooses - and that includes making a fortune.

''Vis:'' You are referring to the American Dream, of course?

''Cit:'' Yes. Obviously the cases are rare that a man becomes President; but they are not so rare that he becomes rich. Even with all the evil effects of struggling for wealth, I just wonder whether this dream isn't so important psychologically - I mean as a motive - that without it all incentive will vanish and the whole level of activity and energy in the community will sink to nothing.

''Vis:'' And you would have this dream, even if it leads to a community nightmare?

''Cit:'' No, I have already admitted to its evil consequences when it takes the form of ruthless competition. My question concerns the psychological consequences of its loss.

''Vis:'' What do you think of a man who is always dreaming of an affair with a movie star or the most beautiful woman his imagination can provide for him? Do you think that he will ever have a happy relationship with a woman, or a happy marriage?

''Cit:'' No, I suppose not.

''Vis:'' Because no actual woman will ever come up to his dream - or perhaps I should say, his fantasy?

''Cit:'' Yes, they will all fall short.

''Vis:'' Not only will they fall short, but the virtues they do have will be invisible to him, because he is so caught up in his dream. The evil of his fantasy is that it so narrows his vision that he becomes oblivious to everything interesting and various in the lives of real women. Isn't that the way we distinguish a childish fantasy from an idea: the one is merely a disconnected fragment of the real world which becomes highly colored and distorted in the imagination, where the other is an extension and transformation of an important aspect of reality, and therefore not impossible to realize?

''Cit:'' Yes, I see the difference.

''Vis:'' And your American Dream - is it anything more than a materialist fantasy? Your dreamer is absorbed only in his plan to make a fortune; everything else - all the desires and sensibilities of other people, and the subtle variety of their lives - is treated as an obstacle and gets trampled under foot. And when the American dreamer finally reaches his goal, if he does, he wonders why the world is empty, and why existence offers nothing but the passing moments of pleasure that money can buy. Is that the sort of psychological incentive you wish to give the children of our community?

''Cit:'' No, of course not. But the dream is repeated so incessantly in our society that we seem to depend on it.

''Vis:'' Well, it is hard to imagine another kind of dream that could catch hold when people are forced to compete and work long hours for whatever material things they have. But to know the foolishness and corrupting nature of a fantasy is not the same thing as discovering worthy incentives and ideals; and we would like our children to be motivated by ideals, not fantasies, so that when they become adults they will know how to make the best use of all the free time they will have.

''Cit:'' Yes, that would be desirable.

''Vis:'' Shall we see then what incentives our community will provide, or whether, as you feared, our restrictions on wealth will lead to loss of energy and mediocrity?

''Cit:'' By all means, that should be the next question.

[[Back to Table of Contents|Book01]]
!

''Visitor:'' Let us suppose one of our young community members wants to be a doctor. We want to decide whether there will be enough incentive or ambition to carry him through in spite of the fact that he will not be able to become rich at his occupation.

''Citizen:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' We can suppose he has an interest in the functioning of the human body and the mysteries and complexities of physiology and such things; and we can assume also that he has a desire to heal people and relieve suffering. Wouldn't these be natural motives to pursuing a medical career?

''Cit:'' Yes, of course.

''Vis:'' But if great wealth is the prime motive, then the medical profession will start attracting many who have no such interests, and who might even find it rather distasteful to be around sick people every day. Such young people are not likely to make good doctors, are they?

''Cit:'' No, of course not.

''Vis:'' And if another young man has an interest in community organization and planning, he might be attracted to administration - perhaps work in the Bureau of Private Enterprise, or in the Department of Agriculture if he is interested in farming as well as organization. But suppose money is again the chief incentive, along with the prestige of being a high official: won't that tend to corrupt him and make him serve himself rather than the community?

''Cit:'' I suppose it is likely to.

''Vis:'' Because he is now interested in being a public figure, living high on the hog, peddling influence, giving and receiving favors, and doing other things that have nothing to do with the smooth functioning of the community.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' So we must be careful not to instill the dream of power and prestige into our young people. We have eliminated excessive wealth, but we must be watchful of the sort of ambition that is likely to turn the needs of the community into an opportunity for self-assertion and power.

''Cit:'' But it is natural, and I should think desirable, for a person to seek public recognition.

''Vis:'' Why yes, of course. But if we are to have this kind of applause and spectacle, it must not be because someone has done his share in providing the community with its necessities. That is a basic function for which congratulations are inappropriate, just as we said earlier that a properly functioning body is no cause for congratulations. But if someone achieves something special in his private life, then we should expect and even encourage public recognition for the same reason that we respect a person who uses his health for something worthwhile. You don't admire someone who is merely healthy, do you?

''Cit:'' No.

''Vis:'' Then we will not single out those who in their community service - administration, medicine, education, and so forth - merely provide for the health of the community. Rather, we will wait to see what they do with their private lives; and if it seems worthy and serves as a model for others seeking the good life, we will expect recognition and prestige to follow as a matter of course.

''Cit:'' Yes, I think it would. But to remove both wealth and prestige from the day to day functioning of the community will be quite a change from what we are accustomed to. Our public figures are among the wealthiest and most prestigious in our society.

''Vis:'' Yes, it will be a change, and one that can only be brought about gradually through education. I think if the proper incentives are part of our educational system, and we have a good breed of teachers and professors, then we can trust to the flexibility of human nature and its potential for good to do the rest of the job. Shall we say a few things about our community educational system at this point?

''Cit:'' Yes, this would be the place.

''Vis:'' First, it will be a good idea to divide it along the lines of the community itself, don't you think? Part of it should be concerned with preparing the young person for a place in providing for community needs, and the other part should prepare him for pursuit of the good life.

''Cit:'' A vocational and a liberal arts curriculum?

''Vis:'' Yes, if you mean by vocational any study concerned with community necessities.

''Cit:'' That is what I meant.

''Vis:'' Then our vocational education will include semi-skilled areas like firefighting and small engine mechanics, but also engineering, computer science, and medicine - for whether simple or complex, all such fields are necessary to the life of the community.

''Cit:'' You are including the professions among the list of vocations?

''Vis:'' Whatever serves the needs of the community I will call vocational. Since each job starts at ten thousand dollars and can pay as much as twenty thousand, as we agreed, distinctions of prestige will not enter much into the picture. What we must be more concerned about is helping our young people find work that suits their interests and talent, for there is no better incentive to doing a job well and contentedly than being skilled at it and interested in the function it serves.

''Cit:'' No, these are fundamental.

''Vis:'' But young people are often interested in several areas, and have many different talents. We should encourage this diversity, should we not, and try to give them training in as many fields as they seem suited for?

''Cit:'' Yes, if the community can afford it.

''Vis:'' Well, we should try. A youth who is mechanically inclined should be pointed towards engineering or automobile mechanics, but if he has a love of nature and an interest in gardening, we should try to arrange for him to study agriculture as well. For one day he may wish to change jobs, or circumstances in the community may require it; and it will be well to have him prepared.

''Cit:'' Yes, this would give both him and the community adaptability.

''Vis:'' And he may wish later to develop one of his interests into a hobby or possibly even into a private enterprise. For example, he may work as a designer of engines for his community service, but in his spare time grow exotic orchids or other kinds of plants to sell to his neighbors. Isn't it possible that some vocational training will spill over into the other area of education and contribute to our citizens' pursuit of the good life?

''Cit:'' Yes, it seems likely.

''Vis:'' Therefore in our educational system, we must not be afraid to mix brain work with hand work, or blue collar and white collar work, as you call it. For many young people such distinctions are artificial anyway, and we don't want our education limited by such barriers. But above all, our teachers must be sensitive to the interests of their young charges, and their abilities. Once they have identified these, little guidance will be necessary, and half the job of educating young people for community service will be over.

''Cit:'' And suppose the community doesn't need more workers of a certain type? Will you then close that department and refuse to offer that kind of training in the schools?

''Vis:'' Of course the needs of the community will shift from time to time. But this should not seriously disappoint our young people, since there are usually a variety of jobs that require the same types of talent, and therefore appeal to the same kinds of interest. If there is no further need for physicians in the community, then our program in medicine can be restricted for the time being; and those who wanted to become doctors can train to be dentists, veterinarians, or nutritionists. Since all occupations have the same salary scale, and the work day is short anyway, most young people will be able to adjust easily to the requirements of the community. Isn't desire to make a lot of money sometimes the real influence on choice of work?

''Cit:'' Yes, along with the prestige that it seems to bring.

''Vis:'' And eliminating these motives will therefore free genuine interest and talent to find suitable objects?

''Cit:'' Yes, I think so.

''Vis:'' Now then, what sort of education should we offer in the other area - I mean the area concerned with the pursuit of the good life? We have said that some vocational training will inevitably contribute to some peoples' idea of the good life by giving them hobbies or a means to private income.

''Cit:'' Yes, we have already done that much. But since pursuit of the good life is each person's own responsibility, perhaps the community should stay out of this area altogether. Didn't we say that the community has a responsibility only to provide the freedom and opportunity for its citizens to find whatever satisfaction in life they can?

''Vis:'' Yes, of course. But a person ignorant of everything except a vocational skill is really not free, and certainly lacks an opportunity to explore many paths. Someone who can neither read nor write is limited in such opportunities, wouldn't you say?

''Cit:'' Yes, but those are basic skills.

''Vis:'' Yes, they are necessary to a person in his job; but they are also the tools through which he can expand his experience and develop new interests.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And the same is true of more sophisticated learning: a person who knows nothing of the achievements, experiments, and ideas of his contemporaries, nor of men who have lived before him, will have a much narrower perspective than one who is better informed; so that when he begins looking for ways to find happiness and fill his free time, his ignorance will be an obstacle. That seems obvious, doesn't it?

''Cit:'' Yes, it does.

''Vis:'' So in addition to vocational training, we should add to our curriculum material which will expand the range of experience and thought. And everyone should have as much exposure to it as he chooses.

''Cit:'' This will be your liberal arts curriculum - the arts and sciences?

''Vis:'' Yes, we must have courses in music and drawing, literature, history, astronomy and the other natural sciences, anthropology, and all the rest.

''Cit:'' And some will go farther than others in their studies, I imagine.

''Vis:'' Yes, some young people require broader perspectives than others to use their free time in a satisfying manner. But since this part of education is intended only to make pursuit of the good life possible, we must be sure that our teachers do not force their subject matter down the throats of the students, favoring one set of ideas and ignoring alternatives.

''Cit:'' They must be entirely objective in their presentations.

''Vis:'' Yes. Their purpose is simply to point out paths that others have followed, and to provide whatever is necessary to get a student started if he should choose to follow one of them himself.

''Cit:'' I understand.

''Vis:'' But that is not as easy as it sounds, because it requires great judgment and perspective on the part of the teacher. As I said, he must be a special breed.

''Cit:'' It is true that some teachers seem more interested in selling ideas than teaching them.

''Vis:'' And that is because they know nothing except some specialized area of knowledge, or are capable of performing only one special skill. We must require our teachers to be broadly educated and to be aware of relationships between one area of study and another. And it wouldn't at all hurt for them to have vocational skills as well. For that way they will not lose sight of the two branches of education in the community, and the different functions they serve.

''Cit:'' Well, I can understand how such broad training is important at elementary levels in school. But at more advanced levels, I should think specialization is inevitable, and desirable. For example, a professor of astronomy is likely to have his hands full in just mastering his field so that he can answer students' questions properly. And it would be an advantage in his teaching, wouldn't it, if his own research contributed to knowledge in his field? I don't see how he can be expected to have a grasp of history and literature and philosophy, and do all this at the same time.

''Vis:'' Is the research you are talking about concerned with providing the necessities of life, or is it chiefly an expression of his curiosity and wonderment?

''Cit:'' I suppose it could be either - or both. His discoveries might be useful for communications technology or for defense in some way.

''Vis:'' Then if it belongs in that area, it is vocational in nature, and he should be doing it as his community service and not have to teach at all. For teaching is one form of community service, and necessary research is another.

''Cit:'' But on that principle you would have to remove most research from the colleges and universities, because most research does not contribute to the necessities of life. And yet we rate a university largely on the quality of its faculty - and that means the amount and quality of its research

''Vis:'' Well, we won't rate our colleges that way, and I think our education will be the better for it. Those people who do necessary research can do it on full salary and with equipment provided by the community itself. Those who do research of a non-necessary kind can do it on their own and in their own spare time away from the classroom. And I suspect that many good professors, freed from the obligations of producing such scholarship, will drop it happily as a useless burden to their profession. Besides, isn't a lot of research and scholarship undertaken just to advance a career?

''Cit:'' Much of it seems to be.

''Vis:'' However, I think we can assume that the kind of research and discovery which is interesting and valuable in itself will still come to light. After all, our teachers, like everyone else in the community, will have much more free time away from their paying jobs. And the fruits of their private investigations they can pass on to others with similar interests, or even try to sell as part of the private enterprise system. For such research is, in a manner of speaking, a luxury like any other, and will contribute to someone's idea of the good life. There are many people who take pleasure in the acquisition of knowledge of almost any kind, are there not?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And if some of this free time research proves to be important - I mean to reshape the structure of some discipline - then we can assume that it will find its way into the curriculum; for since our professors are not committed to the defense of some specialized subject, they will be alive to new ideas and eager to offer them in their classrooms. It is the ultra-specialist, being ignorant of everything but a small corner of a discipline, who is likely to be oblivious to important discoveries, wouldn't you say?

''Cit:'' Well, he becomes isolated.

''Vis:'' Then if someone comes visiting our university some day to expound a new idea, we will expect our professors and students to offer him a good opportunity to test it out. Since they are aware of the relationships between one field and another, they should be able to help the researcher see the implications and consequences of his new idea. That will be a good test, won't it?

''Cit:'' Yes, I should think so.

''Vis:'' For example, if a researcher in psychology comes down one day from a pigeon loft to tell our young people about the tricks he has taught his birds, and the tricks he could teach them using the same techniques, our professors and students might help him evaluate his theory. For we would have musicians and writers and mathematicians and philosophers on hand to tell him how they learn their own tricks, and everyone could consider together the new method being proposed.

''Cit:'' Yes, that would make an interesting discussion.

''Vis:'' And if there seems to be something to the new method, then our teachers and students will be eager to try it out; for they will always want to increase their own skills and abilities, will they not?

''Cit:'' Yes, of course.

''Vis:'' Therefore our liberal arts institutions will not only present the broad outlines of civilization and the many possibilities of human effort, but they will serve as a forum for the discussion of new ideas and practices.

''Cit:'' They should be lively places.

''Vis:'' Yes, they should.

Now shall we identify our community educational institutions and summarize the function of each?

''Cit:'' Yes, that would be a good idea.

''Vis:'' First, then, we will have our basic schools, which all young people attend from the ages of five to fourteen or fifteen perhaps. Here they will learn to read and write, for these are skills that will be necessary both for community service and for pursuit of almost any kind of good life.

''Cit:'' Of course.

''Vis:'' We should also like them to begin thinking about the many things in the universe, and so should include such things in our curriculum as history and science.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' But we want them to appreciate existence too, or I should say to experience things with sensitivity.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' So we should include literature, music, and the other arts.

''Cit:'' Then you want everyone to be schooled in the arts and sciences from the very beginning?

''Vis:'' Yes, for the sake of the community and themselves. And we must have competent and broadly educated teachers at this level especially, for very young people cannot generally identify ignorance and fraud, and so are likely to be permanently corrupted if the teachers are fools. You know it takes much less ability and care to teach a particular theory than to introduce a young mind to an entire field of study.

''Cit:'' We will be careful.

''Vis:'' Second, we will have our vocational education - that which provides a young person with the knowledge and skills necessary for the community's survival. Since everyone must contribute his share in this task, everyone must receive some vocational training.

''Cit:'' We agreed on that.

''Vis:'' It may be some fairly simple specialty like bricklaying - although we must hope that not too many young people will be satisfied with such tedious work all their lives. But if someone chooses bricklaying or carpentering or a similar trade, he could just as well learn it on the job in apprentice fashion, wouldn't you say?

''Cit:'' Yes, that would be the simplest way.

''Vis:'' But if he chooses something more complex, or which requires more background information, then we will send him to special schools which have their own curriculum. I am thinking of such vocations as medicine, engineering, and agriculture.

''Cit:'' Yes, these will require special schooling.

''Vis:'' And if someone has the abilities and interest, he might want to participate in the various kinds of research required by an up-to-date, efficient community. We will want to constantly improve on our technology, health care, transportation systems, and all other things which provide us with the necessities of life, will we not?

''Cit:'' Of course.

''Vis:'' So young people with suitable abilities and interest can be apprenticed to our research people, and eventually make their community contributions in this area.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Now the first area - basic education - is evenly divided in emphasis between the public and private responsibilities that the young people will eventually have. I mean it is planned to ready them for future vocational training, but also to open their eyes to the variety of existence so that they will have many things to do in the free time they will have as adults.

''Cit:'' I understand.

''Vis:'' Now the third area of education is primarily for the community member as a free citizen. Its purpose, as we said, is to give him an idea of the many areas of culture and knowledge so that he can explore for himself the range of existence and have a choice of things to do with his non-working life.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Then since it serves only the individual, and not the needs of the community, it should be open to anyone who has curiosity and interest in such things, and feels that the curriculum will somehow further his pursuit of the good life. Therefore we won't want competitive admissions, will we, or all the rigmarole of grades, graduation, certification, and such things?

''Cit:'' You will have no standards at all?

''Vis:'' I think the standards will be established by the material itself, and the ability of the teachers to convey its true nature. If a student finds it too difficult, or if it turns out to be something other than he wanted, he is free to drop out or try some other area. Remember, our institution is only a pool of information and skills which a free man may use any way he chooses; the needs and welfare of the community are not at stake, so we need not insist on levels of competence and achievement.

''Cit:'' It is strange to think of a college or university without tests, grades, and graduations.

''Vis:'' As I said, nothing concerning the community as a whole is at stake. Our students will be there because they want to be, not because it is expected of them, or required to get employment. And if they want to be there, it is because they are curious. And if they are bright and sensitive enough to be curious, they are probably able to grasp whatever material is offered without trouble. Our professors can remain faithful to their subjects without having to worry about dragging along some lump of a student who resents everything he has to learn.

''Cit:'' That much will be a pleasure for everyone.

''Vis:'' And since our curriculum is not devised to contribute to community work - the vocations of its citizens - the professors won't have to justify its practicality or usefulness, posturing over its imagined importance, and dreaming up a lot of jargon that is supposed to make each discipline and department seem indispensable to life. That should save some embarrassment for the good teachers, and encourage the poor ones to find some other vocation for themselves, don't you think?

''Cit:'' Yes, and since we are not demanding research from them, those who use such projects for professional advancement will be likely to leave too.

''Vis:'' Yes, they will be able to do their research better if they are not troubled by students. Of course they are always free to offer public lectures on their ideas and discoveries, or arrange with the college teachers to take over their classes on occasion. We said that our liberal arts institutions would also make an appropriate forum for new ideas, didn't we?

''Cit:'' Yes, and I think that is an excellent idea.

''Vis:'' There is one area, however, where our liberal arts institutions can serve the needs of the community. Some of our young people who are destined for vocational research or some of the more complex community services will need background in the arts and sciences - not in order to be broadly educated, for that is the individual's responsibility - but rather so that they may have basic knowledge and perspective in their vocations. For example, if someone intends to do medical research, he will obviously need some knowledge of basic biology and chemistry. Couldn't we prevail upon our liberal arts institutions to provide him with that instead of forcing the medical schools to do the job?

''Cit:'' Yes, we could. But wouldn't you have to insist on tests and grades for these people?

''Vis:'' Yes, we will want to weed out the weaker talents among them, for the good of the community is now at stake and not just the curiosity of the individual. We will have our professors give them extra attention and require a good performance from them before they are sent off to their apprenticeships at the special schools or research laboratories. But it won't hurt them to get some of their training along with the students who have no intention of using their studies vocationally. It might even broaden the experience of both groups.

''Cit:'' Very possibly.

''Vis:'' And that is the whole purpose of this third form of education - to broaden our citizens, and expand their perspectives on existence?

''Cit:'' Yes, that is what we said.

''Vis:'' Would you say, then, that our entire system of education offers a young person many possibilities and can lead to a many-sided and interesting life? He can learn several vocations and therefore contribute to community welfare in different ways; or he can stick with one or two, if his desire is to reach the maximum income permitted in our community. Of course he can use his additional vocational training to start a small private enterprise, and add substantially to his income. And if he has the energy and interest, he can contribute to the culture of the community, going to our liberal arts institutions from time to time to participate in discussions and to learn more about the adventures of the mind and spirit. He may even find himself writing a book of his own or engaging in some research, and one day return to the colleges to give a lecture on his discoveries or the fruits of his meditations.

''Cit:'' Yes, there is quite a lot for an ambitious man to do.

''Vis:'' On the other hand, someone of a more easy going sort may wish just to learn some trade and spend his life quietly raising a family, watching television, reading the newspaper, and playing cards with his friends on Saturday nights. We have no reason to despise such a man, do we? He contributes his share to the community good, and as a free man, spends his time as he thinks best. In his own way he has participated in the two functions of our community, has he not?

''Cit:'' Well, he does participate in providing a share of the necessities and pursuing the good life in a minimal way.

''Vis:'' But it is not for us to say what is minimal or maximal, is it?

''Cit:'' No, I suppose not; the good life is each person's own responsibility.

''Vis:'' So let us reserve judgment and mind our own business in this regard.

''Cit:'' But let me ask you about another type of young person who is a plague in our society and who is likely to infect the community we are constructing. He finishes his basic education and perhaps learns a trade - or even has studied a college course - but then finds himself at loose ends. He doesn't feel like being pinned down to a job, and furthermore we can suppose he has a knack for living off others - his parents or perhaps a doting girlfriend. Or perhaps he is a cardsharp or poolroom hustler. Such a person contributes nothing to the community, but lives off it as a parasite. Furthermore, he is not likely to go on very long before he gets into trouble and becomes a truly corrupting influence on everyone he comes in contact with.

''Vis:'' You wonder whether he should be forced to put in his four hours like everyone else?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Then our community will require an army of truant officers to keep track of each citizen to make sure he is always contributing to the work of the community. Even with our short work day, I think the community will begin to look like a pressed labor camp. And that we surely want to avoid.

''Cit:'' Yes, but how will the loafers and malcontents - for every community has malcontents - be made to contribute their share?

''Vis:'' I doubt if we can force people to be cooperative and fair-minded. But our community is so organized that without work there is no income. That is one form of pressure that your loafer will feel.

''Cit:'' But I have supposed he has a knack for living off others.

''Vis:'' Well, it is also one of our community principles that a person is free to use his income as he chooses. If supporting such a ne'er-do-well is someone's choice of luxuries, then I don't know that we can or should do anything about it. Shall we just let such a person get by as best he can and not bother with him?

''Cit:'' But one thing can lead to another, and it won't be long before he is engaged in thievery and more serious crime.

''Vis:'' Well then, we will have to regard him as a criminal, since he has begun to interfere with other citizens' rights. Still, I think we will have much less of this anti-community activity in our society than you have in your own, where aggression is a very part of survival. When someone is told to either sink or swim, and he fears the one and can't do the other, then don't you think he is likely to climb on someone else's back and let him drown instead? How much crime in your society comes from those who think it easier, or in fact find it easier, to live a renegade life than to walk the streets looking for a job which pays scarcely enough to live on? Doesn't most of your crime come from such angry and demoralized people?

''Cit:'' Yes, much of it does.

''Vis:'' And even your higher level thief, if I may speak of such a person: is he really so different in spirit and style from your real estate speculator or stock market gambler. Doesn't he have to lie and manipulate people in his profession?

''Cit:'' He is not so different, I suppose.

''Vis:'' Well, since we have neither poverty in our community nor devious schemes for amassing fortunes, we will not be so troubled by the crime that arises from either source.

''Cit:'' And what will you do about prostitution, gambling, alcoholism, and other forms of immoral and disgraceful behavior? Such practices do not interfere with other persons' rights, and seem to be the free choices of those who engage in them. Will you permit them?

''Vis:'' Yes, I think we must. But isn't it true that to some degree these activities arise from the same source as serious crime against the community? For example, many women who become prostitutes find it difficult to get employment of any kind, or find that prostitution is much easier, more profitable, and even more dignified under certain conditions than some kinds of employment available to them. But if a woman chooses to make money from sex when suitable employment is available to her, then I think we can allow her that form of private enterprise.

''Cit:'' And what about abortion?

''Vis:'' My goodness! Shall we go through the whole list of man's sins? If we remove poverty and wealth, and make struggle and aggression against one another unnecessary in obtaining the requirements of life, won't most of these problems take care of themselves? Aren't most abortions the consequence of broken homes, poverty, and desperation? And don't these circumstances smother natural feelings of motherhood and respect for unborn life?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And how many immoral and brutal actions are the result of suspicion, resentment, envy, pride, jealousy, and selfishness?

''Cit:'' Perhaps all of them.

''Vis:'' But haven't we agreed that such ugly feelings are brought to the surface when people are struggling with one another to provide the necessities of life or trying to become rich? Don't these conditions close a person off to others, and make him conscious only of his own existence and his own desires?

''Cit:'' Yes, he becomes self-centered and insensitive to others, as we discovered.

''Vis:'' So when he witnesses another's misfortune and suffering, he is likely to be thankful only that it wasn't him, and turn his back in relief?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' But in a genuine community where cooperation is built into the very institutions of survival, won't it be natural to feel another's suffering and failure as partly one's own? And won't it also be easy and natural to share another's joys and success?

''Cit:'' Yes, people should be more compassionate.

''Vis:'' Yes indeed; for compassion is an emotional counterpart of cooperative activity. And we can even hope that when our citizens find out what a satisfaction it is to feel with another person his experiences of joy and suffering, that this attitude will transfer over into nature and even inanimate objects. You know there are some people who are offended when they see a dog being whipped, or when they see a beautiful forest destroyed by so-called land developers; and they want to protest such cruelty and desecration, but find themselves without arguments, and can only cry out in anger and pity.

''Cit:'' There are such people.

''Vis:'' And isn't this kind of compassion the real solution to the problem of abortion? We hear legal and medical and religious arguments that go on and on: women fiercely defending their rights to their bodies; doctors trying to agree upon a precise scientific definition of life to set against a theological definition; and so forth. But the reality of the case is the presence of poverty or the inconvenience of a child to a woman's future plans; and underneath it all, behind the bitterness of argument and self-interest, is the fact of a marvelous and mysterious process of nature - the growth of an embryo and the fate which awaits its birth. Who will stand up to protest such desecration without knowing he shall be laughed at for a fool?

''Cit:'' Not many I am afraid.

''Vis:'' But it is the absence of respect for whatever is mysterious and beautiful and helpless in the world that is the cause of most offensive behavior. And the only way to nurture this respect in a community is by having the citizens work together in providing the necessities of life for all. Even our educational institutions can only encourage it in words; it must grow in the habits of day to day life.

''Cit:'' I agree with you, but - to be perfectly honest - I think there are people who will be quite impatient with what we have been saying. Suppose one of them says something like this: Now look, I will give a dog a good kick when he needs it, and I certainly will take down a fine old oak tree if it drops its leaves on my shingle roof threatening my house with fire. But I am just as moral as you are: I don't patronize prostitutes or take money from gamblers who are spending their children's milk money; I am honest and fair in my business dealings and social relationships. My respect for others consists in leaving them alone, instead of making a fool of myself trying to guess their joys and sorrows, and holding hands with those who probably dislike me anyway - and have every right to. The trouble with your community of compassion is that while everyone is spreading sugar and syrup and being the busybody, no one will achieve anything of worth or excellence. We have such do-gooders in our own society - people who are always wandering around muttering to everyone else that they know where they are coming from, to use the current phrase, and that they know just how they feel. But these people don't get anything done themselves or know where they themselves are coming from or going. In a competitive community with a competitive educational system, people will be a little less sensitive to one another and to their dogs, but they will be motivated to achieve. Even if there is more immorality and corruption, the price is not too high for the excellence we produce. Yours may be a harmonious community, but it will play a drab tune; ours will have some stridency and discord, but there will be grand themes your ears will never hear.

''Vis:'' That's a rather terrifying speech, isn't it?

''Cit:'' Yes, but how will you answer it?

''Vis:'' We can apologize for expressing ourselves so clumsily and hope our critic will stop kicking us like a dog. For we don't want him to think of compassion as a kind of sentimental do-goodishness, do we?

''Cit:'' But it can be construed that way.

''Vis:'' Then I hope we will have a chance to come back to the subject from a different side. But in the meantime, shall we respond to his remarks about excellence in our community? Do you think he is right, that when we remove competitive struggle from the community that it will lapse into mediocrity and our citizens will fall into laziness and self-satisfaction?

''Cit:'' I have often heard it said.

''Vis:'' Then perhaps we should begin by asking him about the object of competition, for it doesn't make much sense to talk about competition unless we know what we are supposed to be competing for.

''Cit:'' I suppose he is referring to financial incentive in the community - competition for money.

''Vis:'' Well, we haven't ruled that out in our community entirely, since we have allowed a range of incomes. But let me ask you this: if one is competing for money, what will count as success?

''Cit:'' Why making more money, of course.

''Vis:'' And a person who makes more money out of what he does is doing his job more excellently than one who makes less?

''Cit:'' That seems to follow.

''Vis:'' Then a carpenter who puts up a house addition and gets paid twice as much as his competitor who does the same work is a greater success and a more excellent carpenter?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And how is it possible for him to make twice as much money? Isn't it because he gives his customer a convincing sales talk, cuts corners where he can, charges regular prices for inferior or used lumber, lies about his hours on the job, and so forth?

''Cit:'' It has been known to happen.

''Vis:'' Therefore the excellent carpenter is the one who cheats, lies, and steals from his customer. And if that is not always so, it is only because he observes some other standard of excellence than economic competition, wouldn't you say?

''Cit:'' Yes, he is at least likely to want to stay out of jail or avoid lawsuits.

''Vis:'' But when money is the motive and goal of excellence, the temptation is always there to find some easy and inexpensive way to do a job.

''Cit:'' Yes, I think so.

''Vis:'' But suppose prestige and other peoples' good opinion is the goal of competition. Is the situation really much better? Since it is only approval and admiration that is sought, won't attempts at soft-soaping and currying favor substitute for doing a job well? If our teachers, for example, are concerned mainly with pleasing their students or the administration or state legislators, do you think they will be faithful to their subject matter and to the task of educating young people?

''Cit:'' No, it is not likely.

''Vis:'' And in general, if the goal of competition is anything other than the job which one wants to do excellently, then that goal and not the job is what is likely to get done well?

''Cit:'' It appears that way.

''Vis:'' Then the object of competition must lie within the task that one wishes to be done with excellence. Think of a mother, for example, who wants to bring up her children properly. If she is motivated mainly by the good opinions of her neighbors, then she is likely to look first for ways to give the impression of having brought her children up well. She will try to find out what someone else thinks is a good child, and then follow that person's opinions blindly just so she can get her reward of approval.

''Cit:'' It is interesting, though, that mothers almost always try to bring up their children well without such encouragement and without feeling they have to compete with other mothers.

''Vis:'' Yes, even within a competitive society there are people who fix their eyes on a task that has to be performed, decide what its ideal outcome will be, and then do it to the best of their ability. They don't need bribes or anyone's approval. And isn't this always true of those who contribute most to civilization - its scientists, artists, philosophers, composers, and statesmen? Don't they always see some ideal within a confusing and imperfect situation and use all their energies and talents to isolate it and bring it forth into the light? Do you think that offering them money will change their course?

''Cit:'' It may if they don't have enough to live on.

''Vis:'' Yes, it certainly may. That is probably another myth of our critic who wants us to compete over everything - the myth of the starving artist or poet who leaves his masterpieces in his garret after his body is carried to a pauper's grave. They seem to think it is good that a poet or composer should have nothing in his stomach and not know when he will be evicted from his dwelling, as if such misery is a good stimulus to creativity.

''Cit:'' There are many artists and writers who share that romance, however.

''Vis:'' No doubt because it is easier to go hungry than to be creative. But in our community, where everyone has enough to eat and enough time to do as he pleases, I think we will not be disappointed in those of our citizens who have an eye for perfection and an ardent soul.

But I must confess that there is one type of excellence that is inspired by intense competition - a kind of excellence that perhaps should be called technique. I am thinking of fine concert violinists, for example, who seem to be motivated by money and prestige, as well as the ideal that lies within the music. Such people seem to thrive on competition along with their self-imposed discipline. They are remarkable, are they not, and deserve the money and admiration that inspires them to such perfection?

''Cit:'' Yes they do. But will we have them in our community, since we have just said that our citizens will not be subject to such pressures?

''Vis:'' Probably not - or at least not quite so many of them. Our principle incentive to excellence will be the ideal or perfection hidden within a job or experience, although we will not discourage the prestige or modest financial reward that may follow from the realization of that idea. We may expect our citizens to admire the achievements of one another and wish sometimes to pay for the pleasure of sharing in them. Won't that be natural?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And since there is great perfection and meaning in music, many of our young people will want to learn to play instruments so that they can release it - I mean by playing string quartets and other types of music?

''Cit:'' Yes, they will.

''Vis:'' But since they are not predominately interested in making money from their activity, or in capturing an audience, they will learn to play only well enough to suit their purpose. And that is to play the music so that its beauty and meaning is brought forth.

''Cit:'' Yes, but it won't come forth as perfectly as it does at the hands of a master performer.

''Vis:'' But it may be adequate for purposes of appreciation. The imperfections of technique can easily be corrected by a musical and appreciative ear, wouldn't you say? You know, seldom are great composers also great performers, but they are more aware of the meaning of their music than the great performers who present them to the public.

''Cit:'' That must certainly be true.

''Vis:'' And since it is the music itself that stirs our young musicians, and not its perfect performance, which stirs audiences, they will be more like the composers - hearing with the inner ear.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And that means instead of a handful of masterful performers or musical technicians, we will have hundreds of modest performers playing for themselves and one another, sharing in the composing and production of music.

''Cit:'' Then we shall be emphasizing amateur rather than professional music?

''Vis:'' But you must remember that to play decently much of the finest music requires no little skill. Many of our musicians will be superb, though not many will compare to your finest concert performers. But isn't this more desirable and truer to the function of good music? When your famous violinists or string quartet groups come to town, two thirds of the audience turns out to lionize the musicians and participate in a glamorous social event; another ten percent are connoisseurs who pride themselves on distinguishing small points of difference between the master players. But neither approach has much to do with the real function of music, does it?

''Cit:'' No.

''Vis:'' But we will have many performances in every town before audiences who have no reason to attend except for their love of music and the pleasure in sharing it with others of their kind. And if some of our musicians also happen to be masters of technique, then the pleasure will be that much greater. Won't such a situation be more excellent for music than having sensational musical events once or twice a season?

''Cit:'' Yes, I think so.

''Vis:'' And it will be the same with all the other arts, and with all the other uses of the mind and spirit. The excellence in our community may be second to others in technique, but it will be first in faithfulness to its object. And the nature of our educational institutions will guarantee that excellence, for our teachers are not concerned to produce merely a handful of master technicians, pushing everyone else into a despised role of amateur and hack; they will always be encouraging understanding, appreciation, participation, and faithfulness to the perfection that lies at the heart of every worthy undertaking.

''Cit:'' Yes, we asked that of our teachers.

''Vis:'' And what we have been saying applies not just to the arts, but to the sciences as well. Our science teachers will not burden their students with difficult problems or with fastidiousness to detail. Rather they will want to have them appreciate important ideas and methods of thought, and thereby expand their understanding of nature and man. Problem solving and details of technique can be left to those few who will pursue a vocation of research for the community.

''Cit:'' Such a program would be consistent with our approach to music.

''Vis:'' But great creations and discoveries in both areas will come about as they will, don't you think? For we did say that the finest products of the human mind and spirit come about by their own mysterious laws. Neither money nor prestige nor emphasis on faithfulness to an idea can bring them forth.

''Cit:'' Yes, we said that.

''Vis:'' Now then, have we answered our critic, or have we said a lot of irrelevant things?

''Cit:'' Oh, I think we have answered him very well indeed. How could what we have said be irrelevant?

''Vis:'' Well, I was just thinking: Whoever said that the purpose of a community is to produce excellence - did we?

''Cit:'' No, except for the fact that we insisted that it should supply the necessities of life.

''Vis:'' That is only a matter of proficiency in saving our citizens from long hours and unpleasant kinds of work. Such an achievement hardly falls under the heading of excellence.

''Cit:'' No.

''Vis:'' The other function of the community is to provide each citizen with the opportunity and freedom to pursue his own idea of the good life. We had meant to leave the question of excellence up to the individual, had we not?

''Cit:'' Yes, now that you remind me of it, I suppose we had.

''Vis:'' And it was natural for us to do so, since all the great issues and problems of life that demand excellence transcend community interest and responsibility. Think of those things which challenge man's understanding and appreciation: love, death, fate, suffering, nature, and all the other themes that philosophers have played upon for centuries. These are not social or community issues, are they? Must not the individual face them alone, or in the company of those who share his particular form of struggle?

''Cit:'' Yes, he must.

''Vis:'' And the most a community can do is to provide only what is necessary and helpful to the task?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' The material necessities of life and freedom from constraint?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Then we should not have allowed ourselves to be bullied into saying how we will make our citizens excellent people, beyond what is necessary to provide efficiently for the basics of survival.

''Cit:'' No, I suppose not. But I think it is the nature of communities to conceal some ideal or standard of perfection which they would have their citizens achieve. I mean a church state obviously insists on certain standards of belief and moral conduct, and a monarchy encourages elitism and privilege. And democratic capitalism, in spite of its profession of individual rights and freedom seems to cultivate an ethic of hard work in the service of wealth. Even the Marxist state with its official position of classlessness, seems really to encourage uniformity and regimentation of belief and value. I wonder whether we too will not fall into the same trap, pretending to leave everything open to the citizen, but in reality guiding him toward some hidden ideology and set of standardized values which will eventually become law or at least a strong public pressure to conform. Is it possible to have such an open society as we have constructed, or won't we too join the ranks of other ideological states?

''Vis:'' Wouldn't you say that we have avoided the ideologies of the types of government you mentioned?

''Cit:'' Yes, I think so. But who knows what lies behind our dream?

''Vis:'' What dream lies behind our dream?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Well, I admit that there is such a dream; but since it is only a dream within a dream, I can scarcely grasp its outlines. However, there seems to be nothing fearful or covert about it - indeed, it seems in its beauty and promise to transcend our ideal community as far as that community transcends existing societies.

''Cit:'' Then I think you must tell me what it is. Besides, I will not have very much success in persuading others of the attractiveness of our community unless I can also allay their suspicions about the dreams of the person who imagined it.

''Vis:'' What you are asking now makes what we have accomplished so far mere child's play. Do you share the suspicions of the people you mentioned?

''Cit:'' No, I do not.

''Vis:'' And will you help with this final task, and put your best understanding and compassion along with mine to accomplish it?

''Cit:'' You can be sure that I will.

''Vis:'' Then let us begin and see whether we can describe our highest and deepest dream - for I think it is also your dream.

''Cit:'' Please proceed.

[[Back to Table of Contents|Book01]]
!

''Visitor:'' Do you remember when we were trying to decide whether men are by nature capable of living in a cooperative community?

''Citizen:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And that discussion led us to identify three capacities or dispositions that all men seem to share?

''Cit:'' Yes, I recall. You talked about the psychological, aesthetic, and cognitive parts of the soul, and how they are related to one another.

''Vis:'' Now the dream I have in mind has to do with those three capacities, their development, and their potential for harmony. That is what we must look into now.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Each time we find ourselves pushed in one way or another by desire, wanting to possess something and to avoid something else, we are in the sphere of the psychological. That seems clear, does it not?

''Cit:'' Yes, we can speak that way.

''Vis:'' But if someone chooses to speak of instinct, drive, force, motive, compulsion, or need, we will find no reason to argue; for we can regard these as refinements on the general idea of desire - or perhaps aspects of it.

''Cit:'' I think we may include them under that heading.

''Vis:'' Now the objects of desire, the things we want, may be quite various, since they include feelings, material possessions, and experiences. I mean one can desire to be happy or sad, to have money or a certain make of car, or to become a doctor or musician or husband and father. These are natural ends to desire, are they not?

''Cit:'' Yes, of course.

''Vis:'' But in order for us to desire such things, they must have a particular character that our consciousness or imagination seizes upon vividly and intensely. We don't desire something whose nature is a blank to us, for even if we are ignorant of its reality, our imagination gives us its picture, distorted as it may be.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And it is the character of an object or experience, thus vividly represented to consciousness, that we agreed to call its value?

''Cit:'' Yes, we did.

''Vis:'' And although we desire things for biological and psychological reasons of various kinds, there is nevertheless no desire unless the character of its object is vividly represented to the mind. In order to desire something we must be aware of its value, or at least assign it some particular value, isn't that so?

''Cit:'' Yes, that seems to follow from the definition.

''Vis:'' Now it is the artists among us who seem to be most intensely aware of values, or at least able to express them better than the rest of us. I mean a painter presents for us a landscape or face which makes us want to fasten our eyes on it and contemplate its wonder; and a composer creates themes and harmonies which express the qualities of many feelings - grandeur, sorrow, and different kinds of joy; and the poet or writer of novels does the same with all the varied content of human life. Isn't this capacity to express intensely and vividly the qualities of things the reason we value artists and desire to experience their works?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Therefore in honor of them we agreed to call that capacity we have to recognize an object's value - its character experienced as an end in itself - an aesthetic capacity, and to call ourselves aesthetic man insofar as we exercise our capacity.

''Cit:'' Yes, we decided to use that term.

''Vis:'' There remains then the cognitive component of the soul. We thought of this as a capacity to discover the relationships that exist between things in the world, did we not?

''Cit:'' Yes, we did.

''Vis:'' And these relations include cause and effect, spatial or geometrical relations, relations of number, and so forth?

''Cit:'' Yes, general relationships fall under that heading. And I recall that we included in knowledge all the particular facts and theories of the sciences and various other disciplines that one might study in school.

''Vis:'' Because all of them are attempts to describe the structures that exist among various elements of existence?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Then a person with a finely developed cognitive sense can be faced with a confusing mass of information or a complex situation and somehow manage to identify the elements which can be correlated with other elements, or those elements which are so important that if any one of them is changed everything else in the situation changes.

''Cit:'' Yes, we admire the intelligence of such people.

''Vis:'' Now wouldn't you say that all people have these three capacities or dispositions, but some to a greater extent than others, and some with one of them more exaggerated than the other two?

''Cit:'' Yes, I think so.

''Vis:'' Someone with lazy desires we call lethargic and dull; but if his desires are many and intense, we call him passionate?

''Cit:'' Yes, that is a common way of speaking.

''Vis:'' And someone with an underdeveloped or coarse aesthetic sense we call insensitive?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And someone who cannot think things through or see connections between one thing and another, we call unintelligent or stupid?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' But all men have the three capacities in different degree and proportion. Do you think lower forms of life like cats and grasshoppers have them too?

''Cit:'' I have no idea, but I doubt it.

''Vis:'' Sometimes, though, when you see a cat crouching intently watching a mouse or fly on the window, you wonder whether it would not be the equal to us if its faculties were more highly developed and it possessed a memory to retain its experiences.

''Cit:'' Then I imagine it would stop watching flies. But this is all pure speculation.

''Vis:'' Yes, but it is natural to suppose that the three capacities of the soul have slowly evolved until they have reached the human level in terms of complexity, flexibility, and potential, wouldn't you say? After all, the same conditions of existence face all creatures, and if they adapt to their environments, as the biologists tell us they do, we could expect that the capacities we human beings possess have emerged from nature and are present to some degree in all lower forms of life.

''Cit:'' Perhaps so, but I think these speculative questions are best left to others.

''Vis:'' No doubt. Shall we agree, however, that our three faculty picture is plausible and a good description of human consciousness?

''Cit:'' Yes, it seems plausible to me.

''Vis:'' Now we must make one other point which will carry us to the plateau from which we must make our ascent. Do you remember what we were saying about the effect of community life on the nature of man?

''Cit:'' We said that in a competitive society where everyone had to struggle for the necessities of life, the psychological side of man's nature would dominate the other two, and men would tend to become grasping, aggressive, and selfish.

''Vis:'' And that seems perfectly natural, does it not? Imagine a vegetable farmer who must work ten or twelve hours a day to squeeze from his land just enough to feed himself and his family, and to purchase necessary equipment. He is not likely to see in his vegetables anything more than a means to something else, unless he is an exceptional sort of farmer. And his curiosity about his land and crops will go no farther than what is necessary to produce the maximum so that he can make as much profit as possible from his land. Both his sensitivity or capacity to experience nature like an artist, and his intelligence and understanding will be seriously limited under these circumstances, will they not?

''Cit:'' Yes, he is likely to regard everything he does as a means to survival.

''Vis:'' And we should regard him as an exceptional man if after years of such an existence he retained any humor or kindness or curiosity about the world?

''Cit:'' Yes, I think so.

''Vis:'' But we can hope for much more from a community such as we have constructed. For now a farmer needs to work but four hours a day in order to live decently, and has plenty of free time to give the aesthetic and cognitive parts of his nature an opportunity to grow as they can. He won't have to hold a cabbage in his hand only to see if it is worth a quarter or fifty cents.

''Cit:'' We have agreed that such a social system will be far preferable to our own.

''Vis:'' Now then, I think we have reached the place where the road becomes steep, and we will have to concentrate our energies and proceed very carefully if we hope to reach the summit.

''Cit:'' I will follow as best I can.

''Vis:'' Let us begin then with the aesthetic side of our nature. The artist in us seeks to represent experiences as intensely and vividly as possible, and is not satisfied that he has grasped their reality until he has done so. That is what we meant by being aware of something's value. Now an artist by trade - one who paints pictures, composes music, or writes poetry - is one who does this for us in particular works of art. And he does it by including in his work only those elements which contribute to the experience whose value he wants to express; the rest he discards as useless to his purpose. For example, a landscape painter has a particular image of nature which he wishes to make vivid and real to our consciousness. In order to do this he must use only certain colors and shades, and lines of a certain character; and if some parts of the view that he has before him do not fit the vision, he is free to omit or change them so that they fit in and make a unity. A composer must approach his music in the same way: only certain rhythms, harmonies, and combinations of instruments will fit the reality or character of the piece he is writing; all others disrupt that aesthetic unity. Does this seem clear?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' He uses only those lines or harmonies which intensify and add to the central vision that his work tries to express. Whatever contributes in this way takes part in the aesthetic synthesis; whatever does not is useless and disruptive, and belongs to an aesthetic harmony or synthesis of a different kind perhaps.

''Cit:'' Yes, good artists have an instinctive sense of what to include in their works.

''Vis:'' But a truly fine artist transcends this unity of technique and uses it to express the values of experiences or realities that are more universal and important. For example, a portrait painter will be a success if his lines and colors and other elements of technique combine harmoniously to present a unique or particular face. But if that face can also express more than a single person's identity, I mean an image of great sorrow or wisdom or some other universal aspect of human nature, then the work is much more significant, and the artist deserves much more credit. A good work of art creates a harmony or unity of elements, but its vision must transcend a small corner of existence: it must pull into unity experiences that are universal and important. Isn't that what makes Rembrandt's portraits and Beethoven's symphonies finer creations than the productions of professional portrait painters and the compositions that accompany motion pictures?

''Cit:'' Yes, certainly.

''Vis:'' And doesn't the aesthetic capacity in each of us try to do the same with our daily experience? We seek out those aspects of life that have value to us, and try to keep them together, drawing in all other elements and experiences which seem to harmonize with them and share their value. Everything else we shun and profess to hate, because it disrupts the aesthetic harmony we have created.

''Cit:'' I understand.

''Vis:'' And in our attempts to universalize the harmony, we sometimes distort and falsify things in order to make them fit. If, for example, we are planning a perfect outing in the country, and have included everything in our plans, isn't it likely that we will see clouds on the horizon as only fog or pollution from the city? For rain clouds do not fit the landscape of our life for the afternoon, so to speak.

''Cit:'' Yes, though I had not thought to regard such matters in an aesthetic way.

''Vis:'' Now let us turn for a moment to our cognitive capacity. We said its function was to discover relations or correlations that exist among the various elements of existence, did we not?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And those who do this best, or specialize in the use of the cognitive capacity, are called scientists, are they not? Isn't the function of science above all to understand and explain how things happen?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' They can take a complex and confusing set of circumstances and find within it some set of elements that forms a pattern; and with this discovery they have brought order and unity into what seemed a chaos and jumble of fragments. For example, Isaac Newton showed how such different events as the motions of the planets, the movement of the tides, the flattened shape of the earth, as well as many types of terrestrial motions, could all be understood as functions of the attraction bodies have for one another. He even found that from his law of gravity he could deduce the laws of planetary motion discovered earlier by Kepler. Isn't this a marvelous example of the cognitive capacity at work, bringing its own kind of unity into the many parts of existence?

''Cit:'' Yes, it certainly seems to be.

''Vis:'' And we find scientists in every field doing the same type of thing, or trying to. Always they want to understand something by finding something else which is concealed from view, but which affects or determines its behavior. Think, for example, of the multitude of processes and elements that are related to the simplest movement of the hand, or the quickness of the eye catching sight of a flying insect. There is a great amount to understand here, is there not?

''Cit:'' Yes indeed.

''Vis:'' But every small bit of understanding brings some unity to the complexity of existence, because it shows relationships where none had been thought to exist.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Then can we say that both the aesthetic and cognitive parts of our nature have the power to bring harmony and unity into our vision of the universe, even if they do so by a different principle? Doesn't each have its own peculiar synthesis to bring to bear on existence?

''Cit:'' Yes, they both weave things together.

''Vis:'' And there is another similarity too. A good artist, we said, presents us with the values of experiences or elements of existence that are important and far-reaching. A good landscape is in a way a view of all of nature, is it not, just as a good portrait may be a sort of vision of mankind in general?

''Cit:'' Yes, great art is universal.

''Vis:'' And isn't the same true of great science or theories in science? Newton's law of gravity is a description of one of the fundamental forces in nature, as we said, and brings unity into a multitude of events and lesser laws. And for that reason we regard his achievement as greater and more significant to knowledge than the work of someone who describes only a small correlation in nature. Doesn't his work far transcend the efforts of some meteor counter or breeder of tomato hybrids?

''Cit:'' Yes, of course.

''Vis:'' Then we can agree that in addition to bringing their own types of unity to experience, the aesthetic and cognitive each reaches toward universality. Great art and great science are both universal, are they not?

''Cit:'' Yes, in different ways.

''Vis:'' Now here is a curious point. We said that when an artist, even a good one, runs into an element of reality that does not fit his harmony, he is free to ignore it, or change its character altogether. In this sense he can put truth aside, and still remain faithful to his task. For example, if there is a blemish on the chin of his model, he can go right ahead with his work and just omit it.

''Cit:'' Yes, he has that freedom.

''Vis:'' In fact doesn't the artist ignore the truth of things every time he puts brush to canvas? For in giving us a landscape or vision of nature, he is at the same time only giving us a piece of canvas with paint on it.

''Cit:'' Yes, but of course one is supposed to see through the picture, so to speak.

''Vis:'' Yes, one is. But the fact that he is only painting, or that the composer is only giving us sounds while at the same time expressing the nature of feelings and other experiences, shows how little truth may figure into his work. The artist is relatively free, is he not, to play fast and loose with the cognitive capacity, even when his purpose is great and serious?

''Cit:'' Yes, in the sense in which you are speaking.

''Vis:'' Now isn't the scientist free to do the same with the aesthetic capacity - I mean to distort or ignore it altogether?

''Cit:'' I am not sure I understand.

''Vis:'' Suppose a teacher wants to explain Newton's ideas to a group of students. He is likely to go to the blackboard and draw for them a picture of the solar system - the sun at the center, and the planets arranged around it in circles or ellipses of various sizes. This is sufficient, is it not, to explain Kepler's laws, the attraction between masses, and the way that angular momentum serves to counteract gravity and thereby hold the planets in their orbits?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Or if the teacher is fortunate he may have one of those three dimensional models which have colored plastic balls of different sizes held in their orbits by thin wires.

''Cit:'' Yes, I have seen them.

''Vis:'' Both devices - the rough sketch and the pretty plastic model - are adequate to illustrate the cognitive relationships described in Newton's theory, so far as it concerns the behavior of the planets. Isn't that so?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' Now it is obvious that the planets do not look like this under any possible view. The planet Venus doesn't look like a plastic ball suspended by a wire when we see it as the glittering Morning Star, or view it through a telescope. And the vastness of the distances of the planets from the sun and from one another is certainly not expressed in the blackboard sketch or table model, is it?

''Cit:'' No, of course not; they are only models intended to represent the relationships described in the theory of gravity.

''Vis:'' Yes, that is just the point. In describing those relationships the scientist is free to ignore the character or value of the elements participating in the relationships. Instead of Venus in one of its presentations to experience, he shows us a circle on the blackboard or a little white plastic ball; and instead of a planet's orbit, he shows us a line or wire bent into a circle. While these models reflect a great set of cognitive relationships, they ignore the aesthetic nature of the solar system, or distort it by offering us shiny plastic balls instead of actual planets. Instead of a true aesthetic picture, expressing the qualities or values of things in the universe, they give us the aesthetic of a clean and tidy table sculpture.

''Cit:'' But it does accurately express the Newtonian theory. One can deduce other facts about the solar system by using the model or picture.

''Vis:'' Yes, and that is the irony of the cognitive mode. As the aesthetic capacity is free to ignore or distort facts in its effort to faithfully present the qualities of existence, the cognitive capacity is equally free to ignore or distort the qualities of existence in order to faithfully describe the relationships among its elements.

''Cit:'' That is ironic indeed.

''Vis:'' But both the aesthetic and cognitive strive towards universality, in spite of their discourtesy to one another?

''Cit:'' Yes, we said so.

''Vis:'' And yet we believe existence to be one, do we not, even if there are many aspects of it and many points of view from which things may be grasped?

''Cit:'' Yes, to have as many worlds as there are points of view is absurd.

''Vis:'' But even if there were many worlds, each element in them would have an aesthetic identity and a cognitive identity. Things present us with their particular characters or values, which the aesthetic capacity in us recognizes, and they also participate in various relations with one another, which our cognitive capacity discovers. The reality of something has both an aesthetic and cognitive side, does it not?

''Cit:'' According to what we have been saying.

''Vis:'' Therefore to be faithful to reality, we cannot permit the aesthetic to distort the cognitive, nor can we permit the cognitive to distort or ignore the aesthetic. We wish to walk through a landscape with full aesthetic appreciation, instead of having to go to a museum for the privilege; and we want also to have an understanding of gravity and the momentum of planets as we watch the Morning Star fade at sunrise. A full grasp of reality includes both an aesthetic and cognitive dimension; it transcends each of them by uniting both.

''Cit:'' I think I understand, but I cannot see how such a synthesis can be reached.

''Vis:'' Yes, it must be very difficult, and I am convinced it is a mystery to all but the masters of life. But even the rest of us can sometimes catch a glimpse of it and perhaps occasionally participate in this transcendence ourselves. Have you ever watched a master craftsman at work - a watch repairman or furniture maker or machinist perhaps?

''Cit:'' I have seen such people, but I can't tell whether they are masters or not.

''Vis:'' But if they were, you would expect them to know their crafts thoroughly, would you not? If someone is a fine watch and clock repairman, for example, he can undertake any problem because he knows the basic principles and understands or can deduce how everything is put together, even if it is a clock he has never seen before.

''Cit:'' Yes, he will know everything there is to know about his craft.

''Vis:'' But you won't see him throwing his screwdrivers around and cursing the clock because some parts are rusty or don't fit together quite as they should. Rather, he will pursue his business calmly, giving each part its measure of attention and importance, so that the whole process seems to form an orderly pattern or harmony. Doesn't this seem to reflect the aesthetic approach to experience, for he is not merely getting the watch to work again, but treating his task as an end in itself, something to be nourished and appreciated.

''Cit:'' Yes, there seems to be both an aesthetic and cognitive aspect to his work.

''Vis:'' He has managed to unite the cognitive and aesthetic in this modest profession of his?

''Cit:'' Yes, I would say so.

''Vis:'' Perhaps we should consider another example of modest scope before proceeding; for the demands of life are great and the problems of achieving harmony are much more complex than they appear in some craft or other limited activity.

''Cit:'' What example did you have in mind?

''Vis:'' I was thinking of birdwatchers - you know, people who keep lists of the birds they have seen in a certain area and go out Sundays, especially during migration, and see how many varieties they can find. There are people who take great pleasure in this harmless activity.

''Cit:'' I am aware of them.

''Vis:'' Now some of them approach their hobby primarily from a cognitive standpoint. They are passionate keepers of records which show exactly on what day and in precisely what spot a certain bird was seen, when the first migrating robin appeared, and so forth. If they go far enough in this direction pretty soon they are banding birds to help in migration studies, shooting them and cutting open their stomachs to see what they had for breakfast, raiding their nests, peeping at their courting rituals, and doing all kinds of things that may seem absurd.

''Cit:'' Not to the ornithologist, however.

''Vis:'' Of course not. But there are people who observe birds from an opposite direction. They wait each evening for the sound of the whip-poor-will, which becomes part of the harmony of hot summer nights. Or they stare in wonderment at a black skimmer cutting a groove through the surf with its orange bill as it makes its feeding run. Such people may not know the names of birds, keep lists, or have any real information about them, but they take great pleasure in their company. It is primarily an aesthetic interest that they have, wouldn't you say?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' But many birdwatchers combine both approaches. In fact bird watching seems especially suited for a synthesis of the cognitive and aesthetic on a limited scale. For example, in the early fall in the South, a small dark bird suddenly appears fishing for minnows in salt water bays and flats. Even to an outsider the dark grace of the bird and its sudden appearance must catch the imagination. But knowing that the bird is the black tern that has arrived from its summer breeding grounds in Canadian marshlands, and is on its way to South America for the winter, adds to the wonderful abruptness of its appearance. The vast distances of the migration, the instinct that carries the bird from one end of the planet to the other, somehow combine with the mystery of this small dark creature, and it is not so difficult to imagine the birdwatcher waiting each year for its return and thrilling when at last on some August morning he sees it. Does this seem so strange?

''Cit:'' No, I suppose not.

''Vis:'' And the same kind of merger of the two modes of experience lies behind most hobbies and pastimes, wouldn't you say? Think of coin collectors, flower growers, gardeners, and all others who find relief from the pressures of life in some trivial amusement. Do they not find the same opportunity for developing expert knowledge and appreciation for some small corner of existence? And doesn't the special knowledge combine with the appreciation to create an activity that is satisfying and complete in itself?

''Cit:'' Yes, but as you said, these are trivial matters when we are concerned with the problem of grasping all of existence under two modes that seem in such conflict.

''Vis:'' Yes, life is not a hobby or amusement. Shall we turn then to a large and more universal theme? What about the great mansion of love?

''Cit:'' There are many kinds of love, I think.

''Vis:'' Then let us begin with sexual love. You know how the awakening of sexual love is always spoken of as the awakening of passion and desire, as if it were an entirely psychological phenomenon?

''Cit:'' Yes, one speaks of the stormy period of puberty or adolescence.

''Vis:'' But isn't it just as much a period of intense aesthetic awakening? For suddenly a young person becomes very sensitive to another person's gestures and voice, and his imagination is filled with visions of the two of them in some vague atmosphere of romance. And then when sexuality is ripe, there is the consuming experience of the sex act itself. These intense and vivid experiences evoke powerful desires, do they not? In fact, isn't it possible that the more intense the awareness, the more powerful the desire?

''Cit:'' Young people with no imagination along these lines do seem less thrown by the problems of puberty.

''Vis:'' Which suggests that a powerful aesthetic sense is the cause of powerful desires, rather than the reverse. Is that possible?

''Cit:'' Yes, I suppose it is.

''Vis:'' Now then, when a young man is sexually attracted to a girl, it is natural for the sexuality to gather together other parts of her existence into that intense consciousness. Her whole body becomes charged with it, her laughter and voice express it, and every gesture seems a wonder of grace. Everything she says and believes will suddenly seem to take on great meaning and depth, and he will respond to qualities in her that are invisible or trivial to someone not in love. Isn't this the way love is?

''Cit:'' Yes, I think so.

''Vis:'' And isn't it proper to call this an aesthetic harmony, since each component shares somehow in the event of sensual love, just as the elements of a landscape or symphony share in some vision of nature or man?

''Cit:'' Yes, on a small scale.

''Vis:'' But it is inevitable that there will be some aspects of the loved one's appearance or character that do not fit the sensual harmony. Perhaps it will be the way she shows her teeth when laughing, or perhaps the young lover will catch sight of her one day in curlers and face cream. Worse yet, someone else may begin showing signs of affection toward her and - greatest conflict of all - she may seem to respond. None of this fits into the young lover's harmony of passion, does it?

''Cit:'' No, he is on his way to becoming a jealous and miserable young fellow.

''Vis:'' He can then do one of two things. Either he can pretend that the conflicting elements do not exist, or he can expand the character of his love so that it embraces the conflicting elements.

''Cit:'' Or he can give up his love altogether.

''Vis:'' Yes, of course. But I meant if he wishes to stay in love these will be the only two alternatives open to him. In falling in love he has created a small aesthetic harmony surrounding himself and his lover; but life will not let him rest, and throws things in his way to challenge the harmony. He can refuse the challenge and try to preserve the small thing he has, or he can accept it and attempt to expand his love.

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' But isn't this an example of the conflict between the aesthetic and the cognitive, and the inevitable pull each has towards becoming universal? The lover has a small harmony of elements - some touches, glances, conversations, and the sexual experience itself. The aesthetic harmony is given its identity by sexual love, and includes only those facets of his lover's existence that fit its nature. His understanding, however, shows him that if he is to preserve the wonderful harmony of his love without dishonesty or illusion - such as the artist can tolerate - he must change or reshape his love to take in the conflicting parts of the other's existence, since after all, they are as much a part of that person's reality as the parts which are included in his sensuality. So his love must become respectful and tolerant and more encompassing, must it not?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And isn't this what is called maturity in love - when two people share this respect and understanding?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' But two people who love one another in this deeper way can isolate themselves in their tenderness and understanding, and exclude the rest of the world. When they see others in love or recognize qualities in other people identical to the qualities that they love in each other, they will still ignore them as having nothing to do with their own private universe. Isn't this another case of refusing an opportunity to expand one's love and include more of the universe in its harmony?

''Cit:'' But how is it possible to include others in the intimacy of love shared between two people?

''Vis:'' Of course its harmony must be adapted, just as mature love for another adapts the harmony of sexuality. To extend love to others requires that the sensitivity one has toward his lover's feelings and ideas be extended to encompass the feelings and ideas of strangers. When a stranger has a triumph or defeat the lover who reaches this more universal stage feels it as if it were his own.

''Cit:'' Some people, I suppose, are capable of this.

''Vis:'' And don't we call these people compassionate? Isn't that the word for them?

''Cit:'' Yes, it is.

''Vis:'' But compassion is something different from sentimentality and do-goodishness, because it is based both on sensitivity to feelings and understanding of the differences between one person and another.

''Cit:'' You are referring back to the criticism that a cooperative community based on general regard and compassion would be populated with sentimental busybodies, are you not?

''Vis:'' Yes, and do you think we have an answer now to the objection?

''Cit:'' Yes I do, although I think the ascent from selfish love and sensuality to compassion is very steep and difficult.

''Vis:'' But we are really talking about degrees of love and not a path one must tread from childhood to adulthood. Many adults who have worked at love and marriage never can rise to compassion, but some children seem to have it by nature, feeling sympathetically and generously toward everything in life. In fact, isn't that the inevitable outcome of the rise in universality of love: a generous and sympathetic feeling for all of nature and existence itself?

''Cit:'' You mean as a child can love animals and inanimate objects?

''Vis:'' Yes, except that a child lacks the understanding which is necessary for such universal love. I think if one can understand the differences among men and grasp intellectually the complexity of the great order of nature, but at the same time preserve the vividness and innocence of the child's gaze, then he will have reached the pinnacle of love for existence. For love at its highest must have true and equal portions of understanding and aesthetic appreciation.

''Cit:'' This seems to be a very mysterious and difficult synthesis.

''Vis:'' Well, as I said earlier, such achievements are for the masters of life to understand.

But we have only been talking about the synthesis of the aesthetic and cognitive modes so far as they appear in one aspect of life - which, to be sure, requires more from us and reaches to a higher universality than mere crafts and hobbies like bird watching - but nevertheless is still only one aspect. Think of the difficulties that await us when we attempt this synthesis on the ideas of birth, death, space, time, the creation and evolution of the universe, and all the other issues philosophers have puzzled over for generations. We would have to embark on the same journey for each of them.

''Cit:'' Yes, the task would be a difficult one.

''Vis:'' And even when we had understood each of these ideas in their aesthetic and cognitive dimensions, we should still be drawn upward to unite them into a single vision of nature and man. And, though I cannot know this, I think that in such a view each element of existence, and each step we take in life, no matter how small and brief, will still somehow be a reflection of everything else, a sort of meeting place for all truths and all values; and therefore each thing must be treated with respect, for at the summit of understanding there is a kind of holiness that touches each thing.

''Cit:'' And this is the dream you mentioned that lies behind our cooperative community - a dream of religious understanding?

''Vis:'' Yes, I think full understanding culminates in the religion which unites in a single vision the most universal ideas produced by our cognitive and aesthetic capacities.

''Cit:'' So after all, it is a religious ideology that lies behind your dream of a cooperative community.

''Vis:'' Oh, I wouldn't call it an ideology, because there are no fixed dogmas or programs of behavior that could be prescribed by a state or society. The call to religious vision is given by life itself, just as the demand to universalize love or raise it beyond sensuality is given by the nature of love itself; whoever disregards it must pay a heavy price in struggle and suffering. No, the most a community can do when it comes to the religious consciousness is to stifle its expression or make its progress possible.

''Cit:'' And a cooperative community furthers the religious viewpoint better than other societies?

''Vis:'' Yes, I think so. But it does so only by giving its citizens what each of them wants and expects from the community. By providing for the necessities without competitive struggle, and otherwise giving citizens the freedom to do and believe as they choose, each person has the opportunity to respond to the demands of life as best he is able. There is no other way that a community can help its citizens rise to a harmonious view of existence.

''Cit:'' But you said it can throw obstacles in its way.

''Vis:'' Indeed it can. If people must struggle unceasingly against each other for food and work, there can be nothing but a perversion of the religious need. Those who fail in the struggle and sink into poverty will find their religion in renunciation, dumb patience, and blind acceptance of things as they are. Or they may be maddened into violence if they are a more passionate sort. Others who survive the struggle will be so ill-equipped for an intelligent and sensitive view of existence, that in their emptiness they will embrace any kind of dogma or movement, the more superstitious and ridiculous the better; for such people, having given all their intelligence and energy to the struggle of earning a living, will probably have little left over to understand and appreciate the mysteries and complexities of existence.

''Cit:'' We have some of each of these groups in our society.

''Vis:'' I am not surprised. But a community can also be an obstacle to the religious perspective if it tries to do too much. In such a community people begin to feel that all their problems will be solved and they will be happy and fulfilled if only certain laws are passed or the right political party comes to power. Whenever they have a complaint or feel some confusion they look to the government or some group of specialists to clear it up for them. Even something as private and confusing to the religious perspective as death they might come to feel is a matter mainly of getting one's insurance and will in order, and making sure one has proper medical attention for the final struggle. All this would be expecting too much from the community, don't you think?

''Cit:'' Yes, it would.

''Vis:'' And after a time such people may imagine that that their community is a sort of higher reality than they are, and that their purpose in life is to serve it, as though it were some god?

''Cit:'' Yes, perhaps.

''Vis:'' And your own society - is it not a curious mixture of a community that does too little but tries to do too much?

''Cit:'' Yes, I think so.

''Vis:'' In letting people fend for themselves and struggle over the necessities of life, it does too little; and this throws some people into despair. But at the same time, your American Dream promises total happiness and fulfillment if one is a success in this struggle; and that makes the same people wildly optimistic. People who are despairing one moment and optimistic the next are scarcely in a position to respond capably to the many demands of human existence, are they?

''Cit:'' No, I am afraid not.

But you paint such a bleak picture of our society, and have in fact been so critical all along of the competitive style - which of course is our own - that I myself am thrown into a kind of despair. For I share your criticism, but must return from these visions of a better society to the reality of life in the United States. And that reality now seems so disheartening that I have no desire to return and see no place in my country for anyone like me.

''Vis:'' So like some of your countrymen you feel caught in the net of despair and hope?

''Cit:'' I only meant that the distance between the ideal we have described and the real that I see around me is so great that I feel powerless, unable to have the one or to endure the other.

''Vis:'' You are suffering then like all ardent lovers. Isn't it true that the more consumed a lover is with the perfections of the one he loves, the less able he is to tolerate her imperfections? Isn't a perfect harmony more easily ruined by a single defect than one that is less perfect?

''Cit:'' Yes, one becomes perhaps too sensitive.

''Vis:'' And didn't we say that if a lover is to keep his love, he must find some way to absorb the conflicting elements, and to reshape the harmony of his love to take them in?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And his love may become deeper, more understanding, and more universal when he does this?

''Cit:'' Yes.

''Vis:'' And now you find yourself in love with a vision of men working together and leading free lives, but your vision is threatened and choked by the conflicting elements of the life you see around you.

''Cit:'' Yes, that seems to be the way it is.

''Vis:'' Then you must find some way to deepen and reshape your love to bring those conflicting elements into it. Isn't that always the problem in the pursuits of life - to accept conflict but at the same moment to begin shaping it to fit a more complete perfection? Such wisdom has been the subject of our discussion, has it not?

''Cit:'' Yes, and I understand how it can be practiced in the crafts and hobbies you mentioned; and I even have a sense of how love for another can rise to compassion and the love of existence. But I am at a loss when it comes to merging the vision of a perfect society with the realities of life as we are forced to live it. I see no way for an individual to change things without ruining his own life and the little peace of mind he can attain. Our country is just too large and the sources of power too tightly controlled and remote from the single citizen to allow him to have any effect. There appears to be nothing that I or anyone else can do to move us toward a better society.

''Vis:'' Well then, perhaps you should let it alone. Still, I think there are some things you can do. For example, you can live your life as though your community were ideal.

''Cit:'' I am not sure I understand.

''Vis:'' I mean you can refuse to participate in the struggle, so far as that is possible. You can live modestly and choose a worthy profession - one given to providing the necessities that every community requires. You could become a physician or carpenter or teacher, for example. And whatever work you do, you can try to cultivate and maintain the sense of general regard for others that we have talked so much about. You can avoid selfishness and greed, and not let your sensibilities be dominated by materials necessary to sustain life.

''Cit:'' These things should be possible.

''Vis:'' But you must remember, no society has the power to give you fulfillment and happiness. That is a private matter which must be left to individuals by themselves and in free association with others.

''Cit:'' But we said a moment ago that some communities offer an environment more conducive to happiness and fulfillment.

''Vis:'' That may be. But even in the best of communities there will be fatigue, repetition, disappointment, missed opportunity, failure - and worse. Happiness finally depends on your own sensitivity and understanding.

''Cit:'' And courage.

''Vis:'' Yes, and courage.

/***
|Name|CheckboxPlugin|
|Source|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#CheckboxPlugin|
|Version|2.2.4|
|Author|Eric Shulman - ELS Design Studios|
|License|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#LegalStatements <<br>>and [[Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License|http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/]]|
|~CoreVersion|2.1|
|Type|plugin|
|Requires||
|Overrides||
|Description|Add checkboxes to your tiddler content|
This plugin extends the TiddlyWiki syntax to allow definition of checkboxes that can be embedded directly in tiddler content.  Checkbox states are preserved by either:
* automatically modifying the tiddler content (deprecated)
* or, by setting/removing tags on specified tiddlers,
* or, by setting custom field values on specified tiddlers,
* or, by saving to a locally-stored cookie ID.
When an ID is assigned to the checkbox, it enables direct programmatic access to the checkbox DOM element, as well as creating an entry in TiddlyWiki's config.options[ID] internal data.  In addition to tracking the checkbox state, you can also specify custom javascript for programmatic initialization and onClick event handling for any checkbox, so you can provide specialized side-effects in response to state changes.
!!!!! Inline wiki-syntax usage
<<<
//{{{
[ ]or[_] and [x]or[X]
//}}}
Simple checkboxes using 'Inline X' storage.  The current unchecked/checked state is indicated by the character between the {{{[}}} and {{{]}}} brackets ("_" means unchecked, "X" means checked).  When you click on a checkbox, the current state is retained by directly modifying the tiddler content to place the corresponding "_" or "X" character in between the brackets.
>//''NOTE: 'Inline X' syntax has been deprecated...''  This storage format only works properly for checkboxes that are directly embedded and accessed from content in a single tiddler.  However, if that tiddler is 'transcluded' into another (by using the {{{<<tiddler TiddlerName>>}}} macro), the 'Inline X' will be ''erroneously stored in the containing tiddler's source content, resulting in corrupted content in that tiddler.''  For anything but the most simple of "to do list" uses, you should select from the various alternative storage methods described below...//
//{{{
[x=id]
//}}}
Assign an optional ID to the checkbox so you can use {{{document.getElementByID("id")}}} to manipulate the checkbox DOM element, as well as tracking the current checkbox state in {{{config.options["id"]}}}.  If the ID starts with "chk" the checkbox state will also be saved in a cookie, so it can be automatically restored whenever the checkbox is re-rendered (overrides any default {{{[x]}}} or {{{[_]}}} value).  If a cookie value is kept, the "_" or "X" character in the tiddler content remains unchanged, and is only applied as the default when a cookie-based value is not currently defined.
//{{{
[x(title|tag)] or [x(title:tag)]
//}}}
Initializes and tracks the current checkbox state by setting or removing a particular tag value from a specified tiddler.  If you omit the tiddler title (and the | or : separator), the specified tag is assigned to the current tiddler.  If you omit the tag value, as in {{{(title|)}}}, the default tag, {{{checked}}}, is assumed.  Omitting both the title and tag, {{{()}}}, tracks the checkbox state by setting the "checked" tag on the current tiddler.  When tag tracking is used, the "_" or "X" character in the tiddler content remains unchanged, and is not used to set or track the checkbox state.  If a tiddler title named in the tag does not exist, the checkbox state defaults to the "inline X" value.  If this value is //checked//, or is subsequently changed to //checked//, it will automatically create the missing tiddler and then add the tag to it.  //''NOTE: beginning with version 2.1.2 of this plugin, the "|" separator is the preferred separator between the title and tag name, as it avoids syntactic ambiguity when ":" is used within tiddler titles or tag names.''//
//{{{
[x(field@tiddler)]
//}}}
Initializes and tracks the current checkbox state by setting a particular custom field value from a specified tiddler.  If you omit the tiddler title (but not the "@" separator), the specified field on the current tiddler is used.  If you omit the field name, as in {{{(@tiddler)}}}, a default fieldname of {{{checked}}} is assumed.  Omitting both the field and the tiddler title, {{{(@)}}}, defaults to setting the "checked" field on the current tiddler.  When field tracking is used, the "_" or "X" character in the tiddler content remains unchanged, and is not used to set or track the checkbox state.  If the tiddler title named in the parameter does not exist, the checkbox state defaults to the "inline X" value.  If this value is //checked// or is subsequently changed to //checked//, it will automatically create the missing tiddler and then add the field to it.
//{{{
[x{javascript}{javascript}]
//}}}
You can define optional javascript code segments to add custom initialization and/or 'onClick' handling to a checkbox.  The current checkbox state (and it's other DOM attributes) can be set or read from within these code segments by reference to the default context-object, 'this'.

The first code segment will be executed when the checkbox is initially displayed, so that you can programmatically determine it's starting checked/unchecked state.  The second code segment (if present) is executed whenever the checkbox is clicked, so that you can perform programmed responses or intercept and override the checkbox state based on complex logic using the TW core API or custom functions defined in plugins (e.g. testing a particular tiddler title to see if certain tags are set or setting some tags when the checkbox is clicked).

Note: if you want to use the default checkbox initialization processing with a custom onclick function, use this syntax: {{{ [x=id{}{javascript}] }}} 
<<<
!!!!! Macro usage
<<<
In addition to embedded checkboxes using the wiki syntax described above, a ''macro-based syntax'' is also provided, for use in templates where wiki syntax cannot be directly used.  This macro syntax can also be used in tiddler content, as an alternative to the wiki syntax.  When embedded in [[PageTemplate]], [[ViewTemplate]], or [[EditTemplate]] (or custom alternative templates), use the following macro syntax:
//{{{
<span macro="checkbox target checked id onInit onClick"></span>
//}}}
or, when embedded in tiddler content, use the following macro syntax:
//{{{
<<checkbox target checked id onInit onClick>>
//}}}
where:
''target''
>is either a tag reference (e.g., ''tagname|tiddlername'') or a field reference (e.g. ''fieldname@tiddlername''), as described above.
''checked'' (optional)
>is a keyword that sets the initial state of the checkbox to "checked".  When omitted, the default checkbox state is "unchecked".
''id'' (optional)
>specifies an internal config.options.* ID, as described above.  If the ID begins with "chk", a cookie-based persistent value will be created to track the checkbox state in between sessions.
''onInit'' (optional)
>contains a javascript event handler to be performed when the checkbox is initially rendered (see details above).
''onClick'' (optional)
>contains a javascript event handler to be performed each time the checkbox is clicked (see details above).
>//note: to use the default onInit handler with a custom onClick handler, use "" (empty quotes) as a placeholder for the onInit parameter//
<<<
!!!!!Examples
<<<
''checked and unchecked static default ("inline X") values:''
//{{{
[X] label
[_] label
//}}}
>[X] label
>[_] label
''document-based value (id='demo', no cookie):''
//{{{
[_=demo] label
//}}}
>[_=demo] label
''cookie-based value  (id='chkDemo'):''
//{{{
[_=chkDemo] label
//}}}
>[_=chkDemo] label
''tag-based value (TogglyTagging):''
//{{{
[_(CheckboxPlugin|demotag)]
[_(CheckboxPlugin|demotag){this.refresh.tagged=this.refresh.container=false}]
//}}}
>[_(CheckboxPlugin|demotag)] toggle 'demotag' (and refresh tiddler display)
>[_(CheckboxPlugin|demotag){this.refresh.tagged=this.refresh.container=false}] toggle 'demotag' (no refresh)
''field-based values:''
//{{{
[_(demofield@CheckboxPlugin)] demofield@CheckboxPlugin
[_(demofield@)] demofield@ (equivalent to demonfield@ current tiddler)
[_(checked@CheckboxPlugin)] checked@CheckboxPlugin
[_(@CheckboxPlugin)] @CheckboxPlugin
[_(@)] @ (equivalent to checked@ current tiddler)
//}}}
>[_(demofield@CheckboxPlugin)] demofield@CheckboxPlugin
>[_(demofield@)] demofield@ (current tiddler)
>[_(checked@CheckboxPlugin)] checked@CheckboxPlugin
>[_(@CheckboxPlugin)] @CheckboxPlugin
>[_(@)] toggle field: @ (defaults to "checked@here")
>click to view current: <<toolbar fields>>
''custom init and onClick functions:''
//{{{
[X{this.checked=true}{alert(this.checked?"on":"off")}] message box with checkbox state
//}}}
>[X{this.checked=true}{alert(this.checked?"on":"off")}] message box with checkbox state
''retrieving option values:''
>config.options['demo']=<script>return config.options['demo']?"true":"false";</script>
>config.options['chkDemo']=<script>return config.options['chkDemo']?"true":"false";</script>
<<<
!!!!!Configuration
<<<
Normally, when a checkbox state is changed, the affected tiddlers are automatically re-rendered, so that any checkbox-dependent dynamic content can be updated.  There are three possible tiddlers to be re-rendered, depending upon where the checkbox is placed, and what kind of storage method it is using.
*''container'': the tiddler in which the checkbox is displayed. (e.g., this tiddler)
*''tagged'': the tiddler that is being tagged (e.g., "~MyTask" when tagging "~MyTask:done")
*''tagging'': the "tag tiddler" (e.g., "~done" when tagging "~MyTask:done")
You can set the default refresh handling for all checkboxes in your document by using the following javascript syntax either in a systemConfig plugin, or as an inline script.  (Substitute true/false values as desired):
{{{config.checkbox.refresh = { tagged:true, tagging:true, container:true };}}}

You can also override these defaults for any given checkbox by using an initialization function to set one or more of the refresh options.  For example:
{{{[_{this.refresh.container=false}]}}}
<<<
!!!!!Installation
<<<
import (or copy/paste) the following tiddlers into your document:
''CheckboxPlugin'' (tagged with <<tag systemConfig>>)
<<<
!!!!!Revision History
<<<
2007.08.06 - 2.2.5 supress automatic refresh of any tiddler that is currently being edited.  Ensures that current tiddler edit sessions are not prematurely discarded (losing any changes).  However, if checkbox changes a tag on a tiddler being edited, update the "tags" input field (if any) so that saving the edited tiddler correctly reflects any changes due to checkbox activity... see refreshEditorTagField().
2007.07.13 - 2.2.4 in handler(), fix srctid reference (was "w.tiddler", should have been "w.tiddler.title").  This fixes broken 'inline X' plus fatal macro error when using PartTiddlerPlugin.  Thanks to cmari for reporting the problem and UdoBorkowski for finding the code error.
2007.06.21 - 2.2.3 suppress automatic refresh of tiddler when using macro-syntax to prevent premature end of tiddler editing session.
2007.06.20 - 2.2.2 fixed handling for 'inline X' when checkboxes are contained in a 'trancluded' tiddler.  Now, regardless of where an inline X checkbox appears, the X will be placed in the originating source tiddler, rather than the tiddler in which the checkbox appears.
2007.06.17 - 2.2.1 Refactored code to add checkbox //macro// syntax for use in templates (e.g., {{{macro="checkbox ..."}}}. Also, code cleanup of existing tag handling.
2007.06.16 - 2.2.0 added support for tracking checkbox states using tiddler fields via "(fieldname@tiddlername)" syntax.
2006.05.04 - 2.1.3 fix use of findContainingTiddler() to check for a non-null return value, so that checkboxes won't crash when used outside of tiddler display context (such as in header, sidebar or mainmenu)
2006.03.11 - 2.1.2 added "|" as delimiter to tag-based storage syntax (e.g. "tiddler|tag") to avoid parsing ambiguity when tiddler titles or tag names contain ":".   Using ":" as a delimiter is still supported but is deprecated in favor of the new "|" usage.  Based on a problem reported by JeffMason.
2006.02.25 - 2.1.0 added configuration options to enable/disable forced refresh of tiddlers when toggling tags
2006.02.23 - 2.0.4 when toggling tags, force refresh of the tiddler containing the checkbox.
2006.02.23 - 2.0.3 when toggling tags, force refresh of the 'tagged tiddler' so that tag-related tiddler content (such as "to-do" lists) can be re-rendered.
2006.02.23 - 2.0.2 when using tag-based storage, allow use [[ and ]] to quote tiddler or tag names that contain spaces:
{{{[x([[Tiddler with spaces]]:[[tag with spaces]])]}}}
2006.01.10 - 2.0.1 when toggling tags, force refresh of the 'tagging tiddler'.  For example, if you toggle the "systemConfig" tag on a plugin, the corresponding "systemConfig" TIDDLER will be automatically refreshed (if currently displayed), so that the 'tagged' list in that tiddler will remain up-to-date.
2006.01.04 - 2.0.0 update for ~TW2.0
2005.12.27 - 1.1.2 Fix lookAhead regExp handling for {{{[x=id]}}}, which had been including the "]" in the extracted ID.  
Added check for "chk" prefix on ID before calling saveOptionCookie()
2005.12.26 - 1.1.2 Corrected use of toUpperCase() in tiddler re-write code when comparing {{{[X]}}} in tiddler content with checkbox state. Fixes a problem where simple checkboxes could be set, but never cleared.
2005.12.26 - 1.1.0 Revise syntax so all optional parameters are included INSIDE the [ and ] brackets.  Backward compatibility with older syntax is supported, so content changes are not required when upgrading to the current version of this plugin.   Based on a suggestion by GeoffSlocock
2005.12.25 - 1.0.0 added support for tracking checkbox state using tags ("TogglyTagging")
Revised version number for official post-beta release.
2005.12.08 - 0.9.3 support separate 'init' and 'onclick' function definitions.
2005.12.08 - 0.9.2 clean up lookahead pattern
2005.12.07 - 0.9.1 only update tiddler source content if checkbox state is actually different.  Eliminates unnecessary tiddler changes (and 'unsaved changes' warnings)
2005.12.07 - 0.9.0 initial BETA release
<<<
!!!!!Credits
<<<
This feature was created by EricShulman from [[ELS Design Studios|http:/www.elsdesign.com]]
<<<
!!!!!Code
***/
//{{{
version.extensions.CheckboxPlugin = {major: 2, minor: 2, revision:5 , date: new Date(2007,8,6)};
//}}}

//{{{
config.checkbox = { refresh: { tagged:true, tagging:true, container:true } };
config.formatters.push( {
	name: "checkbox",
	match: "\\[[xX_ ][\\]\\=\\(\\{]",
	lookahead: "\\[([xX_ ])(=[^\\s\\(\\]{]+)?(\\([^\\)]*\\))?({[^}]*})?({[^}]*})?\\]",
	handler: function(w) {
		var lookaheadRegExp = new RegExp(this.lookahead,"mg");
		lookaheadRegExp.lastIndex = w.matchStart;
		var lookaheadMatch = lookaheadRegExp.exec(w.source)
		if(lookaheadMatch && lookaheadMatch.index == w.matchStart) {
			// get params
			var checked=(lookaheadMatch[1].toUpperCase()=="X");
			var id=lookaheadMatch[2];
			var target=lookaheadMatch[3];
			if (target) target=target.substr(1,target.length-2).trim(); // trim off parentheses
			var fn_init=lookaheadMatch[4];
			var fn_click=lookaheadMatch[5];
			var tid=story.findContainingTiddler(w.output);  if (tid) tid=tid.getAttribute("tiddler");
			var srctid=w.tiddler?w.tiddler.title:null;
			config.macros.checkbox.create(w.output,tid,srctid,w.matchStart+1,checked,id,target,config.checkbox.refresh,fn_init,fn_click);
			w.nextMatch = lookaheadMatch.index + lookaheadMatch[0].length;
		}
	}
} );
config.macros.checkbox = {
	handler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		if(!(tiddler instanceof Tiddler)) { // if no tiddler passed in try to find one
			var here=story.findContainingTiddler(place);
			if (here) tiddler=store.getTiddler(here.getAttribute("tiddler"))
		}
		var srcpos=0; // "inline X" not applicable to macro syntax
		var target=params.shift(); if (!target) target="";
		var defaultState=params[0]=="checked"; if (defaultState) params.shift();
		var id=params.shift(); if (id && !id.length) id=null;
		var fn_init=params.shift(); if (fn_init && !fn_init.length) fn_init=null;
		var fn_click=params.shift(); if (fn_click && !fn_click.length) fn_click=null;
		var refresh={ tagged:true, tagging:true, container:false };
		this.create(place,tiddler.title,tiddler.title,0,defaultState,id,target,refresh,fn_init,fn_click);
	},
	create: function(place,tid,srctid,srcpos,defaultState,id,target,refresh,fn_init,fn_click) {
		// create checkbox element
		var c = document.createElement("input");
		c.setAttribute("type","checkbox");
		c.onclick=this.onClickCheckbox;
		c.srctid=srctid; // remember source tiddler
		c.srcpos=srcpos; // remember location of "X"
		c.container=tid; // containing tiddler (may be null if not in a tiddler)
		c.tiddler=tid; // default target tiddler 
		c.refresh = {};
		c.refresh.container = refresh.container;
		c.refresh.tagged = refresh.tagged;
		c.refresh.tagging = refresh.tagging;
		place.appendChild(c);
		// set default state
		c.checked=defaultState;
		// track state in config.options.ID
		if (id) {
			c.id=id.substr(1); // trim off leading "="
			if (config.options[c.id]!=undefined)
				c.checked=config.options[c.id];
			else
				config.options[c.id]=c.checked;
		}
		// track state in (tiddlername|tagname) or (fieldname@tiddlername)
		if (target) {
			var pos=target.indexOf("@");
			if (pos!=-1) {
				c.field=pos?target.substr(0,pos):"checked"; // get fieldname (or use default "checked")
				c.tiddler=target.substr(pos+1); // get specified tiddler name (if any)
				if (!c.tiddler || !c.tiddler.length) c.tiddler=tid; // if tiddler not specified, default == container
				if (store.getValue(c.tiddler,c.field)!=undefined)
					c.checked=(store.getValue(c.tiddler,c.field)=="true"); // set checkbox from saved state
			} else {
				var pos=target.indexOf("|"); if (pos==-1) var pos=target.indexOf(":");
				c.tag=target;
				if (pos==0) c.tag=target.substr(1); // trim leading "|" or ":"
				if (pos>0) { c.tiddler=target.substr(0,pos); c.tag=target.substr(pos+1); }
				if (!c.tag.length) c.tag="checked";
				var t=store.getTiddler(c.tiddler);
				if (t && t.tags)
					c.checked=t.isTagged(c.tag); // set checkbox from saved state
			}
		}
		if (fn_init) c.fn_init=fn_init.trim().substr(1,fn_init.length-2); // trim off surrounding { and } delimiters
		if (fn_click) c.fn_click=fn_click.trim().substr(1,fn_click.length-2);
		c.init=true; c.onclick(); c.init=false; // compute initial state and save in tiddler/config/cookie
	},
	onClickCheckbox: function(event) {
		if (this.fn_init)
			// custom function hook to set initial state (run only once)
			{ try { eval(this.fn_init); this.fn_init=null; } catch(e) { displayMessage("Checkbox init error: "+e.toString()); } }
		else if (this.fn_click)
			// custom function hook to override or react to changes in checkbox state
			{ try { eval(this.fn_click) } catch(e) { displayMessage("Checkbox click error: "+e.toString()); } }
		if (this.id)
			// save state in config AND cookie (only when ID starts with 'chk')
			{ config.options[this.id]=this.checked; if (this.id.substr(0,3)=="chk") saveOptionCookie(this.id); }
		if (this.srctid && this.srcpos>0 && (!this.id || this.id.substr(0,3)!="chk") && !this.tag && !this.field) {
			// save state in tiddler content only if not using cookie, tag or field tracking
			var t=store.getTiddler(this.srctid); // put X in original source tiddler (if any)
			if (t && this.checked!=(t.text.substr(this.srcpos,1).toUpperCase()=="X")) { // if changed
				t.set(null,t.text.substr(0,this.srcpos)+(this.checked?"X":"_")+t.text.substr(this.srcpos+1),null,null,t.tags);
				if (!story.isDirty(t.title)) story.refreshTiddler(t.title,null,true);
				store.setDirty(true);
			}
		}
		if (this.field) {
			if (this.checked && !store.tiddlerExists(this.tiddler))
				store.saveTiddler(this.tiddler,this.tiddler,"",config.options.txtUserName,new Date());
			// set the field value in the target tiddler
			store.setValue(this.tiddler,this.field,this.checked?"true":"false");
			// DEBUG: displayMessage(this.field+"@"+this.tiddler+" is "+this.checked);
		}
		if (this.tag) {
			if (this.checked && !store.tiddlerExists(this.tiddler))
				store.saveTiddler(this.tiddler,this.tiddler,"",config.options.txtUserName,new Date());
			var t=store.getTiddler(this.tiddler);
			if (t) {
				var tagged=(t.tags && t.tags.find(this.tag)!=null);
				if (this.checked && !tagged) { t.tags.push(this.tag); store.setDirty(true); }
				if (!this.checked && tagged) { t.tags.splice(t.tags.find(this.tag),1); store.setDirty(true); }
			}
			// if tag state has been changed, update display of corresponding tiddlers (unless they are in edit mode...)
			if (this.checked!=tagged) {
				if (this.refresh.tagged) {
					if (!story.isDirty(this.tiddler)) story.refreshTiddler(this.tiddler,null,true); // the TAGGED tiddler in view mode
					else config.macros.checkbox.refreshEditorTagField(this.tiddler,this.tag,this.checked); // the TAGGED tiddler in edit mode (with tags field)
				}
				if (this.refresh.tagging)
					if (!story.isDirty(this.tag)) story.refreshTiddler(this.tag,null,true); // the TAGGING tiddler
			}
		}
		// refresh containing tiddler (but not during initial rendering, or we get an infinite loop!) (and not when editing container)
		if (!this.init && this.refresh.container && this.container!=this.tiddler)
			if (!story.isDirty(this.container)) story.refreshTiddler(this.container,null,true); // the tiddler CONTAINING the checkbox
		return true;
	},
	refreshEditorTagField: function(title,tag,set) {
		var tagfield=story.getTiddlerField(title,"tags");
		if (!tagfield||tagfield.getAttribute("edit")!="tags") return; // if no tags field in editor (i.e., custom template)
		var tags=tagfield.value.readBracketedList();
		if (tags.contains(tag)==set) return; // if no change needed
		if (set) tags.push(tag); // add tag
		else tags.splice(tags.indexOf(tag),1); // remove tag
		for (var t=0;t<tags.length;t++) tags[t]=String.encodeTiddlyLink(tags[t]);
		tagfield.value=tags.join(" "); // reassemble tag string (with brackets as needed)
		return;
	}
}
//}}}

Background: #fff
Foreground: #000
PrimaryPale: #ddeeaa
PrimaryLight: #ddeeaa
PrimaryMid: #666633
PrimaryDark: #014
SecondaryPale: #bbdd88
SecondaryLight: #fe8
SecondaryMid: #db4
SecondaryDark: #666633
TertiaryPale: #eee
TertiaryLight: #ccc
TertiaryMid: #999
TertiaryDark: #aacc88
Error: #f88

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
If an ant living on an expanding balloon had the intelligence of a human being, it would see its universe expanding. Its conclusion would be similar to ours based on the red shift. Then, since its intelligence is like ours, it would think that since everything is expanding, the world must have originated from some original infinitesimal point. There must have been an originating "big bang" out of nothingness.

But the ant happened to land on a balloon blown up by someone in a circus or street carnival. Something totally outside its existence and intelligence is responsible for its place in the universe.

It may be, ultimately, that way with us. We don't know, of course, and that should not give comfort to the enemies of science and the scientific metaphysics. But it can give the kind of comfort a child feels, that it is in hands greater and more powerful than its own, and that it doesn't have the challenge, difficulty, and responsibility of solving all its problems and satisfying all its desires.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
It's interesting how Skinner's "operant conditioning" is similar to Darwin's "natural selection." In both an event occurs—a behavior for Skinner, a mutation for Darwinism—which is successful or leads somewhere: it is rewarded for Skinner and adaptive for Darwin. Both have outcomes of change and creation of complexity.

It may be that both are instances of the broadest mechanism characteristic of existence. Everything that exists, every individual entity, has structural characteristics of some sort. These characteristics dictate how it will interact with other entities and their distinctive structures. They may combine to create a new entity; they may destroy each other; or they may fail to interact altogether. In the first case—combining to create a new entity or structure—complexity is created.

This description seems to apply to the whole of creation, from the purported Big Bang from Nothingness to the great complexity of existence on a planet such as our own.

It is a fantastic process. It creates us. It is us. There is every reason to regard and represent it as a religion.
!

# Group ENTRIES by a common tag, 'xxxx'.
# Create subtopic menu:
** rename as ''//xxxx//SubtopicMenu''
** enter the ENTRY titles into the table cells
# Create the viewtemplate
** rename as ''//xxxx//ViewTemplate''
** edit this line in the body, to this syntax using the 'xxxx' tag name:
{{{
<class='xxxx' macro='tiddler xxxxSubtopicMenu'>
}}}
!!SUBTOPIC PAGE CONTENT
{{{
<html>
<div style="color: rgb(100, 100, 150); font-family: Monaco;"><big><b>
TITLE OR HEADER OR DESCRIPTOR . . . .. 
</html>
1. [[x |1.11]]
2. [[y |1.12]]
3. [[z |1.13]]
!!
}}}
!!PLOT PAGE CONTENT
{{{
//header title//
<html><img src="00/xxxx.png" style="height:400px"></html>
[[BACK|XXTAGNAMEXX]]
!!!
}}}
!!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
We like to speak of our control over nature. That's a big program for self-promoting free enterprise of course, and it can even trace its roots to the religion of Abraham: God created man in his self-image and the earth and its creatures for his use.

Well, it turns out of course that we can't control nature. The BP oil spill is the latest example. God speaking to Job out of the whirlwind told us that. We can't control volcanoes, hurricanes, or pressures from oil five miles into the earth's crust when we find a way to penetrate to it.

Turning away from nature, God in the whirlwind, and BP, we find we can't even control ourselves. We can't control our minds, our actions, our desires, our behavior, and all the political/economic/cultural results they produce, because we can't control our brains, which after all belong to the realm of volcanoes and hurricanes.

So we do the best we can, at least so far as nature's environmental volcanoes are concerned. But with the volcano of the brain, its physiology and seismology one could say, we don't have a clue.

As an illustration: On page 265 of Eric Kandel's //In Search of Memory// there is a diagram which shows the effects of a stimulus on a sensory neuron which results in release of serotonin by an interneuron at a synapse to a motor neuron. In short-term memory, a single stimulus strengthens the synapse; in long-term memory, repeated stimulation causes kinases to move into the neuron's nucleus, leading to gene expression and growth of new synapses. How are we to control the flow of stimuli to our sensory neurons? How are we to control the shaping of those neurons and our brain? We cannot.

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
There's another just-so story from evolutionary psychology reported in the November/December issue of Harvard magazine, this one from Richard Wrangham, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard. It goes this way: cooking food makes more calories available from existing food, thus "reducing the caloric cost of digestion" (you don't have to chew all day long like gorillas), "making more metabolic energy available for other things: the development of a large brain relative to gut size" and "later, in prehistoric societies, more time available for hunting" (instead of chewing all day long, we made weapons to go hunting). So men hunted and women cooked. But the smell of fire and roasting meat (one thinks of Charles Lamb's short story, "A Dissertation on Roast Pig") attracted other males bent on scrounging free food, which led women to bond with their hunter-provider, who in turn established bonds with other men in a "primitive protection racket" in which husbands "used their bonds with other men in the community to protect their wives from being robbed, and women returned the favor by preparing their husband's meals."

It's truly astonishing that this sort of thing makes a claim to being part of the scientific metaphysics. For example, tracing growth in brain size to greater caloric availability, while absurd in itself (why not use the available calories for larger penises—fornicating is probably more adaptive than thinking), simply ignores all the environmental influences on complex and mobile bodies that would lead to increased neural function and therefore greater brain size.

What explains the gullibility of the public and apparently the scientific community to swallow (keeping to the food metaphor) this kind of nonsense? Part of the reason probably has to do with the nature of academic departments, their specialization and lack of accountability except to their peers. As for the educated public, it is impressed by the "hard science" that seems to be foundation for the whole fantasy: there are more calories available in cooked food than in raw food that can make metabolic energy available for other physiological developments and behavior activities. Then, of course, there is the imaginative simplicity of the entire story. Television and movie makers know very well how to exploit this weakness to sell their products, no matter how implausible the stories may be. "Silence of the Lambs" (still keeping with the food theme) is a perfectly ridiculous story, but utterly riveting.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces E|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
Forget about string theory, multiple universes, parallel universes, all those mathematically driven possibilities to account for the explosion of data from instruments like the CERN Hadron Collider and the computers that assemble it. The universe as we know it, with multiple galaxies (they say billions, but one has to wonder) and the billions or millions of stars within each of them, and the many millions or at least thousands of those stars with planetary systems that can produce life such as ours is enough.

Well then, we sit on this planet wondering if we are "alone." We might as well be sitting on another planet in another galaxy, or even in our own, the Milky Way, wondering if we are "alone." It's a little like wondering why one wasn't born someone else, in another family in a different country on this, our own planet.

There is plenty to wonder at with what we do in fact know. What is needed now are some Giordano Brunos and Jacob Boehmes with their "cosmic poetry," as Windelband called it. The irony is that they wouldn't be persecuted or put to death by the Church, but by science itself; they would be ignored or ridiculed. Teilhard de Chardin is an example.
!

/***
|''Name:''|CryptoFunctionsPlugin|
|''Description:''|Support for cryptographic functions|
***/
//{{{
if(!version.extensions.CryptoFunctionsPlugin) {
version.extensions.CryptoFunctionsPlugin = {installed:true};

//--
//-- Crypto functions and associated conversion routines
//--

// Crypto "namespace"
function Crypto() {}

// Convert a string to an array of big-endian 32-bit words
Crypto.strToBe32s = function(str)
{
	var be = Array();
	var len = Math.floor(str.length/4);
	var i, j;
	for(i=0, j=0; i<len; i++, j+=4) {
		be[i] = ((str.charCodeAt(j)&0xff) << 24)|((str.charCodeAt(j+1)&0xff) << 16)|((str.charCodeAt(j+2)&0xff) << 8)|(str.charCodeAt(j+3)&0xff);
	}
	while (j<str.length) {
		be[j>>2] |= (str.charCodeAt(j)&0xff)<<(24-(j*8)%32);
		j++;
	}
	return be;
};

// Convert an array of big-endian 32-bit words to a string
Crypto.be32sToStr = function(be)
{
	var str = "";
	for(var i=0;i<be.length*32;i+=8)
		str += String.fromCharCode((be[i>>5]>>>(24-i%32)) & 0xff);
	return str;
};

// Convert an array of big-endian 32-bit words to a hex string
Crypto.be32sToHex = function(be)
{
	var hex = "0123456789ABCDEF";
	var str = "";
	for(var i=0;i<be.length*4;i++)
		str += hex.charAt((be[i>>2]>>((3-i%4)*8+4))&0xF) + hex.charAt((be[i>>2]>>((3-i%4)*8))&0xF);
	return str;
};

// Return, in hex, the SHA-1 hash of a string
Crypto.hexSha1Str = function(str)
{
	return Crypto.be32sToHex(Crypto.sha1Str(str));
};

// Return the SHA-1 hash of a string
Crypto.sha1Str = function(str)
{
	return Crypto.sha1(Crypto.strToBe32s(str),str.length);
};

// Calculate the SHA-1 hash of an array of blen bytes of big-endian 32-bit words
Crypto.sha1 = function(x,blen)
{
	// Add 32-bit integers, wrapping at 32 bits
	add32 = function(a,b)
	{
		var lsw = (a&0xFFFF)+(b&0xFFFF);
		var msw = (a>>16)+(b>>16)+(lsw>>16);
		return (msw<<16)|(lsw&0xFFFF);
	};
	// Add five 32-bit integers, wrapping at 32 bits
	add32x5 = function(a,b,c,d,e)
	{
		var lsw = (a&0xFFFF)+(b&0xFFFF)+(c&0xFFFF)+(d&0xFFFF)+(e&0xFFFF);
		var msw = (a>>16)+(b>>16)+(c>>16)+(d>>16)+(e>>16)+(lsw>>16);
		return (msw<<16)|(lsw&0xFFFF);
	};
	// Bitwise rotate left a 32-bit integer by 1 bit
	rol32 = function(n)
	{
		return (n>>>31)|(n<<1);
	};

	var len = blen*8;
	// Append padding so length in bits is 448 mod 512
	x[len>>5] |= 0x80 << (24-len%32);
	// Append length
	x[((len+64>>9)<<4)+15] = len;
	var w = Array(80);

	var k1 = 0x5A827999;
	var k2 = 0x6ED9EBA1;
	var k3 = 0x8F1BBCDC;
	var k4 = 0xCA62C1D6;

	var h0 = 0x67452301;
	var h1 = 0xEFCDAB89;
	var h2 = 0x98BADCFE;
	var h3 = 0x10325476;
	var h4 = 0xC3D2E1F0;

	for(var i=0;i<x.length;i+=16) {
		var j,t;
		var a = h0;
		var b = h1;
		var c = h2;
		var d = h3;
		var e = h4;
		for(j = 0;j<16;j++) {
			w[j] = x[i+j];
			t = add32x5(e,(a>>>27)|(a<<5),d^(b&(c^d)),w[j],k1);
			e=d; d=c; c=(b>>>2)|(b<<30); b=a; a = t;
		}
		for(j=16;j<20;j++) {
			w[j] = rol32(w[j-3]^w[j-8]^w[j-14]^w[j-16]);
			t = add32x5(e,(a>>>27)|(a<<5),d^(b&(c^d)),w[j],k1);
			e=d; d=c; c=(b>>>2)|(b<<30); b=a; a = t;
		}
		for(j=20;j<40;j++) {
			w[j] = rol32(w[j-3]^w[j-8]^w[j-14]^w[j-16]);
			t = add32x5(e,(a>>>27)|(a<<5),b^c^d,w[j],k2);
			e=d; d=c; c=(b>>>2)|(b<<30); b=a; a = t;
		}
		for(j=40;j<60;j++) {
			w[j] = rol32(w[j-3]^w[j-8]^w[j-14]^w[j-16]);
			t = add32x5(e,(a>>>27)|(a<<5),(b&c)|(d&(b|c)),w[j],k3);
			e=d; d=c; c=(b>>>2)|(b<<30); b=a; a = t;
		}
		for(j=60;j<80;j++) {
			w[j] = rol32(w[j-3]^w[j-8]^w[j-14]^w[j-16]);
			t = add32x5(e,(a>>>27)|(a<<5),b^c^d,w[j],k4);
			e=d; d=c; c=(b>>>2)|(b<<30); b=a; a = t;
		}

		h0 = add32(h0,a);
		h1 = add32(h1,b);
		h2 = add32(h2,c);
		h3 = add32(h3,d);
		h4 = add32(h4,e);
	}
	return Array(h0,h1,h2,h3,h4);
};


}
//}}}

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
There is a good review of a new translation of Dante’s //Paradiso// by Joan Acocella in the New Yorker that brings me back again to that amazing work, so utterly foreign to our metaphysics now, but still so powerful regarding human nature. The review, of course, focuses on the part of the Comedy that is hardly read—heaven. Hell, as the review points out, is more to our tastes and resonates better with our psyches and what we allow them to become. But, as the review also points out, we can’t understand even hell with that undeveloped psyche; how, for example, it could have been created from “divine love.”

But what strikes me is that in Dante’s attempt to describe heaven, his aesthetic devices leave him. That is natural and as it should be. He is trying to describe what later Spinoza identified as the condition of “blessedness,” and though he tried mightily as Dante did with aesthetic devices, his intellectual devices almost leave him too. When one tries to depict the ultimate condition of the human psyche and human existence, the aesthetic and the intellectual, and the passion, desire or yearning that drives them both, are inadequate. Perhaps they have to drop away as the sins drop away one by one as Dante goes from ledge to ledge in Purgatory.

The real point that strikes me, however, is that within the metaphysics of the natural sciences that goal and condition of the best human existence and human psyche is absolutely no different from Dante’s and Spinoza’s. It is a state of harmony and fulfillment where all psychic tensions and conflicts have been worked out and disappear. That fulfillment, happiness and blessedness, occurs within the very framework of the metaphysics of natural science. After all, since that conception—rather, that kind of universe—created those conflicts and tensions for our psyches as a result of our living within it and as part of it, it seems natural that that same universe should allow us to resolve them. One could say it is part of its fulfillment and destiny, just as evolution itself is.

In short, I don’t think there may be any difference between Christianity and science in terms of the best and most desirable outcome for the human psyche and human existence. Their metaphysics of course are opposed, and the Christian (and Muslim and Judaic) metaphysics is clearly false. But the same best outcome for human beings follows equally from both.

I think it is the same for all religions. One has heaven or nirvana, the two extremes of bliss, fulfillment, happiness. Now it comes from biology and natural science. Nature, as it were, wants us to solve the problem she has created for us in enabling us to live. And she punishes us to the extent that we fail. Dante didn’t get his knowledge of suffering, sin, and punishment from God; he got it from his insight into the human psyche, human consciousness, and how its misuse is it own punishment. (I used to enjoy trying to get this idea across to students in the humanities course at St. Petersburg Junior College.)

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
On October 29 we scattered my brother David's ashes in Deadman's Swamp in Cromwell, Connecticut. Most of them were not ashes at all, but had the consistency of garden fertilizer. In fact, as I looked up when I got back to Washington, they are fertilizer: 47.5% phosphate, 25.3% calcium, 11% sulfate, 3.69% potassium (potash), and seventeen other chemicals and elements in small or trace amounts. Altogether the maple box with sliding lid and "David A.Titus, December 2, 1934 - June 13, 2006" carved into it weighed seven or eight pounds, which surprised me as I carried it down to the edge of the swamp.

After David was cremated in June, his son Jeffrey told me his wife Rie put the box of ashes on his dresser. Her thought must have been that those ashes and granulations were his father and should remain close to him—and of course that is right. Now, a week after the scattering, they are somewhat broken down or rearranged. They are still David, just in different form.

In Lin Yutang's translation of //Chuangtzu// (//The Wisdom of China and India//, p. 662) there is a man who visits a dying friend, and leaning against the door of his room says, "I wonder what God will make of you now, and whither he will send you. Do you think he will make you into a rat's liver or an insect leg?" As I later wrote to Jeffrey, it would be nice to think of David, part of him, becoming the red eye of a black rail; he would become a real "Tito rail" as Mike DiGeorgio depicted him in his wonderfully funny painting of a black rail, cigarette hanging from beak, beer can clutched in one raised claw, and bleary, hung-over red eye.

The dying man and friend leaning against the door in //Chuangtzu// were two of four friends whose bond was that they could "make Not-being the head, Life the backbone, and Death the tail," believing that "death and life and being and non-being are of one body." That turns out to be quite literally true in the scientific metaphysics. Those chemicals and elements into which David's conscious and functioning body broke down are being sifted and gathered into new and other forms, some of which may be a rat's liver, an insect leg, or a black rail's red eye. Some of them might even find their way into the neural system of another conscious human being a hundred years from now. Mysticism and reincarnation meet in the modern scientific metaphysics.

In the West our cemeteries are filled with bodies whose flesh was poisoned with embalming fluid and sealed off from the earth by heavy metal caskets. It makes sense, because in the Judeo-Christian tradition man is not part of nature; his spirit—his true nature—has wafted from his body and sent to heaven (or hell). The body remains a leftover that one has to do something with, a sort of grisly heirloom that is kept in the cemetery.

Four hundred years of growth and consolidation of the scientific metaphysics has made this Western Judeo-Christian metaphysics and the values bound into it seem naive, childish, and almost silly. The Eastern tradition of Taoism (as in //Chuangtzu//) and Buddhism on the other hand seems almost magically insightful and prophetic for what was to come in our understanding of existence.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
The seven deadly sins are Lust, Avarice, Gluttony, Sloth, Rage, Pride, and Envy. Customarily they are analyzed and treated phenomenologically. But it is better to focus on particular situations in which one succumbs to them and to try to grasp the particular sensations that occur and the way they stimulate responses—and the kind of responses and further sensations they bring about. Then one begins to understand their biological roots, how and why they operate as they do, why they (quite properly) come to be regarded as sins, and even why Dante could say hell—the place where they are carried to their extreme—could be created by "God's love."

Take gluttony. One is hungry and sits down to a delicious meal, delectable and good to look at. He eats and stuffs until he is almost sick, regrets that he can't get more pleasure from eating more, or that the food is gone, and in spite of all is looking forward to the next feast. Maybe he would like to vomit, as the Romans reportedly did, so he can eat more.

What is at the bottom of this? Pleasure. And what is pleasure? Sensations that are desired. All those seven sins involve sensations that our nature, our biological nature, is contrived to seek: Gluttony, food; Lust, sex; Sloth, the comfort of rest from strenuous activity; Rage, the curious sensations of exuberance and combat, almost like lust; Pride, an image of power, importance or beauty of oneself; Envy, the same image one would like to take from another; Avarice, the accumulation or possession of the means to any of the pleasurable sensations involved in the other six sins.

Biologically all involve food, sex, and the maintenance or preservation of one's //umwelt//, one's "life" as the behaviorist would like to put it. And humans, with their capacity of memory and conceptual-neural plasticity, would like the best in all three: that they be perfect, continuous, and permanent (as Spinoza would say). It is that effort that turns them into sins. One wants food and sex, the best of each, all the time; and one wants nothing but food and sex. One wants to be admired all the time, to have bodily ease and comfort continuously, the pleasure of punishing those who deny these pleasures to us, and to have the security of means to insure all of this. Each constellation of sensations, bound by desire, is universalized—which is what making them perfect, continuous, and permanent is all about.

But that, of course, is what Dante's hell is all about—Paolo and Francesca in the whirlwind, the avaricious weighted in their leaden robes, the gluttonous swollen like pigs, the angry in a torment of constant rage, and so on. The attempt to universalize the natural biological pleasures is its own punishment, its own hell. That's what Dante recognized.

The biological "logic" of the organism is to use its sensations as guide or indicators to food, a mate, and those situations that maintain and preserve its existence. The means or force to carry it out is what we recognize as desire—a matter of neural circuits connected to physiological processes of a different sort than the circuits and processes involved in sensation. That logic, of sensations operating through impulse, drive, desire, is the basis of the pleasures and activities involved in the seven sins. But for simpler organisms, those without significant memory and plasticity, the logic is simple and effective: sensation, desire, activity, satiation, rest; renewed sensation, desire, activity, satiation, rest; and that for the rest of their lives. For us, however, it is different. Memory and plasticity enable us to cultivate those activities created by sensation and desire, to make them even better than natural circumstances generally allow, and to make them more continuous and to last longer. And that brings us to the brink of the sins.

And "God's Love"? There is some irony here. There is "Wisdom and Power," if that is the way one wants to attribute the miracle and marvel of nature that can produce organisms of such an extraordinary kind. But "Love"? Well, maybe you can say hell is the situation of giving humans what they want, if that is really what they want. It is an opportunity or possibility that nature, by its very logic, opens to them. It is a consequence, biologically speaking, of an organism's ability to find food and a mate, and to maintain itself in the world.

So much for hell. The problem of heaven is more confusing. It is the problem of happiness. The simple logical way of making pleasure perfect, continuous, and permanent leads to hell, and certainly one can give up the attempt to happiness—especially if one has little capacity for pleasure and joy to begin with. One can become a Puritan sourpuss, with all the psychological torment and aesthetic deprivation and offense that condition must bring.
!

[[FrontPage]]

/***
|''Name:''|DeprecatedFunctionsPlugin|
|''Description:''|Support for deprecated functions removed from core|
***/
//{{{
if(!version.extensions.DeprecatedFunctionsPlugin) {
version.extensions.DeprecatedFunctionsPlugin = {installed:true};

//--
//-- Deprecated code
//--

// @Deprecated: Use createElementAndWikify and this.termRegExp instead
config.formatterHelpers.charFormatHelper = function(w)
{
	w.subWikify(createTiddlyElement(w.output,this.element),this.terminator);
};

// @Deprecated: Use enclosedTextHelper and this.lookaheadRegExp instead
config.formatterHelpers.monospacedByLineHelper = function(w)
{
	var lookaheadRegExp = new RegExp(this.lookahead,"mg");
	lookaheadRegExp.lastIndex = w.matchStart;
	var lookaheadMatch = lookaheadRegExp.exec(w.source);
	if(lookaheadMatch && lookaheadMatch.index == w.matchStart) {
		var text = lookaheadMatch[1];
		if(config.browser.isIE)
			text = text.replace(/\n/g,"\r");
		createTiddlyElement(w.output,"pre",null,null,text);
		w.nextMatch = lookaheadRegExp.lastIndex;
	}
};

// @Deprecated: Use <br> or <br /> instead of <<br>>
config.macros.br = {};
config.macros.br.handler = function(place)
{
	createTiddlyElement(place,"br");
};

// Find an entry in an array. Returns the array index or null
// @Deprecated: Use indexOf instead
Array.prototype.find = function(item)
{
	var i = this.indexOf(item);
	return i == -1 ? null : i;
};

// Load a tiddler from an HTML DIV. The caller should make sure to later call Tiddler.changed()
// @Deprecated: Use store.getLoader().internalizeTiddler instead
Tiddler.prototype.loadFromDiv = function(divRef,title)
{
	return store.getLoader().internalizeTiddler(store,this,title,divRef);
};

// Format the text for storage in an HTML DIV
// @Deprecated Use store.getSaver().externalizeTiddler instead.
Tiddler.prototype.saveToDiv = function()
{
	return store.getSaver().externalizeTiddler(store,this);
};

// @Deprecated: Use store.allTiddlersAsHtml() instead
function allTiddlersAsHtml()
{
	return store.allTiddlersAsHtml();
}

// @Deprecated: Use refreshPageTemplate instead
function applyPageTemplate(title)
{
	refreshPageTemplate(title);
}

// @Deprecated: Use story.displayTiddlers instead
function displayTiddlers(srcElement,titles,template,unused1,unused2,animate,unused3)
{
	story.displayTiddlers(srcElement,titles,template,animate);
}

// @Deprecated: Use story.displayTiddler instead
function displayTiddler(srcElement,title,template,unused1,unused2,animate,unused3)
{
	story.displayTiddler(srcElement,title,template,animate);
}

// @Deprecated: Use functions on right hand side directly instead
var createTiddlerPopup = Popup.create;
var scrollToTiddlerPopup = Popup.show;
var hideTiddlerPopup = Popup.remove;

// @Deprecated: Use right hand side directly instead
var regexpBackSlashEn = new RegExp("\\\\n","mg");
var regexpBackSlash = new RegExp("\\\\","mg");
var regexpBackSlashEss = new RegExp("\\\\s","mg");
var regexpNewLine = new RegExp("\n","mg");
var regexpCarriageReturn = new RegExp("\r","mg");

}
//}}}

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
Siddhartha was a happy person (according to the story), with wife, child, wealth and future kingdom; but then one day a servant took him for a walk through town and he saw a sick person, and on later walks an old person and a corpse being carried off for cremation. Such was his innocence (thanks to his father's protectiveness) that he had to ask what they were. When he found out, according to the story, he said to himself, "What is the point of my happiness if I too am subject to these three conditions?" One cannot believe (if we want to flesh the story out) that he didn't become depressed. Maybe his father, observing his condition, took him to what passed for psychiatrists in those days and was given a prescription for what passed for anti-depressants. For some reason, the father and psychiatrists would say, he suddenly came down with the illness or disease of depression.

It's perfectly ridiculous. Of course sickness, old age, and death, the very conditions of human existence, are good and sufficient reasons for depression. And in modern societies we multiply and refine the sickness and suffering: we are forced to drive eight-lane freeways on a commute to and from work at a stress-filled job which has no other meaning or importance than to bring in enough money to rush into a grocery store on the way home for milk and eggs, waiting in line and dealing with rude fellow customer-commuters and cashiers, who of course are that way because they have to deal with the same ugly facts of life as everyone else. This is what Joyce in Lauren Slater's //Opening Skinner's Box// had to deal with—this texture was the very substance of her life—and she was diagnosed as depressed. Of course she was depressed. Good for her!

One can point out, of course, that there are people unlike Joyce who //don't// get depressed, who drive the eight lanes, work the meaningless job, shop the grocery store, and raise the children to do the same as themselves in the future. Well, there are people who look at sick people, old people, and corpses and say, "What of it? That's life." They are not depressed; they can "handle life" and are healthy. No disease there.

The proper response to that is 1) They know little of what happiness can be and have little desire for it; and 2) They are ignorant, which Buddhists put at the heart of things.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
When one destroys a building, turning it into a pile of rubble, it has lost its value for us. For nature, however, it has not; the building and rubble are one and the same; the rubble is just the disassembled building.

When we die, our lives have lost their value for us, but not for nature. Our bodies, the decaying remains or eight-pound box of chemicals from the crematorium are the same; our lives are just disassembled.

!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
I went through the books on my shelves this afternoon, putting in a pile those I will give to the used book seller on 33rd Street. In general, I think I made the distinction this way: those concerning the scientific metaphysics I kept. Those concerning the human //umwelt//, whether mine personally, like bird books and religious things picked up in India or at different stages in my life, I also kept. I also kept //umwelt// books with a reference beyond my own—Proust's //Remembrance of Things Past// and poetry anthologies, or texts like Janson's //History of Art// and Gombrich. Those books that confuse the two—the human //umwelt// existence and the larger existence described by the scientific metaphysics, and especially those that exploit that confusion for the sake of publishing—go to the used book man. That includes most of my philosophy books and a lot of the free publisher's copies/uncorrected proofs sent to U.S. News that I picked up while working there.
!

/***
|!''Name:''|!''E''asily ''A''daptable ''S''ource ''E''ditor|
|''Description:''|this framework allows you to easily create commands that work on the current tiddler text selection in edit mode|
|''Version:''|0.1.0|
|''Date:''|13/01/2007|
|''Source:''|http://yann.perrin.googlepages.com/twkd.html#E.A.S.E|
|''Author:''|[[Yann Perrin|YannPerrin]]|
|''License:''|[[BSD open source license]]|
|''~CoreVersion:''|2.x|
|''Browser:''|Firefox 1.0.4+; Firefox 1.5; InternetExplorer 6.0|
***/
////Messages Definition
//{{{
config.messages.Ease = {
noselection:"nothing selected",
asktitle:"enter the new tiddler title",
exists:" already exists, please enter another title",
askForTagsLabel:"enter the new tiddler tags",
tiddlercreated:" tiddler created"
}
//}}}
////
//{{{
if (!window.TWkd) window.TWkd={context:{}};
if (!TWkd.Ease)
 TWkd.Ease = function (text,tooltip){
 this.text = text;
 this.tooltip = tooltip;
 this.modes = [];
 this.addMode = function(modeDefinition) {this.modes.push(modeDefinition);};
 this.handler = function(event,src,title) {
 TWkd.context.command = this;
 TWkd.context.selection=this.getSelection(title);
 if (this.modes.length==1) {
 this.modes[0].operation();
 }
 else {
 var popup = Popup.create(src);
 if(popup) {
 for (var i=0; i<this.modes.length; i++) {
 createTiddlyButton(createTiddlyElement(popup,"li"), this.modes[i].name, this.modes[i].tooltip, this.OperateFromButton, null, 'id'+i, null);
 }
 Popup.show(popup,false);
 event.cancelBubble = true;
 if (event.stopPropagation) event.stopPropagation();
 return false;
 }
 }
 };
 };

TWkd.Ease.prototype.OperateFromButton = function(e){
 var commandMode=this.getAttribute('Id').replace('id','');
 TWkd.context.command.modes[commandMode].operation();
};

TWkd.Ease.prototype.getTiddlerEditField = function(title,field){
 var tiddler = document.getElementById(story.idPrefix + title);
 if(tiddler != null){
 var children = tiddler.getElementsByTagName("*")
 var e = null;
 for (var t=0; t<children.length; t++){
 var c = children[t];
 if(c.tagName.toLowerCase() == "input" || c.tagName.toLowerCase() == "textarea"){
 if(!e) {e = c;}
 if(c.getAttribute("edit") == field){e = c;}
 }
 }
 if(e){return e;}
 }
} // closes getTiddlerEditField function definition
 
TWkd.Ease.prototype.getSelection = function(title,quiet) {
 var tiddlerTextArea = this.getTiddlerEditField(title,"text");
 var result = {};
 if (document.selection != null && tiddlerTextArea.selectionStart == null) {
 tiddlerTextArea.focus();
 var range = document.selection.createRange();
 var bookmark = range.getBookmark();
 var contents = tiddlerTextArea.value;
 var originalContents = contents;
 var marker = "##SELECTION_MARKER_" + Math.random() + "##";
 while(contents.indexOf(marker) != -1) {
 marker = "##SELECTION_MARKER_" + Math.random() + "##";
 }
 var selection = range.text;
 range.text = marker + range.text + marker;
 contents = tiddlerTextArea.value;
 result.start = contents.indexOf(marker);
 contents = contents.replace(marker, "");
 result.end = contents.indexOf(marker);
 tiddlerTextArea.value = originalContents;
 range.moveToBookmark(bookmark);
 range.select();
 }
 else {
 result.start=tiddlerTextArea.selectionStart;
 result.end=tiddlerTextArea.selectionEnd;
 }
 result.content=tiddlerTextArea.value.substring(result.start,result.end);
 result.source=title;
 if (!result.content&&!quiet) displayMessage(config.messages.Ease.noselection);
 return(result);
}//closes getSelection function definition

// replace selection or insert new content
TWkd.Ease.prototype.putInPlace=function(content,workplace) {
 var tiddlerText = this.getTiddlerEditField(workplace.source,"text");
 tiddlerText.value = tiddlerText.value.substring(0,workplace.start)+content+tiddlerText.value.substring(workplace.end);
}

// asking for title
TWkd.Ease.prototype.askForTitle = function(suggestion) {
 if (!suggestion)
 suggestion = "";
 var newtitle;
 while (!newtitle||store.tiddlerExists(newtitle))
 {
 if (store.tiddlerExists(newtitle))
 displayMessage(newtitle+config.messages.Ease.exists);
 newtitle = prompt(config.messages.Ease.asktitle,suggestion);
 if (newtitle==null)
 {
 displayMessage(config.messages.Ease.titlecancel);
 return(false);
 }
 }
 return(newtitle);
}//closes askForTitle function definition

// creation of a new tiddler
TWkd.Ease.prototype.newTWkdLibTiddler = function(title,content,from,askForTags){
 var tiddler = new Tiddler();
 tiddler.title = title;
 tiddler.modifier = config.options.txtUserName;
 tiddler.text = content;
 (from) ? tiddler.tags = [from] : tiddler.tags=[];
 if (askForTags)
 tiddler.tags = prompt(config.messages.Ease.askForTagsLabel,'[['+from+']]').readBracketedList();
 store.addTiddler(tiddler);
 //store.notifyAll();
 displayMessage(title+config.messages.Ease.tiddlercreated);
}

if (!TWkd.Mode)
 TWkd.Mode = function (name,tooltip,ask,operation) {
 this.name = name;
 this.tooltip = tooltip;
 this.ask = ask;
 this.operation = operation;
 };
//}}}

<div class="toolbar" macro="toolbar +saveTiddler closeOthers -cancelTiddler deleteTiddler"></div>
<div class="title" macro="view title"></div>
<div class="editLabel">Title</div><div class="editor" macro="edit title"></div>
<div class="editLabel">Tags</div><div class="editor" macro="edit tags"></div>
<div class="editorFooter"><span macro="message views.editor.tagPrompt"></span><span macro="tagChooser"></span></div>
<div macro='hideWhen ((tiddler.tags.contains("Contacts"))||(tiddler.title=="New Contact"))'>[[EditToolbar]]<div class='editor' macro='edit text'></div></div>
<div macro='showWhen ((tiddler.tags.contains("Contacts"))||(tiddler.title=="New Contact"))'><div class='editor'>
<table width='100%'>
<tr><th>Name</th><td><span macro='edit ContactFirstName'></span><span macro='edit ContactLastName'></span></td><td rowspan='4' width='50%' macro='edit text'></td></tr>
<tr><th>Adress</th><td><span macro='edit ContactStreetNumber'></span><span macro='edit ContactStreetName'></span><span macro='edit ContactZipCode'></span><span macro='edit ContactCity'></span></td></tr>
<tr><th>Phone</th><td><span macro='edit ContactPhone'></span></td></tr>
<tr><th>Email</th><td><span macro='edit ContactMail'><span></td></tr>
</table>
</div></div>

<div macro='toolbar Format Greek Hebrew Indent Notes Color Highlighting Tables'></div>

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
There is a metaphysical basis, however vague and uncertain in character, underlying all epistemology The two branches of philosophy are in fact co-dependent and play back and forth. Epistemology cannot doubt that there is a framework of existence (metaphysics); it can only doubt the //nature// of that framework or any element within it. Descartes cannot doubt that he appears to be sitting at his writing desk in the morning, or lying on his back looking at the ceiling, and doubting. He knows this. He can only doubt particular statements or beliefs: for example, that he is in fact lying on his back staring at the ceiling (rather than dreaming it or being deceived by some Evil Genius), or that the ceiling is really made of plaster.

As the historian of philosophy, Wilhelm Windelband, pointed out a hundred years ago, in periods of great metaphysical uncertainty epistemology comes to the fore as the attempt to choose among theories, or possibly—as in skepticism—to reject them all. In periods of metaphysical sureness and confidence, as for example, in Medieval Christianity, epistemology shrinks to the background and busies itself with methodological issues or clearing up loose ends of confusion. For example, in that earlier period, it was concerned with the existential status of universals.

We have now entered a similar period of metaphysical confidence with the view of existence developed by physics, chemistry, and biology. The sole role for epistemology is to look over, review, clarify, and perhaps tighten up procedures employed (the "scientific method") in establishing that view—for example, as Popper did in showing science is better served by a principle of falsifiability rather than verifiability.

Of course philosophy in the last hundred years has simply dithered about with epistemology, ignoring and ignorant of that established metaphysics, choosing to follow the irrelevant mutterings of Wittgenstein.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
The relation between metaphysics and epistemology is a chicken-and-egg type thing. Not, of course, in the sense of which came first (if we're talking about chicken and egg, the temporal question would take us back to the Big Bang!), but rather as a structural question (regarding chicken and egg the structure is clear: out of the egg comes the chicken; out of the chicken comes the egg).

Philosophers and the public tend to think epistemology is prior to and more fundamental than metaphysics. One can't say, they argue, that anything exists until one understands what knowledge is and what can secure it.

But that is not so. To doubt something one must have it in mind and believe that it exists to the degree that it can be doubted. Put another way, one believes the thing exists, but is doubtful about its nature—i.e. what can correctly be said about it. Epistemology, in short, cannot exist in a metaphysical vacuum. Existence of some sort, even if only an unknowable Kantian "thing-in-itself," must be assumed even to raise the question of epistemology.

In the scientific philosophy, epistemology follows from its metaphysics—or better, is structurally related to it. For example, observations can be trusted (or particular ones discarded) because of our knowledge of the environment provided by physics and chemistry and our knowledge of the physiology of sensation and perception provided by biology.

Philosophers who would criticize this as circular or self-justifying think that epistemology is prior to metaphysics and must justify metaphysics from the outside, so to speak. But that is not possible; there are always metaphysical assumptions in launching any epistemological critique.

It's perfectly acceptable—in fact desirable for a complete philosophy—to have an epistemology which is part of its metaphysics, which flows from it. The chicken and the egg are structurally related.

Science is epistemologically critical of itself. It critiques each of its own propositions, using a method justified by its metaphysics. (Ribe and Steinle's article on "exploratory" and "theory-oriented" experiments published in Physics Today (July 2002) illustrates this clearly.)
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
Neil Campbell's textbook //Biology// concludes its chapter on populations with a section oddly titled "Does Evolution Fashion Perfect Organisms?" Campbell answers, "In a word—no" and goes on to list four reasons: 1) "Evolution does not scrap ancestral anatomy" (so, for example, we are likely to suffer back pain from ancestrally having walked on four legs); 2) Adaptations are often compromises (for example, seals would walk better with legs rather than the flippers that enable them to swim so well); 3) Not all evolution is adaptive (for example, the bottleneck effect may yield a less adaptive set of alleles to a new environment); and 4) New adaptive genes do not arise on demand.

Of course the basic reason why evolution does not fashion perfect organisms is that organisms suffer and die, and they don't want to! Campbell undoubtedly knows this, and could give reasons why it must be so. For example, we need to feel pain in order to avoid noxious or harmful stimuli (one of those compromises mentioned above); and death, one could argue, is inevitable in metabolism's ongoing struggle against the second law of thermodynamics—entropy. 

Probably Campbell doesn't mention suffering and death as the main obstacles to perfection because it sounds "too philosophical." That's a great pity, because the issue is at the heart of both philosophy and the scientific metaphysics. The suffering and death consequent upon evolution has all the grandeur of Greek tragedy with its suffering and death consequent upon Fate. One could say it is greater, because it gives a face to that blind force that so troubled Aeschylus and Sophocles.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
In //Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman//, Feynman describes being hypnotized in a demonstration before the Princeton Graduate College. The hypnotist says things like, "You can't open your eyes," and he says to himself, "I bet I //could// open my eyes, but I don't want to disturb the situation." At the end of the demonstration the hypnotist tells him that instead of returning directly to his seat he will walk all the way around the room and go to his seat from the back. This time he says to himself, "Damn it, enough is enough! I'm gonna go straight to my seat."

He starts to go straight to his seat, "but then an annoying feeling came over me: I felt so uncomfortable that I couldn't continue. I walked all the way around the hall."

This seems to me very revealing—and also very puzzling—about the nature of motivation, decision, impulse, desire, or as Kant would call it, "will." Feynman concludes that while under hypnosis, "All the time you're saying to yourself, 'I could do that, but I won't'—which is just another way of saying that you can't." I don't think that is quite correct; but in any case motivation, will, and decision are very complicated, both phenomenologically and neurologically.

A similar situation might be that of an adult who decides doing something or other is silly or wrong, but then goes ahead and does it anyway, justifying his action by saying that he was brought up that way and not doing it would be "annoying" and make him feel "uncomfortable."

One wonders too what it is about hypnosis that can expose this aspect of motivation.


!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
In "What Do //You// Care About What Other People Think" Richard Feynman writes about the death of his first wife, Arlene, who died of Hodgkin's disease when she was about thirty. He writes:

{{engindent{{{engindent{
I came back into her room. I kept imagining all the things that were going on physiologically: the lungs aren't getting enough air into the blood, which makes the brain fogged out and the heart weaker, which makes the breathing even more difficult. I kept expecting some sort of avalanche effect, with everything caving in together in a dramatic collapse. But it didn't appear that way at all: she just slowly got more foggy, and her breathing gradually became less and less, until there was no more breath—but just before that, there was a small one.
}}}}}}
(I remember as a child holding a small brown bat in my hand that was dying. It did the same: gave a small breath, and then was still.)

He goes on:

{{engindent{{{engindent{
I sat there for a while and then went over to kiss her one last time. I was very surprised to discover that her hair smelled exactly the same. Of course, after I stopped and thought about it, there was no reason why her hair should smell different in such a short time. But to me it was a kind of shock, because in my mind, something enormous had just happened—and yet nothing had happened.
}}}}}}
He concludes the story:

{{engindent{{{engindent{
I didn't cry until about a month later, when I was walking past a department store in Oak Ridge and noticed a pretty dress in the window. I thought, "Arlene would have liked that," and then it hit me.
}}}}}}
This is a straightforward description of three of death's dimensions.
!

/***
|Name|FontSizePlugin|
|Created by|SaqImtiaz|
|Location|http://tw.lewcid.org/#FontSizePlugin|
|Version|1.0|
|Requires|~TW2.x|
!Description:
Resize tiddler text on the fly. The text size is remembered between sessions by use of a cookie.
You can customize the maximum and minimum allowed sizes.
(only affects tiddler content text, not any other text)

Also, you can load a TW file with a font-size specified in the url.
Eg: http://tw.lewcid.org/#font:110

!Demo:
Try using the font-size buttons in the sidebar, or in the MainMenu above.

!Installation:
Copy the contents of this tiddler to your TW, tag with systemConfig, save and reload your TW.
Then put {{{<<fontSize "font-size:">>}}} in your SideBarOptions tiddler, or anywhere else that you might like.

!Usage
{{{<<fontSize>>}}} results in <<fontSize>>
{{{<<fontSize font-size: >>}}} results in <<fontSize font-size:>>

!Customizing:
The buttons and prefix text are wrapped in a span with class fontResizer, for easy css styling.
To change the default font-size, and the maximum and minimum font-size allowed, edit the config.fontSize.settings section of the code below.

!Notes:
This plugin assumes that the initial font-size is 100% and then increases or decreases the size by 10%. This stepsize of 10% can also be customized.

!History:
*27-07-06, version 1.0 : prevented double clicks from triggering editing of containing tiddler.
*25-07-06,  version 0.9

!Code
***/

//{{{
config.fontSize={};

//configuration settings
config.fontSize.settings =
{
            defaultSize : 100,  // all sizes in %
            maxSize : 200,
            minSize : 40,
            stepSize : 10
};

//startup code
var fontSettings = config.fontSize.settings;

if (!config.options.txtFontSize)
            {config.options.txtFontSize = fontSettings.defaultSize;
            saveOptionCookie("txtFontSize");}
setStylesheet(".tiddler .viewer {font-size:"+config.options.txtFontSize+"%;}\n","fontResizerStyles");
setStylesheet("#contentWrapper .fontResizer .button {display:inline;font-size:105%; font-weight:bold; margin:0 1px; padding: 0 3px; text-align:center !important;}\n .fontResizer {margin:0 0.5em;}","fontResizerButtonStyles");

//macro
config.macros.fontSize={};
config.macros.fontSize.handler = function (place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler)
{

               var sp = createTiddlyElement(place,"span",null,"fontResizer");
               sp.ondblclick=this.onDblClick;
               if (params[0])
                           createTiddlyText(sp,params[0]);
               createTiddlyButton(sp,"+","increase font-size",this.incFont);
               createTiddlyButton(sp,"=","reset font-size",this.resetFont);
               createTiddlyButton(sp,"–","decrease font-size",this.decFont);
}

config.macros.fontSize.onDblClick = function (e)
{
             if (!e) var e = window.event;
             e.cancelBubble = true;
             if (e.stopPropagation) e.stopPropagation();
             return false;
}

config.macros.fontSize.setFont = function ()
{
               saveOptionCookie("txtFontSize");
               setStylesheet(".tiddler .viewer {font-size:"+config.options.txtFontSize+"%;}\n","fontResizerStyles");
}

config.macros.fontSize.incFont=function()
{
               if (config.options.txtFontSize < fontSettings.maxSize)
                  config.options.txtFontSize = (config.options.txtFontSize*1)+fontSettings.stepSize;
               config.macros.fontSize.setFont();
}

config.macros.fontSize.decFont=function()
{

               if (config.options.txtFontSize > fontSettings.minSize)
                  config.options.txtFontSize = (config.options.txtFontSize*1) - fontSettings.stepSize;
               config.macros.fontSize.setFont();
}

config.macros.fontSize.resetFont=function()
{

               config.options.txtFontSize=fontSettings.defaultSize;
               config.macros.fontSize.setFont();
}

config.paramifiers.font =
{
               onstart: function(v)
                  {
                   config.options.txtFontSize = v;
                   config.macros.fontSize.setFont();
                  }
};
//}}}

/***
|''Name:''|ForEachTiddlerPlugin|
|''Version:''|1.0.8 (2007-04-12)|
|''Source:''|http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de/#ForEachTiddlerPlugin|
|''Author:''|UdoBorkowski (ub [at] abego-software [dot] de)|
|''Licence:''|[[BSD open source license (abego Software)|http://www.abego-software.de/legal/apl-v10.html]]|
|''Copyright:''|&copy; 2005-2007 [[abego Software|http://www.abego-software.de]]|
|''TiddlyWiki:''|1.2.38+, 2.0|
|''Browser:''|Firefox 1.0.4+; Firefox 1.5; InternetExplorer 6.0|
!Description

Create customizable lists, tables etc. for your selections of tiddlers. Specify the tiddlers to include and their order through a powerful language.

''Syntax:'' 
|>|{{{<<}}}''forEachTiddler'' [''in'' //tiddlyWikiPath//] [''where'' //whereCondition//] [''sortBy'' //sortExpression// [''ascending'' //or// ''descending'']] [''script'' //scriptText//] [//action// [//actionParameters//]]{{{>>}}}|
|//tiddlyWikiPath//|The filepath to the TiddlyWiki the macro should work on. When missing the current TiddlyWiki is used.|
|//whereCondition//|(quoted) JavaScript boolean expression. May refer to the build-in variables {{{tiddler}}} and  {{{context}}}.|
|//sortExpression//|(quoted) JavaScript expression returning "comparable" objects (using '{{{<}}}','{{{>}}}','{{{==}}}'. May refer to the build-in variables {{{tiddler}}} and  {{{context}}}.|
|//scriptText//|(quoted) JavaScript text. Typically defines JavaScript functions that are called by the various JavaScript expressions (whereClause, sortClause, action arguments,...)|
|//action//|The action that should be performed on every selected tiddler, in the given order. By default the actions [[addToList|AddToListAction]] and [[write|WriteAction]] are supported. When no action is specified [[addToList|AddToListAction]]  is used.|
|//actionParameters//|(action specific) parameters the action may refer while processing the tiddlers (see action descriptions for details). <<tiddler [[JavaScript in actionParameters]]>>|
|>|~~Syntax formatting: Keywords in ''bold'', optional parts in [...]. 'or' means that exactly one of the two alternatives must exist.~~|

See details see [[ForEachTiddlerMacro]] and [[ForEachTiddlerExamples]].

!Revision history
* v1.0.8 (2007-04-12)
** Adapted to latest TiddlyWiki 2.2 Beta importTiddlyWiki API (introduced with changeset 2004). TiddlyWiki 2.2 Beta builds prior to changeset 2004 are no longer supported (but TiddlyWiki 2.1 and earlier, of cause)
* v1.0.7 (2007-03-28)
** Also support "pre" formatted TiddlyWikis (introduced with TW 2.2) (when using "in" clause to work on external tiddlers)
* v1.0.6 (2006-09-16)
** Context provides "viewerTiddler", i.e. the tiddler used to view the macro. Most times this is equal to the "inTiddler", but when using the "tiddler" macro both may be different.
** Support "begin", "end" and "none" expressions in "write" action
* v1.0.5 (2006-02-05)
** Pass tiddler containing the macro with wikify, context object also holds reference to tiddler containing the macro ("inTiddler"). Thanks to SimonBaird.
** Support Firefox 1.5.0.1
** Internal
*** Make "JSLint" conform
*** "Only install once"
* v1.0.4 (2006-01-06)
** Support TiddlyWiki 2.0
* v1.0.3 (2005-12-22)
** Features: 
*** Write output to a file supports multi-byte environments (Thanks to Bram Chen) 
*** Provide API to access the forEachTiddler functionality directly through JavaScript (see getTiddlers and performMacro)
** Enhancements:
*** Improved error messages on InternetExplorer.
* v1.0.2 (2005-12-10)
** Features: 
*** context object also holds reference to store (TiddlyWiki)
** Fixed Bugs: 
*** ForEachTiddler 1.0.1 has broken support on win32 Opera 8.51 (Thanks to BrunoSabin for reporting)
* v1.0.1 (2005-12-08)
** Features: 
*** Access tiddlers stored in separated TiddlyWikis through the "in" option. I.e. you are no longer limited to only work on the "current TiddlyWiki".
*** Write output to an external file using the "toFile" option of the "write" action. With this option you may write your customized tiddler exports.
*** Use the "script" section to define "helper" JavaScript functions etc. to be used in the various JavaScript expressions (whereClause, sortClause, action arguments,...).
*** Access and store context information for the current forEachTiddler invocation (through the build-in "context" object) .
*** Improved script evaluation (for where/sort clause and write scripts).
* v1.0.0 (2005-11-20)
** initial version

!Code
***/
//{{{

	
//============================================================================
//============================================================================
//		   ForEachTiddlerPlugin
//============================================================================
//============================================================================

// Only install once
if (!version.extensions.ForEachTiddlerPlugin) {

if (!window.abego) window.abego = {};

version.extensions.ForEachTiddlerPlugin = {
	major: 1, minor: 0, revision: 8, 
	date: new Date(2007,3,12), 
	source: "http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de/#ForEachTiddlerPlugin",
	licence: "[[BSD open source license (abego Software)|http://www.abego-software.de/legal/apl-v10.html]]",
	copyright: "Copyright (c) abego Software GmbH, 2005-2007 (www.abego-software.de)"
};

// For backward compatibility with TW 1.2.x
//
if (!TiddlyWiki.prototype.forEachTiddler) {
	TiddlyWiki.prototype.forEachTiddler = function(callback) {
		for(var t in this.tiddlers) {
			callback.call(this,t,this.tiddlers[t]);
		}
	};
}

//============================================================================
// forEachTiddler Macro
//============================================================================

version.extensions.forEachTiddler = {
	major: 1, minor: 0, revision: 8, date: new Date(2007,3,12), provider: "http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de"};

// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Configurations and constants 
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

config.macros.forEachTiddler = {
	 // Standard Properties
	 label: "forEachTiddler",
	 prompt: "Perform actions on a (sorted) selection of tiddlers",

	 // actions
	 actions: {
		 addToList: {},
		 write: {}
	 }
};

// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
//  The forEachTiddler Macro Handler 
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

config.macros.forEachTiddler.getContainingTiddler = function(e) {
	while(e && !hasClass(e,"tiddler"))
		e = e.parentNode;
	var title = e ? e.getAttribute("tiddler") : null; 
	return title ? store.getTiddler(title) : null;
};

config.macros.forEachTiddler.handler = function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
	// config.macros.forEachTiddler.traceMacroCall(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler);

	if (!tiddler) tiddler = config.macros.forEachTiddler.getContainingTiddler(place);
	// --- Parsing ------------------------------------------

	var i = 0; // index running over the params
	// Parse the "in" clause
	var tiddlyWikiPath = undefined;
	if ((i < params.length) && params[i] == "in") {
		i++;
		if (i >= params.length) {
			this.handleError(place, "TiddlyWiki path expected behind 'in'.");
			return;
		}
		tiddlyWikiPath = this.paramEncode((i < params.length) ? params[i] : "");
		i++;
	}

	// Parse the where clause
	var whereClause ="true";
	if ((i < params.length) && params[i] == "where") {
		i++;
		whereClause = this.paramEncode((i < params.length) ? params[i] : "");
		i++;
	}

	// Parse the sort stuff
	var sortClause = null;
	var sortAscending = true; 
	if ((i < params.length) && params[i] == "sortBy") {
		i++;
		if (i >= params.length) {
			this.handleError(place, "sortClause missing behind 'sortBy'.");
			return;
		}
		sortClause = this.paramEncode(params[i]);
		i++;

		if ((i < params.length) && (params[i] == "ascending" || params[i] == "descending")) {
			 sortAscending = params[i] == "ascending";
			 i++;
		}
	}

	// Parse the script
	var scriptText = null;
	if ((i < params.length) && params[i] == "script") {
		i++;
		scriptText = this.paramEncode((i < params.length) ? params[i] : "");
		i++;
	}

	// Parse the action. 
	// When we are already at the end use the default action
	var actionName = "addToList";
	if (i < params.length) {
	   if (!config.macros.forEachTiddler.actions[params[i]]) {
			this.handleError(place, "Unknown action '"+params[i]+"'.");
			return;
		} else {
			actionName = params[i]; 
			i++;
		}
	} 
	
	// Get the action parameter
	// (the parsing is done inside the individual action implementation.)
	var actionParameter = params.slice(i);


	// --- Processing ------------------------------------------
	try {
		this.performMacro({
				place: place, 
				inTiddler: tiddler,
				whereClause: whereClause, 
				sortClause: sortClause, 
				sortAscending: sortAscending, 
				actionName: actionName, 
				actionParameter: actionParameter, 
				scriptText: scriptText, 
				tiddlyWikiPath: tiddlyWikiPath});

	} catch (e) {
		this.handleError(place, e);
	}
};

// Returns an object with properties "tiddlers" and "context".
// tiddlers holds the (sorted) tiddlers selected by the parameter,
// context the context of the execution of the macro.
//
// The action is not yet performed.
//
// @parameter see performMacro
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.getTiddlersAndContext = function(parameter) {

	var context = config.macros.forEachTiddler.createContext(parameter.place, parameter.whereClause, parameter.sortClause, parameter.sortAscending, parameter.actionName, parameter.actionParameter, parameter.scriptText, parameter.tiddlyWikiPath, parameter.inTiddler);

	var tiddlyWiki = parameter.tiddlyWikiPath ? this.loadTiddlyWiki(parameter.tiddlyWikiPath) : store;
	context["tiddlyWiki"] = tiddlyWiki;
	
	// Get the tiddlers, as defined by the whereClause
	var tiddlers = this.findTiddlers(parameter.whereClause, context, tiddlyWiki);
	context["tiddlers"] = tiddlers;

	// Sort the tiddlers, when sorting is required.
	if (parameter.sortClause) {
		this.sortTiddlers(tiddlers, parameter.sortClause, parameter.sortAscending, context);
	}

	return {tiddlers: tiddlers, context: context};
};

// Returns the (sorted) tiddlers selected by the parameter.
//
// The action is not yet performed.
//
// @parameter see performMacro
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.getTiddlers = function(parameter) {
	return this.getTiddlersAndContext(parameter).tiddlers;
};

// Performs the macros with the given parameter.
//
// @param parameter holds the parameter of the macro as separate properties.
//				  The following properties are supported:
//
//						place
//						whereClause
//						sortClause
//						sortAscending
//						actionName
//						actionParameter
//						scriptText
//						tiddlyWikiPath
//
//					All properties are optional. 
//					For most actions the place property must be defined.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.performMacro = function(parameter) {
	var tiddlersAndContext = this.getTiddlersAndContext(parameter);

	// Perform the action
	var actionName = parameter.actionName ? parameter.actionName : "addToList";
	var action = config.macros.forEachTiddler.actions[actionName];
	if (!action) {
		this.handleError(parameter.place, "Unknown action '"+actionName+"'.");
		return;
	}

	var actionHandler = action.handler;
	actionHandler(parameter.place, tiddlersAndContext.tiddlers, parameter.actionParameter, tiddlersAndContext.context);
};

// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
//  The actions 
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

// Internal.
//
// --- The addToList Action -----------------------------------------------
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.actions.addToList.handler = function(place, tiddlers, parameter, context) {
	// Parse the parameter
	var p = 0;

	// Check for extra parameters
	if (parameter.length > p) {
		config.macros.forEachTiddler.createExtraParameterErrorElement(place, "addToList", parameter, p);
		return;
	}

	// Perform the action.
	var list = document.createElement("ul");
	place.appendChild(list);
	for (var i = 0; i < tiddlers.length; i++) {
		var tiddler = tiddlers[i];
		var listItem = document.createElement("li");
		list.appendChild(listItem);
		createTiddlyLink(listItem, tiddler.title, true);
	}
};

abego.parseNamedParameter = function(name, parameter, i) {
	var beginExpression = null;
	if ((i < parameter.length) && parameter[i] == name) {
		i++;
		if (i >= parameter.length) {
			throw "Missing text behind '%0'".format([name]);
		}
		
		return config.macros.forEachTiddler.paramEncode(parameter[i]);
	}
	return null;
}

// Internal.
//
// --- The write Action ---------------------------------------------------
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.actions.write.handler = function(place, tiddlers, parameter, context) {
	// Parse the parameter
	var p = 0;
	if (p >= parameter.length) {
		this.handleError(place, "Missing expression behind 'write'.");
		return;
	}

	var textExpression = config.macros.forEachTiddler.paramEncode(parameter[p]);
	p++;

	// Parse the "begin" option
	var beginExpression = abego.parseNamedParameter("begin", parameter, p);
	if (beginExpression !== null) 
		p += 2;
	var endExpression = abego.parseNamedParameter("end", parameter, p);
	if (endExpression !== null) 
		p += 2;
	var noneExpression = abego.parseNamedParameter("none", parameter, p);
	if (noneExpression !== null) 
		p += 2;

	// Parse the "toFile" option
	var filename = null;
	var lineSeparator = undefined;
	if ((p < parameter.length) && parameter[p] == "toFile") {
		p++;
		if (p >= parameter.length) {
			this.handleError(place, "Filename expected behind 'toFile' of 'write' action.");
			return;
		}
		
		filename = config.macros.forEachTiddler.getLocalPath(config.macros.forEachTiddler.paramEncode(parameter[p]));
		p++;
		if ((p < parameter.length) && parameter[p] == "withLineSeparator") {
			p++;
			if (p >= parameter.length) {
				this.handleError(place, "Line separator text expected behind 'withLineSeparator' of 'write' action.");
				return;
			}
			lineSeparator = config.macros.forEachTiddler.paramEncode(parameter[p]);
			p++;
		}
	}
	
	// Check for extra parameters
	if (parameter.length > p) {
		config.macros.forEachTiddler.createExtraParameterErrorElement(place, "write", parameter, p);
		return;
	}

	// Perform the action.
	var func = config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction(textExpression, context);
	var count = tiddlers.length;
	var text = "";
	if (count > 0 && beginExpression)
		text += config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction(beginExpression, context)(undefined, context, count, undefined);
	
	for (var i = 0; i < count; i++) {
		var tiddler = tiddlers[i];
		text += func(tiddler, context, count, i);
	}
	
	if (count > 0 && endExpression)
		text += config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction(endExpression, context)(undefined, context, count, undefined);

	if (count == 0 && noneExpression) 
		text += config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction(noneExpression, context)(undefined, context, count, undefined);
		

	if (filename) {
		if (lineSeparator !== undefined) {
			lineSeparator = lineSeparator.replace(/\\n/mg, "\n").replace(/\\r/mg, "\r");
			text = text.replace(/\n/mg,lineSeparator);
		}
		saveFile(filename, convertUnicodeToUTF8(text));
	} else {
		var wrapper = createTiddlyElement(place, "span");
		wikify(text, wrapper, null/* highlightRegExp */, context.inTiddler);
	}
};


// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
//  Helpers
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.createContext = function(placeParam, whereClauseParam, sortClauseParam, sortAscendingParam, actionNameParam, actionParameterParam, scriptText, tiddlyWikiPathParam, inTiddlerParam) {
	return {
		place : placeParam, 
		whereClause : whereClauseParam, 
		sortClause : sortClauseParam, 
		sortAscending : sortAscendingParam, 
		script : scriptText,
		actionName : actionNameParam, 
		actionParameter : actionParameterParam,
		tiddlyWikiPath : tiddlyWikiPathParam,
		inTiddler : inTiddlerParam, // the tiddler containing the <<forEachTiddler ...>> macro call.
		viewerTiddler : config.macros.forEachTiddler.getContainingTiddler(placeParam) // the tiddler showing the forEachTiddler result
	};
};

// Internal.
//
// Returns a TiddlyWiki with the tiddlers loaded from the TiddlyWiki of 
// the given path.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.loadTiddlyWiki = function(path, idPrefix) {
	if (!idPrefix) {
		idPrefix = "store";
	}
	var lenPrefix = idPrefix.length;
	
	// Read the content of the given file
	var content = loadFile(this.getLocalPath(path));
	if(content === null) {
		throw "TiddlyWiki '"+path+"' not found.";
	}
	
	var tiddlyWiki = new TiddlyWiki();

	// Starting with TW 2.2 there is a helper function to import the tiddlers
	if (tiddlyWiki.importTiddlyWiki) {
		if (!tiddlyWiki.importTiddlyWiki(content))
			throw "File '"+path+"' is not a TiddlyWiki.";
		tiddlyWiki.dirty = false;
		return tiddlyWiki;
	}
	
	// The legacy code, for TW < 2.2
	
	// Locate the storeArea div's
	var posOpeningDiv = content.indexOf(startSaveArea);
	var posClosingDiv = content.lastIndexOf(endSaveArea);
	if((posOpeningDiv == -1) || (posClosingDiv == -1)) {
		throw "File '"+path+"' is not a TiddlyWiki.";
	}
	var storageText = content.substr(posOpeningDiv + startSaveArea.length, posClosingDiv);
	
	// Create a "div" element that contains the storage text
	var myStorageDiv = document.createElement("div");
	myStorageDiv.innerHTML = storageText;
	myStorageDiv.normalize();
	
	// Create all tiddlers in a new TiddlyWiki
	// (following code is modified copy of TiddlyWiki.prototype.loadFromDiv)
	var store = myStorageDiv.childNodes;
	for(var t = 0; t < store.length; t++) {
		var e = store[t];
		var title = null;
		if(e.getAttribute)
			title = e.getAttribute("tiddler");
		if(!title && e.id && e.id.substr(0,lenPrefix) == idPrefix)
			title = e.id.substr(lenPrefix);
		if(title && title !== "") {
			var tiddler = tiddlyWiki.createTiddler(title);
			tiddler.loadFromDiv(e,title);
		}
	}
	tiddlyWiki.dirty = false;

	return tiddlyWiki;
};


	
// Internal.
//
// Returns a function that has a function body returning the given javaScriptExpression.
// The function has the parameters:
// 
//	 (tiddler, context, count, index)
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction = function (javaScriptExpression, context) {
	var script = context["script"];
	var functionText = "var theFunction = function(tiddler, context, count, index) { return "+javaScriptExpression+"}";
	var fullText = (script ? script+";" : "")+functionText+";theFunction;";
	return eval(fullText);
};

// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.findTiddlers = function(whereClause, context, tiddlyWiki) {
	var result = [];
	var func = config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction(whereClause, context);
	tiddlyWiki.forEachTiddler(function(title,tiddler) {
		if (func(tiddler, context, undefined, undefined)) {
			result.push(tiddler);
		}
	});
	return result;
};

// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.createExtraParameterErrorElement = function(place, actionName, parameter, firstUnusedIndex) {
	var message = "Extra parameter behind '"+actionName+"':";
	for (var i = firstUnusedIndex; i < parameter.length; i++) {
		message += " "+parameter[i];
	}
	this.handleError(place, message);
};

// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.sortAscending = function(tiddlerA, tiddlerB) {
	var result = 
		(tiddlerA.forEachTiddlerSortValue == tiddlerB.forEachTiddlerSortValue) 
			? 0
			: (tiddlerA.forEachTiddlerSortValue < tiddlerB.forEachTiddlerSortValue)
			   ? -1 
			   : +1; 
	return result;
};

// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.sortDescending = function(tiddlerA, tiddlerB) {
	var result = 
		(tiddlerA.forEachTiddlerSortValue == tiddlerB.forEachTiddlerSortValue) 
			? 0
			: (tiddlerA.forEachTiddlerSortValue < tiddlerB.forEachTiddlerSortValue)
			   ? +1 
			   : -1; 
	return result;
};

// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.sortTiddlers = function(tiddlers, sortClause, ascending, context) {
	// To avoid evaluating the sortClause whenever two items are compared 
	// we pre-calculate the sortValue for every item in the array and store it in a 
	// temporary property ("forEachTiddlerSortValue") of the tiddlers.
	var func = config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction(sortClause, context);
	var count = tiddlers.length;
	var i;
	for (i = 0; i < count; i++) {
		var tiddler = tiddlers[i];
		tiddler.forEachTiddlerSortValue = func(tiddler,context, undefined, undefined);
	}

	// Do the sorting
	tiddlers.sort(ascending ? this.sortAscending : this.sortDescending);

	// Delete the temporary property that holds the sortValue.	
	for (i = 0; i < tiddlers.length; i++) {
		delete tiddlers[i].forEachTiddlerSortValue;
	}
};


// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.trace = function(message) {
	displayMessage(message);
};

// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.traceMacroCall = function(place,macroName,params) {
	var message ="<<"+macroName;
	for (var i = 0; i < params.length; i++) {
		message += " "+params[i];
	}
	message += ">>";
	displayMessage(message);
};


// Internal.
//
// Creates an element that holds an error message
// 
config.macros.forEachTiddler.createErrorElement = function(place, exception) {
	var message = (exception.description) ? exception.description : exception.toString();
	return createTiddlyElement(place,"span",null,"forEachTiddlerError","<<forEachTiddler ...>>: "+message);
};

// Internal.
//
// @param place [may be null]
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.handleError = function(place, exception) {
	if (place) {
		this.createErrorElement(place, exception);
	} else {
		throw exception;
	}
};

// Internal.
//
// Encodes the given string.
//
// Replaces 
//	 "$))" to ">>"
//	 "$)" to ">"
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.paramEncode = function(s) {
	var reGTGT = new RegExp("\\$\\)\\)","mg");
	var reGT = new RegExp("\\$\\)","mg");
	return s.replace(reGTGT, ">>").replace(reGT, ">");
};

// Internal.
//
// Returns the given original path (that is a file path, starting with "file:")
// as a path to a local file, in the systems native file format.
//
// Location information in the originalPath (i.e. the "#" and stuff following)
// is stripped.
// 
config.macros.forEachTiddler.getLocalPath = function(originalPath) {
	// Remove any location part of the URL
	var hashPos = originalPath.indexOf("#");
	if(hashPos != -1)
		originalPath = originalPath.substr(0,hashPos);
	// Convert to a native file format assuming
	// "file:///x:/path/path/path..." - pc local file --> "x:\path\path\path..."
	// "file://///server/share/path/path/path..." - FireFox pc network file --> "\\server\share\path\path\path..."
	// "file:///path/path/path..." - mac/unix local file --> "/path/path/path..."
	// "file://server/share/path/path/path..." - pc network file --> "\\server\share\path\path\path..."
	var localPath;
	if(originalPath.charAt(9) == ":") // pc local file
		localPath = unescape(originalPath.substr(8)).replace(new RegExp("/","g"),"\\");
	else if(originalPath.indexOf("file://///") === 0) // FireFox pc network file
		localPath = "\\\\" + unescape(originalPath.substr(10)).replace(new RegExp("/","g"),"\\");
	else if(originalPath.indexOf("file:///") === 0) // mac/unix local file
		localPath = unescape(originalPath.substr(7));
	else if(originalPath.indexOf("file:/") === 0) // mac/unix local file
		localPath = unescape(originalPath.substr(5));
	else // pc network file
		localPath = "\\\\" + unescape(originalPath.substr(7)).replace(new RegExp("/","g"),"\\");	
	return localPath;
};

// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Stylesheet Extensions (may be overridden by local StyleSheet)
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
//
setStylesheet(
	".forEachTiddlerError{color: #ffffff;background-color: #880000;}",
	"forEachTiddler");

//============================================================================
// End of forEachTiddler Macro
//============================================================================


//============================================================================
// String.startsWith Function
//============================================================================
//
// Returns true if the string starts with the given prefix, false otherwise.
//
version.extensions["String.startsWith"] = {major: 1, minor: 0, revision: 0, date: new Date(2005,11,20), provider: "http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de"};
//
String.prototype.startsWith = function(prefix) {
	var n =  prefix.length;
	return (this.length >= n) && (this.slice(0, n) == prefix);
};



//============================================================================
// String.endsWith Function
//============================================================================
//
// Returns true if the string ends with the given suffix, false otherwise.
//
version.extensions["String.endsWith"] = {major: 1, minor: 0, revision: 0, date: new Date(2005,11,20), provider: "http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de"};
//
String.prototype.endsWith = function(suffix) {
	var n = suffix.length;
	return (this.length >= n) && (this.right(n) == suffix);
};


//============================================================================
// String.contains Function
//============================================================================
//
// Returns true when the string contains the given substring, false otherwise.
//
version.extensions["String.contains"] = {major: 1, minor: 0, revision: 0, date: new Date(2005,11,20), provider: "http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de"};
//
String.prototype.contains = function(substring) {
	return this.indexOf(substring) >= 0;
};

//============================================================================
// Array.indexOf Function
//============================================================================
//
// Returns the index of the first occurance of the given item in the array or 
// -1 when no such item exists.
//
// @param item [may be null]
//
version.extensions["Array.indexOf"] = {major: 1, minor: 0, revision: 0, date: new Date(2005,11,20), provider: "http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de"};
//
Array.prototype.indexOf = function(item) {
	for (var i = 0; i < this.length; i++) {
		if (this[i] == item) {
			return i;
		}
	}
	return -1;
};

//============================================================================
// Array.contains Function
//============================================================================
//
// Returns true when the array contains the given item, otherwise false. 
//
// @param item [may be null]
//
version.extensions["Array.contains"] = {major: 1, minor: 0, revision: 0, date: new Date(2005,11,20), provider: "http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de"};
//
Array.prototype.contains = function(item) {
	return (this.indexOf(item) >= 0);
};

//============================================================================
// Array.containsAny Function
//============================================================================
//
// Returns true when the array contains at least one of the elements 
// of the item. Otherwise (or when items contains no elements) false is returned.
//
version.extensions["Array.containsAny"] = {major: 1, minor: 0, revision: 0, date: new Date(2005,11,20), provider: "http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de"};
//
Array.prototype.containsAny = function(items) {
	for(var i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
		if (this.contains(items[i])) {
			return true;
		}
	}
	return false;
};


//============================================================================
// Array.containsAll Function
//============================================================================
//
// Returns true when the array contains all the items, otherwise false.
// 
// When items is null false is returned (even if the array contains a null).
//
// @param items [may be null] 
//
version.extensions["Array.containsAll"] = {major: 1, minor: 0, revision: 0, date: new Date(2005,11,20), provider: "http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de"};
//
Array.prototype.containsAll = function(items) {
	for(var i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
		if (!this.contains(items[i])) {
			return false;
		}
	}
	return true;
};


} // of "install only once"

// Used Globals (for JSLint) ==============
// ... DOM
/*global 	document */
// ... TiddlyWiki Core
/*global 	convertUnicodeToUTF8, createTiddlyElement, createTiddlyLink, 
			displayMessage, endSaveArea, hasClass, loadFile, saveFile, 
			startSaveArea, store, wikify */
//}}}


/***
!Licence and Copyright
Copyright (c) abego Software ~GmbH, 2005 ([[www.abego-software.de|http://www.abego-software.de]])

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,
are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this
list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this
list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other
materials provided with the distribution.

Neither the name of abego Software nor the names of its contributors may be
used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific
prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT
SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR
BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN
ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
***/

!Format menu
|''bold''|@@highlight@@|
|//italic//|[[hyperlink]]|
|__underline__||
!Greek menu
|{{greek{κλητοι̂ς}}}|{{gkindent{{{gkindent{{{gkindent{κλητοι̂ς}}}}}}}}}|
|{{gkindent{κλητοι̂ς}}}|{{gkindent{{{gkindent{{{gkindent{{{gkindent{κλητοι̂ς}}}}}}}}}}}}|
|{{gkindent{{{gkindent{κλητοι̂ς}}}}}}|{{gkindent{{{gkindent{{{gkindent{{{gkindent{{{gkindent{κλητοι̂ς}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}|
!!Hebrew menu
{{hebrewNoAlign{וַיָּקָם}}}
{{hebrewRightAlign{וַיָּקָם}}}
{{hebAlignAndIndent{וַיָּקָם}}}
{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{וַיָּקָם}}}}}}
{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{וַיָּקָם}}}}}}}}}
{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{וַיָּקָם}}}}}}}}}}}}
{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{וַיָּקָם}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
!Indent menu
{{engindent{Text}}}
{{engindent{{{engindent{Text}}}}}}
{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{Text}}}}}}}}}
{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{Text}}}}}}}}}}}}
{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{Text}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
!Notes menu
((syntax(add note here))) &#149; ((translation(add note here))) &#149; ((text(add note here))) &#149; ((gram(add note here))) ((Popup: your text here(your popup text here)))
!Color menu
{{red{Red}}} {{blue{Blue}}} {{green{Green}}} {{gold{Gold}}} {{gray{Gray}}} {{magenta{Magenta}}} {{purple{Purple}}} {{teal{Teal}}} {{burgundy{Burgundy}}}
!Highlighting menu
@@bgcolor(#ff6666):Red@@ @@bgcolor(#ccccff):Blue@@ @@Yellow@@ @@bgcolor(#99ff99):Green@@ @@bgcolor(#cc9966):Brown@@ @@bgcolor(#cccc99):Gray@@ @@bgcolor(#ff9933):Orange@@
!Tables menu
Invisible table: {{invisiblecomm{
|!Invisible table header|!Invisible table header|!invisible table header|
|data|data|data|
|data|data|data|
|data|data|data|
}}}
Sortable table:
|sortable|k
|Header1|Header2|Header3|h
|Aa|B3|data7|
|Ab|B2|data2|
|Ac|B1|data8|
Standard table:
|!Header|!Header|!Header|
|data|data|data|
|data|data|data|
|data|data|data|
Table cell colors:
|!Below is a light gray cell|!Below is a dark gray cell|!Below are regular cells|
|bgcolor(#eeeeee):text here|||
||bgcolor(#cccccc):text there||
|||text anywhere|

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
It's a peculiar thing. You can get into the frame of mind where you see your existence—your physical existence together with your perceptions and experience, the wonderful synthesis of the brain—as part of the entire fabric of existence. And there is a sense of harmony in that.

But then you walk out onto the street and encounter someone, even briefly, possibly just eye contact. Immediately this larger framework of existence is dropped, brushed aside and replaced by a familiar merely psychological and subjective portion of existence. Instantly you interpret that person and assume and worry about how that person is interpreting you.

It should be small stuff, but somehow it is not. Sartre made a philosophical living out of it.
!

!
[[ _Return to Main Website_ |https://marketitus.com]]
<html><div style="color: rgb(100, 100, 150); font-family: Monaco;"><big><big><big><b><center>
<br>Nature of Science<br><br>Philosophy of Nature<br><br>Mind and Matter
<br>
</b>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Mark Titus
<br></big><br><br>
</html>

!!!
//Last Site Update: Tue Mar 23 14:22:03 EST 2021//
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
In finally discovering Nature I feel like someone must feel in finally discovering God. It is something greater than ourselves, something which created us, and something to which we belong. It gets us out of ourselves; it doesn’t allow us to think our existence, and above all our opinions and subjectivity, our “lived world” and our interpretations of it, is the center of existence and its focus. All of that is liberating and a liberation.

I look at this okra flower outside my window—a four inch pale yellow flower with a magenta core and pistil tip—and I think billions of years of creation of chemicals and their combination has come together to create the two of us, the body of that flower and the brain and senses of my body connecting to it by reflected light. It’s a consummate creation; it doesn’t matter whether you call it Nature or God.


!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
Leaning on my stand-up desk just now in a sort of meditative repose watching the sun begin to set over Stoddert field, I heard the ice cubes clink in my glass behind me on the piano bench. "Gravity" was the thought that passed through my mind. After a few minutes, clink again.

Then I was a little startled. Gravity is supposed to be a steady force, not a start and stop thing. But of course the ice cubes were melting, changing shapes and angles, and then fell again.

The more ignorant one is the more startled he will be, especially if in "meditative repose." That's where the idea of miracles comes from, which to a terrible extent feeds religion.

But the real surprise, the real miracle, and what should feed the religious impulse is the melting that caused the sudden reoccurrence of the law of gravity, that steady customary force. Surprises, shocks, happen all the time, but they are the result of vast, steady things always in operation. The superficial or ignorant mind gets its religion from those sudden shocks. The better religious mind gets its religion from all those vast forces that create the shock.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces E|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!

We think of our childhood, especially as we grow older, as a time and place of richness, and then tend to idealize it as part of a better world "back then".

But we are mistaken. It was the richness of the child's gaze and perception that made it a "better world." As the child grows into adulthood, he adjusts his experience and perception to adapt to the world and grow within it; and in the course of that adaptation and adjustment, ruins or altogether loses the child's gaze.

We ("philosophers" that is) give that process a name: we (they) call it "intentionality." The child is taught to ask, "What is your experience about?" and in the course of learning to answer that question is virtually forced to abandon the richness of his experience and perception. "Forget the experience and its richness," he is taught; "You need to ask, 'What is it about? What are its causes and connections? How can it be used or changed?'"

The scientific metaphysics has the power to correct this mistake, for it shows how intimately and seamlessly our experience and perception is connected to the actual environment that creates it. And part of that environment is the brain itself, and its growth in the child's body. It's a truly wonderful process having nothing to do with intentionality or the child growing up and learning about the "real world" and adjusting to it. The Bits and Pieces entry "God and Nature" puts it pretty well.

!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
Genes produce our hands with their opposable thumbs. Some hands are big, some are small; some strong, some weak; some even deformed. There are many more subtle features as well, various degrees of coarseness or delicacy, subjects for the painter and sculptor to discover and dwell upon.

Genes also produce our neural systems and brains. These vary in many more ways than hands do, obviously because they are more complex. Some show greater awareness and refinement of sensory capability; some have more powerful memory; some are more powerfully affected by the endocrine system (which also of course has its own genetic determinants); and so on.

We obviously don't go to genetics to ask how we choose or should choose to employ our hands, though of course the genetic determination of the kind of hands each of us has will affect how we choose to use them. The kind of hand best suited for playing the violin or stitching hems may not be the best for carpentry or swinging a tennis racket.

All this applies equally to the ways we choose or should choose to employ our brains.

Of course genetics (through anatomy and physiology) sets the parameters for the uses of hand and brain. You can't pound nails with your fist, and better not try. What can't you do with your brain and ought not try? An interesting question!
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
Saturday evening I attended a drinks and dinner celebration as a a guest of a friend who works at the Urban Institute, and had a long conversation about health care with Robert Reischauer, who heads the Institute and is an expert in the field. He sits on a government Medicare Board (he told me), the Harvard Corporation and a lot of other boards. When I told him I didn't have Medicare Part B, he leaned across his plate of excellent salmon, potatoes, and French beans, and with eyes goggling said, "You are certifiably crazy! Don't you have assets? You will lose them all! Before you get to be ninety-one, I guarantee you will sign up for Part B. You better do it right away." And so on.

So I explained my point of view: I had no intention of living to be ninety-one. Any routine health problems I may encounter I can pay for myself, especially since I have saved thousands of dollars over the years in premiums. Really expensive treatments like chemotherapy I will refuse, because they don't work anyway, and since I am already seventy-three, adding two or three years to my life—even if they accomplish that—means nothing and is not worth the discomfort and aggravation. And so on.

I managed a little to get to what seems to me the heart of the matter: turning health care over to private interests creates all the wrong incentives, because health becomes primarily a means to making money. Insurers and pharmaceuticals are looking for profits; if the insurer can deny care and the pharmaceutical company sell an expensive drug, even it it might not work or even be dangerous, then that counts as success. Hospitals want to fill their beds and keep their machines humming, and doctors want to perform their procedures, the more expensive the better. Of course that raises insurance premiums and the insurance companies like that.

As for the patient, since he is paying all that money for premiums (or his employer is) he feels compelled to use it, since it is a sort of investment and he might as well get some value out of it. So he goes to his doctor or a hospital emergency room for any small pain or irregularity in what he thinks is his health. And of course he will go for all the tests, the more expensive the better. (Reischauer was genuinely shocked when I told him I had never had a colonoscopy.)

Anyway, it was a lively discussion, and it seemed to me that Reischauer had never ever heard such a point of view. For my part I was a little shocked that he seemed to be shocked.
!

/***
|Name:|HideWhenPlugin|
|Description:|Allows conditional inclusion/exclusion in templates|
|Version:|3.1 ($Rev: 3919 $)|
|Date:|$Date: 2008-03-13 02:03:12 +1000 (Thu, 13 Mar 2008) $|
|Source:|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#HideWhenPlugin|
|Author:|Simon Baird <simon.baird@gmail.com>|
|License:|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#TheBSDLicense|
For use in ViewTemplate and EditTemplate. Example usage:
{{{<div macro="showWhenTagged Task">[[TaskToolbar]]</div>}}}
{{{<div macro="showWhen tiddler.modifier == 'BartSimpson'"><img src="bart.gif"/></div>}}}
***/
//{{{

window.hideWhenLastTest = false;

window.removeElementWhen = function(test,place) {
	window.hideWhenLastTest = test;
	if (test) {
		removeChildren(place);
		place.parentNode.removeChild(place);
	}
};


merge(config.macros,{

	hideWhen: { handler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		removeElementWhen( eval(paramString), place);
	}},

	showWhen: { handler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		removeElementWhen( !eval(paramString), place);
	}},

	hideWhenTagged: { handler: function (place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		removeElementWhen( tiddler.tags.containsAll(params), place);
	}},

	showWhenTagged: { handler: function (place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		removeElementWhen( !tiddler.tags.containsAll(params), place);
	}},

	hideWhenTaggedAny: { handler: function (place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		removeElementWhen( tiddler.tags.containsAny(params), place);
	}},

	showWhenTaggedAny: { handler: function (place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		removeElementWhen( !tiddler.tags.containsAny(params), place);
	}},

	hideWhenTaggedAll: { handler: function (place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		removeElementWhen( tiddler.tags.containsAll(params), place);
	}},

	showWhenTaggedAll: { handler: function (place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		removeElementWhen( !tiddler.tags.containsAll(params), place);
	}},

	hideWhenExists: { handler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		removeElementWhen( store.tiddlerExists(params[0]) || store.isShadowTiddler(params[0]), place);
	}},

	showWhenExists: { handler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		removeElementWhen( !(store.tiddlerExists(params[0]) || store.isShadowTiddler(params[0])), place);
	}},

	hideWhenTitleIs: { handler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		removeElementWhen( tiddler.title == params[0], place);
	}},

	showWhenTitleIs: { handler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		removeElementWhen( tiddler.title != params[0], place);
	}},

	'else': { handler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
		removeElementWhen( !window.hideWhenLastTest, place);
	}}

});

//}}}

{{{
<html><div style="color: rgb(100, 100, 150); font-family: Monaco;"><big><b>
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
</html>
}}}

/***
|''Name:''|HistoryPlugin|
|''Description:''|Limits to only one tiddler open. Manages an history stack and provides macro to navigate in this history (<<history>><<back>><<forward>>).|
|''Version:''|1.0.0|
|''Date:''|2008-03-23|
|''Source:''|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#HistoryPlugin|
|''Author:''|BidiX (BidiX (at) bidix (dot) info)|
|''[[License]]:''|[[BSD open source license|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#%5B%5BBSD%20open%20source%20license%5D%5D ]]|
|''~CoreVersion:''|2.3.0|
***/
//{{{
	Story.prototype.tiddlerHistory = [];
	Story.prototype.historyCurrentPos = -1;
	Story.prototype.currentTiddler = null;
	Story.prototype.maxPos = 11;

	Story.prototype.old_history_displayTiddler = Story.prototype.displayTiddler;
	Story.prototype.displayTiddler = function(srcElement,title,template,animate,slowly)
	{
		title = ((typeof title === "string") ? title : title.title);
		//SinglePageMode
		if (this.currentTiddler) this.closeTiddler(this.currentTiddler);
		if (template == 2) {
			//switch to Edit mode : don't manage
			story.old_history_displayTiddler(null,title,template,animate,slowly);
			return; 
		}
		// if same tiddler no change
		if (this.tiddlerHistory[this.historyCurrentPos] == title) {
			this.currentTiddler = title;
			story.old_history_displayTiddler(null,title,template,animate,slowly);
			return;
		}
		if (this.historyCurrentPos == this.tiddlerHistory.length -1) {
			// bottom of stack
	    	this.tiddlerHistory.push(title);
		   	if (this.tiddlerHistory.length > 11) {
	                 this.tiddlerHistory.shift();
	       	} else {
		    this.historyCurrentPos += 1;
	            }

		} else {
			// middle of stack
		    this.historyCurrentPos += 1;
			if (this.tiddlerHistory[this.historyCurrentPos] != title) {
				// path change => cut history
				this.tiddlerHistory[this.historyCurrentPos] = title;
				var a = [];
				for(var i = 0; i <= this.historyCurrentPos;i++) {
					a[i] = this.tiddlerHistory[i];
				}
				this.tiddlerHistory = a;
			}
		}
		this.currentTiddler = title;
		story.old_history_displayTiddler(null,title,template,animate,true);
	        scrollTo(0, 1);
	}

	Story.prototype.old_history_closeTiddler = Story.prototype.closeTiddler;
	Story.prototype.closeTiddler = function(title,animate,slowly)
	{
		this.currentTiddler = null;
	    story.old_history_closeTiddler.apply(this,arguments);
	}

	config.macros.history = {};
	config.macros.history.action = function(event) {
	var popup = Popup.create(this);
		if(popup)
			{
	        if (!story.tiddlerHistory.length)
	            createTiddlyText(popup,"No history");
	        else
	           {
	           var c = story.tiddlerHistory.length;
			   for (i=0; i<c;i++ )
	               {
					var elmt = createTiddlyElement(popup,"li");
				   	var btn = createTiddlyButton(elmt,story.tiddlerHistory[i],story.tiddlerHistory[i],config.macros.history.onClick);
					btn.setAttribute("historyPos",i);
			       }
	           }
	        }
		Popup.show(popup,false);
		event.cancelBubble = true;
		if (event.stopPropagation) event.stopPropagation();
		return false;
	}
	config.macros.history.handler = function(place,macroName,params)
	{
		createTiddlyButton(place, 'history', 'history', config.macros.history.action);
	}

	config.macros.history.onClick = function(ev)
	{
		var e = ev ? ev : window.event;
		var historyPos = this.getAttribute("historyPos");
		story.historyCurrentPos = historyPos -1;
		story.displayTiddler(null,story.tiddlerHistory[historyPos]);
		return false;
	};

	config.macros.back = {};
	config.macros.back.action = function() {
	       if (story.historyCurrentPos > 0) {
				if (story.currentTiddler) story.closeTiddler(story.currentTiddler);
				story.historyCurrentPos = story.historyCurrentPos -2;
				story.displayTiddler(null,story.tiddlerHistory[story.historyCurrentPos+1]);
			} else {
				//if (story.currentTiddler) story.old_history_displayTiddler(null,story.currentTiddler);
				};
		return false;
	}
	config.macros.back.handler = function(place,macroName,params)
	{
		createTiddlyButton(place, '<<', 'back', config.macros.back.action,"backButton");
	}

	config.macros.forward = {};
	config.macros.forward.action = function() {
	       if (story.historyCurrentPos < story.tiddlerHistory.length -1) {
				if (story.currentTiddler) story.closeTiddler(story.currentTiddler);
				//story.historyCurrentPos = story.historyCurrentPos;
				story.displayTiddler(null,story.tiddlerHistory[story.historyCurrentPos+1]);
			} else {
				//if (story.currentTiddler) story.old_history_displayTiddler(null,story.currentTiddler);
			}
		return false;
	}
	config.macros.forward.handler = function(place,macroName,params)
	{
		createTiddlyButton(place, '>>', 'forward', config.macros.forward.action, "ibutton");
	}
//}}}

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
What struck me on my trip to the National Gallery of Art today was the enormous conceit of human beings. This impression is no doubt partly the result of getting older, becoming more involved again with natural science, and my frequent visits recently to the Museum of Natural History. It's been a long while since I went to an art gallery, and still longer since I taught it as part of humanities courses.

The enormous conceit is not trivial—the purely psychological conceit of self-interest. Rather, it is the conceit of thinking human experience—whether of landscapes or portraits—is reality itself. The Titian portraits of power and cruelty, the Rembrandt portraits of suffering, the weirdly ecstatic portraits of El Greco, the self-important, beautiful people painted by Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Sargent; the grand landscapes of Bierstadt or the English landscapes with nobles on horseback posed in the foreground; all express the idea that our experience is reality itself.

There are exceptions. Vermeer, for example, makes us more interested in the whiteness of the pearls a woman is wearing than in the woman herself. The same could be said of Rembrandt's depiction of light on buttons or other objects, except that his interest always seems to be psychological. Vermeer's subjects seem to be lost in reverie or frozen in a moment, or like the girl in the red hat, beautiful but without character.

We should learn, or should have learned by now, that our experience—what is depicted by art—is not reality itself, or at least not the whole of it. I think the best artists have always known it, and struggle in their medium to reach it. Hence Vermeer's pearls and Rembrandt's buttons.

The Chinese landscape painters had a good idea. They depicted the vastness of nature in their amorphous, misty, lofty landscapes, but always put a human or his dwelling somewhere inconspicuous within them. It was a good device and symbol. One could use the superb technique of art, but not ignore or cheat on the truth.

We know more of truth now and the place of human experience within it than Vermeer, Rembrandt or the Chinese landscape painters could ever have had an inkling of. But it's not likely that it will ever find its way into artistic expression. The distance and barriers between the cognitive and the aesthetic modes of consciousness have increased enormously in the last hundred years, and it's not likely that people with exceptional ability can do both. They can dabble, like C.P. Snow intellectually, or scientists who can paint pictures or play the violin; but they can't synthesize the two in a single vision or representation of existence.

It's a complicated subject. Plato knew its complications: he wrote that a philosopher requires a "musical and loving nature," but in his //Republic// came down hard on the poets and art; and for good reason, because he appreciated their perspective and importance.

(I should add that Leonardo da Vinci's //Ginevra//, which I visited a couple of times today, draws one beyond human experience, its //umwelt//, but in a different way than Chinese landscapes. The Chinese look beyond human existence by making human figures small in the landscape. Somehow da Vinci makes them small because you look through them; you don't see them and their troubles and biographies, because an exquisite curl or eyelid, like Vermeer's pearls, draws you to something larger and beyond.)
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
I wonder if we shouldn't introduce a term like "hyperconsciousness" in addition to "consciousness." Consciousness is something many organisms have as a result of the neural complexity required to enable them to respond to demands imposed by the environment. Consciousness requires a variety of sensation (discrimination, identification, amplification of stimuli to receptors, and neural thru-put to motor response), memory (sustained particular neural activity), and plasticity (neural enablement of flexible motor/behavioral response). There seem to be gradients all the way from invertebrates to man.

"Hyperconsciousness" would be the neural capacity or flexibility to manage the results of consciousness itself: consciousness of consciousness, "self-consciousness" in one of its not so healthy forms. In the West, one can say this hyperconsciousness appeared with the Greeks. It may be identical to the activity of philosophy itself: i.e. How are we to put together into a coherent framework everything we are conscious of, all the things of which we are aware?

The modes themselves are part of consciousness, the aesthetic originating in sensation, the cognitive originating in motor manipulation in response to sensation, and the psychological originating in the neural-hormonal causes of response—i.e. motive, impulse, desire. So too the interaction of modes, and the feeble attempts we make to balance and harmonize them.

Hyperconsciousness is an armchair activity, whether conducted in the universities, seminaries, newsrooms, or local bars. It is faced with the same sort of problems of interaction of modes as consciousness itself, and produces the same sort of closures, but here subject to debate, argument, prejudice, name-calling, and other effluvia of culture. The culture itself—art, science, and religion—is mainly a product of consciousness.

Consciousness for human beings is "doing our thing" according to our capacities, as consciousness is to the bat or dog according to its capacities, with all the conflicts inherent in each's mode of existence. But only human beings have hyperconsciousness: the capacity to reflect on our mode of existence.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
An hypothesis in the scientific metaphysics states something about nature's structure—that it is such and such. A successful experiment, i.e. one supporting the hypothesis, is in fact a manipulation of the structure stated in the hypothesis, or a piece of it. That's why it is successful. An unsuccessful experiment—i.e. one which counts against the hypothesis—is a manipulation of a different structure, which the experiment was not designed to manipulate. Hence, it is a failure, and counts against the hypothesis.

The point is that a successful experiment is of a piece, structurally speaking, with the hypothesis which it supports. That's why it supports it. The unsuccessful experiment may be of a piece with some other structure which it would support. Nature is complex enough so that we can't be certain at any time that the currently accepted hypothesis and its experimental justification is the correct description of its structure.  

!

<!--{{{-->
<div class='toolbar' macro='toolbar closeTiddler closeOthers +editTiddler > fields syncing permalink references jump'></div>
<div class='INTRO' macro='tiddler INTROSubtopicMenu'></div>
<div class='title' macro='view title'></div>
<div class='viewer' macro='view text wikified'></div><div class='tagClear'></div>
<!--}}}-->

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
I would say it's a good thing as I approach the end of my life that I have come to understand the empirical world as the human mode of existence.

Somewhere outside the house sparrows and mourning doves sit in a protected area, feathers ruffled and necks drawn in to keep their bodies' warmth in these twelve inches of snow. That is their empirical world administered by the glucose and everything else in their brains and organism.

I sit here doing the same, a bigger brain and a lot more glucose. We are both part of existence, its expressions, each of us with our own empirical existence (//umwelt// as I prefer to call it, thanks to von Uexk&uuml;ll), but still part of existence.

That's why when we die—the sparrows, mourning doves, me, and all the others my age that I have known—we are still part of existence, though one could say in a much attenuated form.

We rebel, but the rebellion is from a desire to make our empirical world immortal. The sparrows and mourning doves express that desire naturally, biologically. We do it too, naturally and biologically; but thanks to that biology we have consciousness, memory, and neural play, so we create culture and schemes to extend our empirical worlds, to make them immortal.

I said "thanks to biology," when one could equally say, "no thanks," as much modern culture and art says. But you don't reject the biology that creates us, so we have to take it as a challenge and an obligation to do as well as the house sparrows and mourning doves, but with our brighter lights (more brain and glucose of course).

The East has had a better sense of this than we in the West. The Japanese poet Basho loved the sparrow "giving thanks droppings" on his porch. Parabrahma of the Hindus might just as well have been the evolution of galaxies and our own planet and life from an eternal primordium.

We should be able better to appreciate and articulate this insight. But stupidly and ironically we are not. We don't understand what our own science has revealed to us.
!

{{{
<html><img src="00/xxxx.png" style="height:300px"></html>
}}}

{{{
<html><table><tr>
<td><img src="00/xxxx.png" style="height:300px"></td>
<td><img src="00/xxxx.png" style="height:300px"></td>
</tr></table></html>
}}}

{{{
@@display:block;text-align:center;font-size:0.85em;//The compound eye of the horseshoe crab.//@@
}}}

!
''Bits and Pieces'' consists of excerpts from a journal I have kept over the years. Most of the entries I selected relate to the philosophical perspective outlined in "Science As Philosophy" and the final entry in Group F, "The Philosophy of Democritus." Others I included merely because I thought them interesting.

I often use the German word //umwelt// (plural //umwelten//). The term was coined by the Estonian biologist Jakob von Uexk&uuml;ll over half a century ago to refer to an organism's "surrounding world" or "world of experience." It is the product of the environment interacting with an organism's neural system. Much more is known now about the nature of that interaction than was known in von Uexk&uuml;ll's time; but exactly how central neural systems integrate environmental stimuli to produce sensations and other mental content which the organism responds to remains a mystery. It should be emphasized, however, that an organism does not respond directly to its environment; rather it responds to the content of its //umwelt//—for example, its sensations. This fact is usually overlooked.

!!!Contents
* [[Group A (click here)|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
** Two Corruptions at the Smithsonian, Dante and Science, At the Hirshhorn, Irresistable Fundraisers, Kant and Metaphysics, Psychology's Predicament, Biography and Brain, Bird Eyeballs, Complexity, Destruction, Philosophy and Language, Psychic Condition, Satisfying Metaphysics, An Autobiography, Sex and Surfeit, A Dying Squirrel, God and Nature, Alone In the Universe, Old Age, Comforting Doubt
* [[Group B (click here)|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
** A Bad Business, Mind In the Big Bang, Hands and Brains, Frameworks of Existence, Music of the Spheres, Time, Spinoza and Science, Alcohol, An Old Woman, Mystery and Skepticism, Playing Chamber Music, Synesthesia, The Noosphere, Irritating Philosophy, Feynman Hypnotized, Depression, Control, Spinoza and Satisfaction, Playing Tchaikovsky, Nature and Chess
* [[Group C (click here)|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
** A Happy Experience, Intentionality, Evolution and Perfection, Proust, Alcoholism, Discarding Books, Perfecting Ourselves, Epistemology, Squirrels and Engineers, Immortality, Peppered Moths, Epistemology Again, Cooked Food, Qualia, A Nice Compliment, Subjectivity and the Umwelt, Feynman On Death, Astonishing and Unfathomable, Humans In Art, Zen and the Scientific Metaphysics
* [[Group D (click here)|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
** Another Dying Squirrel, C. P. Snow, Deadly Sins, Purpose in the Universe, Monarch Butterflies, Hyperconsciousness, The Nerve Cell, Music, Hypothesis and Experiment, Sex and Ideology, Mysticism, Gravity, Jury Duty, Psychology, Teilhard de Chardin, Joy and Grief, Outside Ourselves, Structure and Probability, Tears in the Heart of Beauty, Health Care
* [[Group E (click here)|Bits and Pieces (E)]] 
** Wittgenstein, Using Our Gifts, Thomas Berry, Growing Up, Invisible Universe, ~Just-So Stories, Maya, Sensations, Cosmic Poetry, Japanese Gardens, Nature's Deepest Laws, Neural Development, Revisiting Classical Dialogues, Umwelt Knowledge, Robins, A Dream, David's Ashes, Origins of Religion, Sublimation, As Others See Us
* [[Group F (click here)|Bits and Pieces (F)]] 
** Absolute and Relative, Atoms and Shoes, Awareness of Awareness, Beating Up On Fundamentalists, Boundaries,  Loving Plants and People, Nature's Designs, Parents and Children, Primary and Secondary Qualities, Thrown Into the World, Ultimate Concern, Animal Consciousness, Religion, Reincarnation, The Philosophy of Democritus
!

/***
|Name|InlineJavascriptPlugin|
|Source|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#InlineJavascriptPlugin|
|Documentation|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#InlineJavascriptPluginInfo|
|Version|1.9.2|
|Author|Eric Shulman - ELS Design Studios|
|License|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#LegalStatements <br>and [[Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License|http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/]]|
|~CoreVersion|2.1|
|Type|plugin|
|Requires||
|Overrides||
|Description|Insert Javascript executable code directly into your tiddler content.|
''Call directly into TW core utility routines, define new functions, calculate values, add dynamically-generated TiddlyWiki-formatted output'' into tiddler content, or perform any other programmatic actions each time the tiddler is rendered.
!!!!!Documentation
>see [[InlineJavascriptPluginInfo]]
!!!!!Revisions
<<<
2008.03.03 [1.9.2] corrected declaration of wikifyPlainText() for 'TW 2.1.x compatibility fallback' (fixes Safari "parse error")
2008.02.23 [1.9.1] in onclick function, use string instead of array for 'bufferedHTML' attribute on link element (fixes IE errors)
2008.02.21 [1.9.0] 'onclick' scripts now allow returned text (or document.write() calls) to be wikified into a span that immediately follows the onclick link.  Also, added default 'return false' handling if no return value provided (prevents HREF from being triggered -- return TRUE to allow HREF to be processed).  Thanks to Xavier Verges for suggestion and preliminary code.
|please see [[InlineJavascriptPluginInfo]] for additional revision details|
2005.11.08 [1.0.0] initial release
<<<
!!!!!Code
***/
//{{{
version.extensions.inlineJavascript= {major: 1, minor: 9, revision: 2, date: new Date(2008,3,3)};

config.formatters.push( {
	name: "inlineJavascript",
	match: "\\<script",
	lookahead: "\\<script(?: src=\\\"((?:.|\\n)*?)\\\")?(?: label=\\\"((?:.|\\n)*?)\\\")?(?: title=\\\"((?:.|\\n)*?)\\\")?(?: key=\\\"((?:.|\\n)*?)\\\")?( show)?\\>((?:.|\\n)*?)\\</script\\>",

	handler: function(w) {
		var lookaheadRegExp = new RegExp(this.lookahead,"mg");
		lookaheadRegExp.lastIndex = w.matchStart;
		var lookaheadMatch = lookaheadRegExp.exec(w.source)
		if(lookaheadMatch && lookaheadMatch.index == w.matchStart) {
			var src=lookaheadMatch[1];
			var label=lookaheadMatch[2];
			var tip=lookaheadMatch[3];
			var key=lookaheadMatch[4];
			var show=lookaheadMatch[5];
			var code=lookaheadMatch[6];
			if (src) { // load a script library
				// make script tag, set src, add to body to execute, then remove for cleanup
				var script = document.createElement("script"); script.src = src;
				document.body.appendChild(script); document.body.removeChild(script);
			}
			if (code) { // there is script code
				if (show) // show inline script code in tiddler output
					wikify("{{{\n"+lookaheadMatch[0]+"\n}}}\n",w.output);
				if (label) { // create a link to an 'onclick' script
					// add a link, define click handler, save code in link (pass 'place'), set link attributes
					var link=createTiddlyElement(w.output,"a",null,"tiddlyLinkExisting",wikifyPlainText(label));
					var fixup=code.replace(/document.write\s*\(/gi,'place.bufferedHTML+=(');
					link.code="function _out(place){"+fixup+"\n};_out(this);"
					link.tiddler=w.tiddler;
					link.onclick=function(){
						this.bufferedHTML="";
						try{ var r=eval(this.code);
							if(this.bufferedHTML.length || (typeof(r)==="string")&&r.length)
								var s=this.parentNode.insertBefore(document.createElement("span"),this.nextSibling);
							if(this.bufferedHTML.length)
								s.innerHTML=this.bufferedHTML;
							if((typeof(r)==="string")&&r.length) {
								wikify(r,s,null,this.tiddler);
								return false;
							} else return r!==undefined?r:false;
						} catch(e){alert(e.description||e.toString());return false;}
					};
					link.setAttribute("title",tip||"");
					var URIcode='javascript:void(eval(decodeURIComponent(%22(function(){try{';
					URIcode+=encodeURIComponent(encodeURIComponent(code.replace(/\n/g,' ')));
					URIcode+='}catch(e){alert(e.description||e.toString())}})()%22)))';
					link.setAttribute("href",URIcode);
					link.style.cursor="pointer";
					if (key) link.accessKey=key.substr(0,1); // single character only
				}
				else { // run inline script code
					var fixup=code.replace(/document.write\s*\(/gi,'place.innerHTML+=(');
					var code="function _out(place){"+fixup+"\n};_out(w.output);"
					try { var out=eval(code); } catch(e) { out=e.description?e.description:e.toString(); }
					if (out && out.length) wikify(out,w.output,w.highlightRegExp,w.tiddler);
				}
			}
			w.nextMatch = lookaheadMatch.index + lookaheadMatch[0].length;
		}
	}
} )
//}}}

// // Backward-compatibility for TW2.1.x and earlier
//{{{
if (typeof(wikifyPlainText)=="undefined") window.wikifyPlainText=function(text,limit,tiddler) {
	if(limit > 0) text = text.substr(0,limit);
	var wikifier = new Wikifier(text,formatter,null,tiddler);
	return wikifier.wikifyPlain();
}
//}}}

!Basic instructions
#Download the file to your hard drive by [[right-clicking and saving the link / target as...|webviewtw.html]] to the filename and location of your choice. Close this page and open your new file.
#Replace the title in the upper left by editing MainMenu.
#Add topics to MainMenu. Click on those topics to create the tiddlers for those topics. To your uninitiated web viewers they will appear to be separate webpages, but you and I know better!
#Edit DefaultTiddlers to include the names of the tiddlers that you want to appear when the ~TiddlyWiki is opened.
#If you want different colorpalettes than the ones provided, check [[here|http://www.giffmex.org/webviewtwexample.html#MoreColorPalettes!]] for more. Just import them from that file to this file.
#If you want to temporarily suspend the single-page-only feature, I recommend the toggle singlepage mode bookmarklet from ~TiddlyTools [[(link here)|http://www.tiddlytools.com/#InstantBookmarklets.]]
#Upload to your site using the UploadPlugin. [[Instructions here|http://www.giffmex.org/twfortherestofus.html#%5B%5BSimple%20instructions%20for%20BidiX's%20UploadPlugin%5D%5D]]

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
This is where the idea of the intentionality of consciousness gets one into trouble. Last night and this morning I was dissecting a Thomastik Rope Core C cello string which I had replaced with a new one. I see that it consists of a core of seven thin steel wires, wrapped by two copper wires of different diameters (the "rope core" no doubt), the whole wrapped by a flat chrome wire. Very beautiful.

Intentionality of consciousness enters the picture when I ask what I am doing in this dissection—what the dissection is "about." The answer: it is about the dull silver core steel wires, the twisted russet colored "ropes," and the leaden color of the flat chrome wrapping.

Now along come the chemists, materials scientists, engineers, and Mr. Thomastik, the manufacturer, and I ask how my description matches or relates to theirs. My description seems to be //about// one sort of reality; theirs seems to be //about// another rather different sort. I can then ask how these two intentionalities are related.

Of course this is all driven by epistemology of the classical sort, which asks how experience is related to the reality ("if there is one") that lies beyond it.

Now, however, we are in a position to answer that question; not through epistemology, but rather through metaphysics, the metaphysics of physics, chemistry, and biology. My sitting there pulling apart differently colored wires is a vast reality. Part of it is the wires themselves and the atoms of copper, iron, and chromium composing them. Part of it—a vastly more complex part—is the functioning of my fingers, my eyes, and most complex of all, my brain and neural system. Both are woven together in an episode of existence.

Where is "the intentionality of consciousness" in all this? Nowhere. Or if it is anywhere it is in the trivial fact that the chemist, materials scientist, engineer, physiologist, Mr Thomastik, and I are each of us concerned mainly with just one segment of this vast reality. That concern and preoccupation is what consciousness is about in the several cases. It is a minor fact of a psychological sort, with no philosophical (i.e. metaphysical or epistemological) implications.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces E|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
Certainly the most astonishing fact about the scientific metaphysics, a fact that we simply can't get our imagination around, is that before sentient animals evolved the universe was quite literally invisible and soundless. From the standpoint of our imaginations it was nothingness; it might just as well have been non-existence itself.

But gradually over the eons existence became visible, slowly with the emergence of cells with sensitive membranes, then clusters of cells responding to an environment outside them, then the development of receptor tissues and neural circuits of cells to integrate and control this response and turn it into behavior. And finally with memory and plasticity full consciousness appears—awareness of awareness—and we reflect that the universe has become visible and aware of itself.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
I was approached on my walk this afternoon by two students from Stoddert School, ages eight or nine, seeking donations for the Haitian earthquake disaster. One walked toward me with a sign in her scribble, looking at me with big innocent eyes in hopeful expectation. She walked along with me, earnestly explaining the event, to the table she and her friend had set up with plates of apple slices and peanut butter/honey dip. I told them I hadn’t brought my wallet with me on my walk, but they said it was okay, I didn’t have to pay for the apples and peanut butter. I was so entranced that I went back and got a dollar, and when I arrived they saw me from a distance and came racing back with big smiles of recognition.

There is a long, portentous debate in philosophy and now in certain branches of psychology, whether human nature is essentially good or bad. Of course it is good. Human beings want to love and be loved. It is there in infancy, and certainly there in those two eight or nine year olds with their beauty that cries out to love and be loved.

But of course it is ruined, and it starts with Sesame Street and noisy childrens story hours at libraries. However, its traces remain in the parent’s devotion to their children when they are that age. When the children grow older the parents forget, and then it is total ruination.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
//The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates// is an 800-page compilation of published articles, which is probably used nationwide in philosophy department Philosophy of Mind courses. The Introduction, titled "The Many Faces of Consciousness: A Field Guide" sets the stage, which is that the term "consciousness" has many uses and overlapping meanings, many of which (perhaps all) are vague, confusing, and often contradictory (p. 1-2). The task of philosophy, as expressed by Owen Flanagan, one of the book's editors, is to:

{{engindent{{{engindent{
Listen carefully to what individuals have to say about how things seem [regarding criteria and meanings for the word "consciousness"]. Also, let the psychologists and cognitive scientists have their say. Listen carefully to their descriptions about how mental life works, and what jobs if any consciousness has in its overall economy. Finally, listen carefully to what the neuroscientists say about how conscious mental events of different sorts are realized, and examine the fit between their stories and the phenomenological and psychological stories. The object of the…method is to see whether and to what extent the three stories can be rendered coherent, meshed, and brought into reflective equilibrium. (p. 116)
}}}}}}
It's hard to get past the pomposity, arrogance, and pretentiousness of this passage to simply understand what philosophy in academia has been up to for the last sixty years or so.

It all springs from the turn Wittgenstein gave to philosophy, that the meaning of language is its use, and there are multiple uses—in this case, according to Flanagan, "phenomenological" uses (ordinary statements about what we are aware of), psychological and cognitive science uses, and neuroscience uses. The task of the philosopher, a la Wittgenstein, is to evaluate all these uses or "stories" after "listening carefully to them" and see if they can be brought into "reflective equilibrium." This is the lofty task of the philosopher.

Well, let's apply this philosophical method and approach to a robin. The British have a "story" about what a robin is. The Americans have another "story." Ornithologists also have their "stories." Should the philosopher "listen carefully" to all of them and then see "to what extent the three stories can be rendered coherent, meshed, and brought into reflective equilibrium"?

Of course the idea is utterly pretentious nonsense. One simply //studies// //Turdus migratorius// (the American robin) and //Erithacus rubella// (the British or European robin), looking at their appearance and behavior (the "phenomenological story"), and the "stories" of biology, taxonomy, genetics, and evolution. "Reflective equilibrium" easily results, but it is not the result of "carefully listening to all sides" and analyzing and reflecting on meanings. It comes from studying the birds themselves.

So it is with consciousness. Everyone agrees that though the overarching term has multiple uses or meanings, eyes, ears, nerves, brains, sensation, perception, feeling, thinking, understanding, desiring and dreaming are part of it. So one //studies// those things. And the study of them will likely bring understanding, in the same way that studying American and European robins brought understanding so that British and Americans don't have to argue about which of the birds is the "real" or "true" robin. "Reflective equilibrium" is not brought about by philosophers listening carefully to different meanings; it is brought about by biology and ornithology doing investigations of what exists.

The desiccated form of epistemology developed by Wittgenstein and practiced in philosophy now is replaced by straightforward metaphysics practicing an epistemology that is equally straightforward and certainly not questioned by the likes of Flanagan as an issue in this book, //The Nature of Consciousness//.

In sum: investigating the nature of consciousness is not an issue of what words mean—people who use them, at least in the sciences, know what they mean—but of what exists. That requires picking //things// apart. Picking //meanings// apart as a full-time activity is sophistry in the classical worst sense of the term.

[[<Back|Journal]]
!August 29, 2007

	I suppose it is possible to believe in a false cosmology—like that handsome, friendly young monk in Rome who toured a reporter from PBS around his monastery grounds, saying with a smile of their apricot tree, “We take good care of it, because it takes good care of us”—but still be in a very good psychic condition. That is to say, in spite of having false beliefs one may work out and manage the tensions and conflicts in-herent in consciousness very well. But I think that may not happen very often. Also, grasping the truth, or trying to, and achieving some success at it is part of the psychic ten-sion and conflict of life. Living, even happily, with cognitive dissonance is not success.
!

[[<BACK|Journal]]
!August 30, 2007

There is a good review of a new translation of Dante’s Paradiso by Joan Acocella in the New Yorker that brings me back again to that amazing work, so utterly foreign to our metaphysics now, but still so powerful regarding human nature. The review, of course, focuses on the part of the Comedy that is hardly read—heaven. Hell, as the re-view points out, is more to our tastes and resonates better with our psyches and what we allow them to become. But, as the review also points out, we can’t understand even hell with that undeveloped psyche; how, for example, it could have been created from “divine love.”

But what strikes me is that in Dante’s attempt to describe heaven, his aesthetic devices leave him. That is natural and as it should be. He is trying to describe what later Spinoza identified as the condition of “blessedness,” and though he tried mightily as Dante did with aesthetic devices, his intellectual devices almost leave him too. When one tries to depict the ultimate condition of the human psyche and human existence, the aes-thetic and the intellectual, and the passion, desire or yearning that drives them both, are inadequate. Perhaps they have to drop away as the sins drop away one by one as Dante goes from ledge to ledge in Purgatory.

The real point that strikes me, however, is that within the metaphysics of the natu-ral sciences that goal and condition of the best human existence and human psyche is ab-solutely no different from Dante’s and Spinoza’s. It is a state of harmony and fulfillment where all psychic tensions and conflicts have been worked out and disappear. That ful-fillment, happiness and blessedness occurs within the very framework of the metaphysics of natural science. After all, since that conception—rather, that kind of universe—created those conflicts and tensions for our psyches as a result of our living within it and as part of it, it seems natural that that same universe should allow us to resolve them. One could say it is part of its fulfillment and destiny, just as evolution itself is.

In short, I don’t think there may be any difference between Christianity and sci-ence in terms of the best and most desirable outcome for the human psyche and human existence. Their metaphysics of course are opposed, and the Christian (and Muslim and Judaic) metaphysics is clearly false. But the same best outcome for human beings follows equally from both.

I think it is the same for all religions. One has heaven or nirvana, the two ex-tremes of bliss, fulfillment, happiness. Now it comes from biology and natural science. Nature, as it were, wants us to solve the problem she has created for us in enabling us to live. And she punishes us to the extent that we fail. Dante didn’t get his knowledge of suffering, sin, and punishment from God; he got it from his insight into the human psy-che, human consciousness, and how its misuse is it own punishment. (I used to enjoy try-ing to get this idea across to students in the humanities course at St. Petersburg
!

[[<BACK|Journal]]
!June 05, 2009
This June 5, at age 73, it’s probably not a bad idea to take stock of my intellectual development. As a teenager I loved biology; those organisms were reality itself, and in nature—in fact even in their formaldehyde jars—beauty itself.

Then I went to college and found that biology is very hard, involving chemistry, which is not beautiful, and physics, which I have since learned is quite beautiful, but was then incomprehensible. And all three required discipline and dedication, which I had not then and still don’t.

So I switched to philosophy, which seemed to promise both reality and beauty, which in those days it could because philosophy was on the cusp between its great tradi-tion and the irrelevant, isolated, epistemologically focused discipline it has since become. I was good at it, and it didn’t require the discipline and complicated and detailed under-standing that chemistry and zoology required. And it was easy for me, giving me lots of free time to walk, ruminate, worry about the future and success, and all the psychic prob-lems youth deals with (well, age deals with them too), which at least philosophy in those days seemed to help with.

Since then, until about ten years ago, I have been spinning wheels intellectually, except for the insight concerning three modes of consciousness.

Then it finally came to me that science—the reality and beauty of biology that I responded to as a teenager—is in fact a philosophy, what philosophy traditionally has tried to achieve. The only problem left is to work out the full flow and detail of that de-velopment regarding consciousness and its proper and best use.

It’s pretty good progress, in view of the obstacles from both science and philoso-phy as now construed
!

[[<Back|Journal]]
!September 16, 2009

	In finally discovering Nature I feel like Janna must feel in finally discovering God. It is something greater than ourselves, but something to which we belong and which has created us. It gets us out of ourselves; it doesn’t allow us to think our existence, and above all our opinions and subjectivity, our “lived world” (umwelt, empirical world) and our interpretations of it, is the center of existence and its focus. All of that is liberating and a liberation.

	I look at this okra flower outside my window—a four inch pale yellow flower with a magenta core and pistil tip—and I think billions of years of creation of chemicals and their combination has come together to create the two of us, the body of that flower and the brain and senses of my body connecting to it by reflected light. It’s a consummate creation; it doesn’t matter whether you call it Nature or God.
!

[[<Back|Journal]]
!September 9, 2009

	When one destroys a building, turning it into a pile of rubble, it has lost its value for us. For nature, however, it has not; the building and rubble are one and the same; the rubble is just the disassembled building.

	When we die, our lives have lost their value for us, but not for nature. Our bodies, the decaying remains or eight-pound box of chemicals from the crematorium are the same; our lives are just disassembled.
!

[[<Back|Journal]]
!December 5, 2009

Today, Saturday, sees the first snow of the year coming down in wet clots. I am keeping the apartment temperature in the low 60s, and wear the down vest, which I washed last week at the Laundromat across from Giant, together with the cotton blanket, both of which I brought back from Korea in 1997. I am having leftover kimchi chige for lunch, with gakdoogi and cold rice, but have put off the pleasure of eating—now it is 3 p.m.—to enjoy a few vodkas, the closest thing in the West to soju.

So it is all Korea this afternoon, looking out the window at the snow from a cold apartment, wearing the down jacket, with warm kimchi chige, cold rice, and gakdoogi waiting in the kitchen.

And then I think of Lee Yang Ja’s autobiography written in 1961 as a “term pa-per” assignment for students in my English classes at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. She writes, “Through the window the snow has been falling thick and fast. Can it be a great misfortune that I have no one to talk, to give something from heart and no place to go like this snowing?” Then she launches into her autobiography—eight pages of single-spaced typing, when the best any of the rest of the students could manage was barely a page or even a short paragraph.

It is a great regret of my life not having met Lee Yang Ja, and I think I have been in love with her all these years. But that is the way life is, our biographies all pieced to-gether of fragments, distantly related in time, but held together by memory, regrets, de-sires, broken circumstance.

In my ambition I hope my writings will reach people like myself, and not disap-pear. I hope the same for Lee Yang Ja’s autobiography, which I keep with my own writ-ings. That way—(after all, sentiment and romance are part of the best in the Korean char-acter)—we will be united and remain together.
!

[[<Back|Journal]]
!January 17, 2010

I’ve noted many times that birds’ eyeballs don’t move in their sockets like sea horses or ours, and so they have to move their heads back and forth and up and down to create a visual world. (For example, the row of house sparrows on the fence outside my window now is motionless, except for the heads which are in constant jerky motion.)

It seems to me that this characteristic, which would be quite crippling for mammals and other sedentary or slow-moving creatures, makes perfect sense for animals that fly and must negotiate the world as they whisk through the air—for example, among branches of trees and bushes or through the openings in chain-link fences. Their bodies rather than their eyes are creating the motion that focuses objects in the environment. Movement of their eyes in their sockets would be much too slow and clumsy to negotiate the instant responses necessary in mid-flight to manage the environment. The drawback, of course, is that when they are perched they have to move their heads constantly to focus—i.e. to structure their environment. Of course their neural centers controlling or enabling vision must function very differently from animals whose eyes can move.

I think von Uexküll would have loved this example, had he thought of it, of an //umwelt// created from vision which must be quite different from our own (even if the anatomy of the eye is much the same). One might wonder whether a tree a bird sees as it sits on a fence cocking its head back and forth, up and down, looks the same as when it flies among its branches.

[[<Back|Journal]]
!January 20, 2010

	I was approached on my walk this afternoon by two irresistible fundraisers from Stoddart School, ages eight or nine, seeking donations for the Haitian earthquake disaster. One walked toward me with a sign in her scribble, looking at me with big innocent eyes in hopeful expectation. She walked along with me, explaining the event, to the table she and her friend had set up with plates of apple slices and peanut butter/honey dip. I told them I hadn’t brought my wallet with me on my walk, but they said it was okay, I didn’t have to pay for the apples and peanut butter. I was so entranced that I went back and got a dollar, and when I arrived they saw me from a distance and came racing back with big smiles of recognition.

	There is a long, portentous debate in philosophy and now in certain branches of psychology, whether human nature is essentially good or bad. Of course it is good. Hu-man beings want to love and be loved. It is there in infancy, and certainly there in those two eight or nine year olds with their beauty that cries out to love and be loved.

	But of course it is ruined, and it starts with Sesame Street and noisy children’s story hours at libraries. However, its traces remain in the parent’s devotion to their chil-dren when they are that age. When the children grow older the parents forget, and then it is total ruination.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces E|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
After fruitlessly waiting for my nephew and his wife and two girls at the Botanic Gardens this afternoon, I walked around the various environments, and then stopped at the special exhibit in the East Garden Court, currently of a Japanese garden or courtyard, with stones laid out in gravel and water flowing through bamboo pipes, shrubs in sculpted arrangement, and all the rest of it.

The Japanese of tradition are very wise. They try to arrange nature in harmony with human perfection. They seem to want to blend nature—stones, flowing water, sculpted shrubs—with an ideal of what it is to be human.

Riding home on the bus I watched the clouds in the evening sun, full, orange, green, and black, moving and reshaping themselves, and thought that is what the Japanese try to achieve in their gardens. Of course it can't be done with the clouds, and of course the Japanese know that; nature is greater than us and beyond our control. But we can select fragments of it, fragments that express nature's power and its permanency—like stones and flowing water—and put them into an arrangement that reflects that power and permanency, but also our sense of perfection, and thus expresses nature and ourselves, blends them both.

It is a great achievement of the Japanese, this achievement of their tradition. But now that we know nature more fully through the metaphysics of physics, chemistry, and biology, that expression and blending becomes more challenging and difficult. The cognitive has become more complex—stones and water are different than traditionally conceived—so the aesthetic is challenged and confused; and shrinks back in fear and anger, or mere scholarship.
!

!Postings
work in progress . . . . 
!

!Postings
# [[2007|2007index]]
## [[29 August|J070829]]
## [[30 August|J070830]]
# [[2008|2008index]]
# [[2009|2009index]]
## [[05 June|J090605]]
## [[09 September|J090917]]
## [[16 September|J090916]]
## [[05 December|J091205]]
# [[2010|2010index]]
## [[17 January|J100117]]
## [[20 January|J100120]]
# [[2011|2011index]]
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
Parents and grandparents especially (as I see from people my own age) rejoice when children are born, but they weep and grieve when their own parents, brothers, and sisters die. It seems perfectly natural. But it is illogical and in some ways stupid, since birth inevitably brings death. Everyone knows this, of course, and after the joy and grief, they take on a "philosophical" mood and say, "Well, that's life."

Still, it is somehow deeply stupid to rejoice and grieve over what is essentially a single process. Of course Buddhism was aware of this, and put ignorance, along with hatred and passion at the center of the wheel of life (the pig, the snake, and the cock in the Tibetan tankas).

The problem is how to get out of this stupidity and ignorance. In Western philosophical terms—or at least in my idea of Western philosophy—that is the problem of values. Old age, sickness, and death present that problem, precisely because of the joy of birth. In modern times (at least in the twentieth century) only the existentialists were aware of it and tried to grapple with it. In Socratic/Platonic Greece (the Greece of Aeschylus and Sophocles too of course) it could be problematical. In the Christian period it was no problem at all. Even for Spinoza it wasn't a problem because he was able to blend the growing scientific metaphysics with the Scholastic tradition. But now with the full development of the scientific metaphysics it reasserts itself with full force.

But back to ignorance, hatred, and passion—the pig, snake, and cock. The growth of psychology in the West as an attempted part of the scientific metaphysics has a lot of things to say about them and their elaboration in our lives and even their emergence from our biological origins. But all of that knowledge added to our own self-observation and reflection doesn't help very much with the problem of values.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
Jury duty today and I took along Teilhard de Chardin's //Phenomenon of Man//. It's a peculiar book, and irritating, though he is on the right track so far as the metaphysics of science is concerned. Part of the problem is that so much more is known in biology and biochemistry than was known seventy years ago when he wrote. Another part is that he felt compelled to recast what was known in a vague and overarching terminology, recasting the standard concepts and vocabulary. The motivation for this seems to have been his desire to pave the way for his thesis. That thesis, culminating in the "Omega point," is thoroughly metaphysical in the worst sense, the sense most thoroughly trashed by logical positivism around the time he wrote and was thinking through his ideas. And yet he insists his thesis is not metaphysics! He does this, or thinks he can do it, because he is a paleontologist, a scientist, and can talk about "a metallic barysphere, a silicious lithosphere, a hydrosphere, and an atmosphere" (p. 71).

He was also a Jesuit who had taken the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. That too must certainly have shaped his perspective. It, or something more complicated or limited in his intellect, make his pronouncements strangely pontifical and truncated, as if his thought becomes frozen as soon as he has written a sentence and he feels the need to follow it up with clarification (which usually turns out to be unhelpful, as awkward and truncated as the original sentence).

I got called on a jury panel of sixty candidates for the criminal trial of a young black man accused of carjacking and attempted murder using a gun. He sat between his two attorneys, a handsome, clean-cut and dressed-up (of course his defenders saw to that), intelligent and even harmless looking person, and with an engaging smile when he talked to his lawyers.

The selection process, very complicated, took a couple of hours, and seemed very thorough, each side interviewing candidates, resulting in a kind of musical chairs as panel members were called to the jury box and temporarily accepted or rejected.

When you actually see this process at work it makes a strong impression. First of all, it is serious and systematic. Second, it costs a lot. This young man, probably guilty (judging from the circumstances outlined by the judge), is costing the judge's salary for that day and the four or five day trial, the salary of prosecutor and public defenders, personnel operating the courtroom, and costs of the jury pool for that day; and that's just for his trial. Then when he is convicted, as it seems almost certain he will be, there will be the cost of his imprisonment for ten or twenty years.

This is the effect on society of one young man, handsome, apparently intelligent, as patient and calm as any professional as he sat there between his lawyers. He contributes nothing to society; indeed he has caused terrible grief to the few of society who were his victims, and he costs the larger society hundreds of thousands of dollars. Dealing with people just like him—some as good-looking as him no doubt—costs society billions.

….So today, it strikes me now, was an unhappy day, mixing Teilhard de Chardin's dream of the consolidation of consciousness into a perfected Omega point outcome for the universe, and the American court system dreaming of perfect justice in a society. Both very defective, but it seems possible easily improved. Well, I guess that, even, is also a dream.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces E|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
What gives the "just-so" flavor to a lot of the explanations in evolutionary psychology is the broad sweep of the idea of natural selection and the simple fact of mutation.

Any anatomical, physiological, or behavioral characteristic can be construed as adaptive in some way (or at least harmless) and therefore selected for, because, after all, it is there and has a function; that function can be identified and described, and its absence would indicate it was non-functional or non-adaptive, and therefore wasn't selected for. Similarly, any anatomical, physiological, or behavioral characteristic can be explained as a result of mutation; any and every gene can mutate.

So the field is open for almost any kind of explanation. A characteristic or behavior is there because it is adaptive and genes mutated to produce it. One has merely to show how it functions and how that function might be adaptive. One can forget about actually identifying the genes responsible and tracing their pathways of expression into the neural and hormonal systems that innervate the muscles and limbs that produce behavior. A "plausible" story will suffice.

It's almost as bad as the "theological" explanation for the way things are: they are that way because God chose for them to be that way. That seems to us ridiculous, because we don't believe in the God of Genesis. If we did, and if we accepted the metaphysics of Aristotle and Aquinas supporting the story of Genesis as we accept the metaphysics of biology, it wouldn't be ridiculous at all; it would be a perfectly reasonable explanation.

There is a vast biological and evolutionary distance between genes coding for proteins and an organism's behavior, especially an organism with as complex a neural and hormonal system as a human being. That distance has been described in remarkable detail for genetically caused disorders such as phenylketonuria, ~Tay-Sachs disease, cystic fibrosis, and Down syndrome. Evolutionary psychology has produced nothing even remotely similar to genetically account for human behavior.

Probably the most important thing genes "code for" regarding human behavior is plasticity of neural function, beginning with habituation, sensitization, and conditioning. It is that flexibility that enables behavior to become adaptive.

-----------

One might add that evolutionary psychology also tends to oversimplify behavior, which adds to the "just-so" flavor of its explanations. For example "fight or flight" behavior is used as a standard example of genetically programmed behavior. It is easily understood and imagined: the sparrow flees the attacking hawk; the gazelle flees the attacking lion or cheetah.

But in fact "fight or flight" behavior can be very complicated. Wolves attacking a moose "fight" when they sense an advantage and "flee" when the moose turns on them with its antlers. The water buffalo turns on attacking hyenas and they temporarily "flee." In such cases both predator and prey use a delicate balance of "fight and flight." Humans do the same in their encounters with each other, but of course on a much more subtle level. So-called "passive-aggressive" behavior might be an example. "Playing possum"—behaving dead when under attack—is a strategy employed by both animals and humans when flight is impossible.

Such complicated behavior cannot be genetically programed; it can only be orchestrated by highly developed neural systems exquisitely responding to quickly changing environmental circumstances.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces]]
!
Just imagine, Kant never in his eighty year life traveled more than twenty miles from Koenigsburg, and famously kept a schedule such that Koenigsburgians could set their clocks at three p. m. when he took his walk.

Well, that is metaphysical idealism for you. You don't have to travel or explore; you can just investigate your own mind. Analytic philosophy in the twentieth century is heir to that idea. You just have to investigate concepts, and you can stay at home to do that.

But the true founders and investigators of philosophy traveled and explored. Democritus came to Athens from Abdera, and "no one knew his name." Plato and Aristotle formed academies and traveled, Plato even to Syracuse and Aristotle with Alexander, Plato's Alcibiades turned world conqueror.

Philosophy was born vibrant and grew, took a huge setback from Christianity, fluttered to life in the Renaissance, took another setback from seventeenth century speculations and the consequent skepticism and focus on epistemology. Kant was the final result.

But it wasn't truly dead. Newton described his work as philosophy; "philosophical societies" sponsored and promoted biology and investigation of nature in the nineteenth century, calling it "natural philosophy." It turns out that science was taking over philosophy, or at least its heart: metaphysics. Democritus, Aristotle, and even Plato would, I think, have been delighted. Socrates I don't know; maybe he would have become weird and self-centered like Wittgenstein.

Whether Kant would have given up his walks and scheduled routine, it's hard to guess. He did after all propose the nebular hypothesis before the influence of Hume led him into idealism.

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
Just imagine, Kant never in his eighty year life traveled more than twenty miles from K&ouml;nigsberg, and famously kept a schedule such that K&ouml;nigsbergians could set their clocks at three p. m. when he took his walk.

But it wasn't truly dead. Newton described his work as philosophy; Dalton titled his book "A New System of Chemical Philosophy"; "Philosophical Societies" sponsored and promoted biology and investigations of nature in nineteenth century England. So it turned out that science had taken over philosophy, or at least its heart: metaphysics. Democritus, Aristotle, and even Plato would, I think, have been delighted. Socrates I don't know; maybe he would have become weird and self-centered like Wittgenstein.

Whether Kant would have given up his walks and scheduled routine, it's hard to guess. He did after all propose the nebular hypothesis before the influence of Hume led him into idealism.

/***
|''Name:''|LegacyStrikeThroughPlugin|
|''Description:''|Support for legacy (pre 2.1) strike through formatting|
|''Version:''|1.0.2|
|''Date:''|Jul 21, 2006|
|''Source:''|http://www.tiddlywiki.com/#LegacyStrikeThroughPlugin|
|''Author:''|MartinBudden (mjbudden (at) gmail (dot) com)|
|''License:''|[[BSD open source license]]|
|''CoreVersion:''|2.1.0|
***/

//{{{
// Ensure that the LegacyStrikeThrough Plugin is only installed once.
if(!version.extensions.LegacyStrikeThroughPlugin) {
version.extensions.LegacyStrikeThroughPlugin = {installed:true};

config.formatters.push(
{
	name: "legacyStrikeByChar",
	match: "==",
	termRegExp: /(==)/mg,
	element: "strike",
	handler: config.formatterHelpers.createElementAndWikify
});

} //# end of "install only once"
//}}}

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!

There was a small segment on NHK television the other day about an elderly botanist in Japan, who (according to the segment) "named a plant after his wife. It showed how much he loved plants."

In our society we would say, "He named a plant after his wife. It showed how much he loved his wife."

There is an ocean of difference between the two.
!

!Work in Progress
My work on compiling this manuscript into an electronic book is proceeding chapter by chapter. 
Most recently added chapter is ''Chapter 4'' that can be read __[[HERE|MSnow015]]__.

!Complete to date:
The full compilation of chapters to date can be read page by page or directly downloaded as an eBook in a PDF format suitable for e-readers: __[[HERE|MSnow-ALL]]__.

!

[[<BACK|MSnow]]
<html><img src="01/Page-01.jpeg" style="height:400px"></html>
!Browse Past Chapters Page by Page:
# [[Chapter 1|MSnow004]]
# [[Chapter 2|MSnow008]]
# [[Chapter 3|MSnow010]]
# [[Chapter 4|MSnow015]]

!Download
Full file as PDF is available: __[[DOWNLOAD|Titus-01.pdf]]__
!

[[<Back|MSnow]]|[[Next>|MSnow002]]
<html><img src="01/Page-01.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow001]]|[[Next>|MSnow003]]
<html><img src="01/Page-02.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow002]]|[[Next>|MSnow004]]
<html><img src="01/Page-03.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow003]]|[[Next>|MSnow005]]
<html><img src="01/Page-04.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow004]]|[[Next>|MSnow006]]
<html><img src="01/Page-05.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow005]]|[[Next>|MSnow007]]
<html><img src="01/Page-06.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow006]]|[[Next>|MSnow008]]
<html><img src="01/Page-07.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow007]]|[[Next>|MSnow009]]
<html><img src="01/Page-08.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow008]]|[[Next>|MSnow010]]
<html><img src="01/Page-09.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow009]]|[[Next>|MSnow011]]
<html><img src="01/Page-10.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow010]]|[[Next>|MSnow012]]
<html><img src="01/Page-11.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow011]]|[[Next>|MSnow013]]
<html><img src="01/Page-12.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow012]]|[[Next>|MSnow014]]
<html><img src="01/Page-13.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow013]]|[[Next>|MSnow015]]
<html><img src="01/Page-14.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow014]]|[[Next>|MSnow016]]
<html><img src="01/Page-15.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Back|MSnow015]]|[[Next>|MSnow017]]
<html><img src="01/Page-16.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

[[<Back|MSnow016]]
<html><img src="01/Page-17.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>
!

{{menubox2{Mark Titus}}}{{menubox3{Magic Snow}}}
<<search>>
!OUTLINE:
[[FrontPage]]
1. [[Science as Philosophy]]
2. [[Sensations in the Metaphysics of Democritus|Sensations in the Metaphysics of Democritus]]
3. [[The 'Hard' Problem of Consciousness|The 'Hard' Problem of Consciousness]]
4. [[McDonald's Child|McDonald's Child]]
5. [[Bits and Pieces|Index: Bits and Pieces]]
6. [[Classical Dialogues|Book01]]
7. [[A Korean Autobiography]]
!CONTACT:
////
!! 
{{tuduSlider{<<slider chkToolbox Toolbox 'Toolbox »'>>}}}
!!

<html>
<!--
3. [[The 'Hard' Problem of|The 'Hard' Problem of Consciousness]]
&emsp; [[Consciousness|The 'Hard' Problem of Consciousness]]
-->
</html>

<!--{{{-->
<link rel='alternate' type='application/rss+xml' title='RSS' href='index.xml'/>
<!--}}}-->

<style type="text/css">#contentWrapper {display:none;}</style><div id="SplashScreen" style="border: 3px solid #ccc; display: block; text-align: center; width: 320px; margin: 100px auto; padding: 50px; color:#000; font-size: 28px; font-family:Tahoma; background-color:#eee;"><b>LOADING</b>: <blink> ...</blink><br><br></div>

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces E|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
In a perfectly straightforward sense Maya or illusion in the Hindu/Buddhist tradition is taking our human //umwelt//, the empirical world or world of experience, to be reality itself. Penetrating that illusion is understanding and adjusting to the fact that it is the product of a far more vast reality—the world of atoms and universal forces like gravity and electromagnetism.

It's not that Maya, the world of experience, does not exist. Obviously it does. But it changes every moment, and finally crumbles with each human's death.

"Working out one's salvation"—the Buddha's final words—is understanding and adjusting to that fact by living one's //umwelt// in constant awareness of the larger framework in which it is embedded. Buddhism would call it "mindfulness." 

There is great beauty in Maya, however; it's just that that beauty needs to be grasped in the larger existential framework in order to avoid its tears.
!

!
@@display:block;text-align:center;font-size:1.25em;  ''I'' @@
All complex organisms, from jellyfish to humans, are multi-celled: their bodies are composed of cells and only cells, sometimes trillions of them. But their bodies hold together and function as a unit in the environment that surrounds them. They are able to respond to and move within it in ways that enable them to survive.

How can they do this, since their sole contact with the environment is at the cellular level—through the individual cells that cover their bodies or lie just beneath their surface? The answer, of course, is that some of these cells are neural receptor cells: they respond to stimuli from the environment. Many of them lie beneath the skin (Pacinian corpuscles, Merkel cells), some lie in the retina at the back of the eye (rods and cones), others in the nasal passages and on the tongue, and some lie within the cochlea of the ear (hair cells). Their job is to respond to small portions of the environment (electromagnetic radiation, pressure changes, molecules) and to pass these responses on to neural networks which integrate them into sensations.

The step from events in the environment (“physical” events) to sensations (“mental” events) is sometimes referred to as the “hard problem of consciousness.” In fact it goes back to the 17th century and John Locke’s distinction between “primary qualities” and “secondary qualities” and the problem of how they can be connected. It appears now, however, that we are in position to make that connection through basic discoveries in neurobiology.

<html><center>
<img src="crab_atlantic_horseshoe.jpg" style="height:200px">
<img src="crab-eye-closeup.jpg" style="height:200px">
</center></html>@@display:block;text-align:center;font-size:0.85em;//The eye of Limulus.//@@
A good place to start is with the horseshoe crab //Limulus//. Its compound eye has about 1,000 ommatidia, each of which contains a light sensitive cell. In their synaptic connections these cells (called eccentric cells) are capable of responding to a gradient of light from dark to light in such a way that the dark side of the gradient becomes darker and the light side becomes lighter, thus creating a boundary line. (The process is called “lateral inhibition,” and won H. Keffer Hartline of Rockefeller University a share of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1967.) The result is that the crab is able to create features in an undifferentiated stream of radiation in its environment—for example a line between the beach towards which it moves to lay eggs and the water to which it must return. Creating such features in an environment of undifferentiated stimuli is essential for a multi-celled organism to move and survive.

The human eye, of course, is vastly more complicated than the eye of the horseshoe crab, and capable of creating an entire visual world of shapes, figures, and colors out of the same undifferentiated environment of electromagnetic radiation that the crab responds to in its world of colorless boundaries. The retinas of each of our eyes contain about 126 million rod and cone cells, the 6 million cone cells containing pigments which are sensitive to those small portions of the spectrum which we recognize as colors. As the biochemist George Wald (who shared the 1967 Nobel Prize with Hartline) showed, those pigments (called carotinoids, of which vitamin A is a member) absorb a narrow band of light energy which they convert into chemical free energy sufficient to cause cone cells to respond. When those responses are integrated colors are created, just as in the horseshoe crab’s eye a line is created when the responses of eccentric cells are integrated. One could say the  horseshoe crab creates lines by connecting the “dots” from the firing of individual eccentric cells; the human retina creates colors by connecting the “pixels” from the firing of individual cone cells.

It thus appears that sensations—integrated responses of receptor neurons to stimuli from an organism’s environment—are one of nature’s novel creations in its evolution of complexity over billions of years. Each level of complexity has new properties or characteristics differing from the elements that create it. Atoms of hydrogen and oxygen, for example, are explosive when separated; but when combined in a certain way to form molecules of water, they are not. Water molecules combine with other molecules in ways that hydrogen and oxygen atoms cannot, creating compounds that have still newer properties. Large quantities of water molecules can take the forms of liquid, solid, or gas, but those properties do not apply to individual molecules. Receptor cells responding to streams of radiation, pressure changes, and molecules in the environment create properties that those stimuli do not have in themselves. They are creations of an organism’s neural system.

Once neural systems have created sensations—conversions of environmental stimuli into neural form—they are free to preserve them, and to combine, shape, edit, and arrange them into innumerable forms. They become what the Estonian biologist Jakob von Uexküll in a 1934 monograph, “A Stroll through the World of Animals and Men,” called the organism’s //umwelt// or “lived world.” The organism henceforth lives not in the physical environment of radiation, pressures, and molecules, but in a world of its own creation. 

@@display:block;text-align:center;font-size:1.25em;  ''II''@@
A few weeks ago I was having lunch at ~McDonald’s and noticed a young father with his daughter eating ice cream in a nearby booth. The father, who appeared to be Chinese, was absorbed in reading while the child, whose head hardly reached above the table, looked about her with that wandering gaze children two or three years old have. She looked out the window, then briefly at me, and then a little more fixedly at two women talking loudly in a booth across from hers. Then she slowly turned toward her father without looking at him, opened her mouth and accepted a spoonful of ice cream. The pattern repeated itself—the child drifting in a sea of sensations created from the receptor neurons in her eyes, ears, tongue, nose and skin integrated and assembled by her brain—until the father picked her up and they left the restaurant.

Years ago as an undergraduate I read Jean Piaget’s  book, “The Language and Thought of the Child,” which described how the child makes the distinction between itself and the outside world—the “Me” and the “~Not-Me.” At the same time I was reading William James’s “Essays in Radical Empiricism,” which seemed to me to describe what was going on in this child’s mind. She was in her world of sensations, but gradually classifying them into two categories—those that belonged to “her” and her body and those that belonged to an “outside world.” As James described this categorization: 

{{engindent{Just so, I maintain, does a given undivided portion of experience, taken in one context of associates, play the part of a knower, of a state of mind, of 'consciousness'; while in a different context the same undivided bit of experience plays the part of a thing known, of an objective 'content.' In a word, in one group it figures as a thought, in another group as a thing. And, since it can figure in both groups simultaneously we have every right to speak of it as subjective and objective, both at once. (James 1912, "Essays in Radical Empiricism," Essay I)}}}

I think James might have gone further had he lived to see the discoveries in neurobiology revealing how sensations are created within neural systems. The unity he sought, he might have realized, lies not in sensations—“radical empiricism”—but in nature itself.


Mark Titus
//February 2018//


!

<!--{{{-->
<div class='toolbar' macro='toolbar closeTiddler closeOthers +editTiddler > fields syncing permalink references jump'></div>
<div class='MicroGen' macro='tiddler MicroGenSubtopicMenu'></div><div class='title' macro='view title'></div>
<div class='viewer' macro='view text wikified'></div><div class='tagClear'></div>
<!--}}}-->

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
It's interesting that Teilhard de Chardin and the biophysicist Harold Morowitz in following him tend toward the idea that the creation of man, mind, and even "spirit" are contained in, or somehow implicit or immanent in the creation of the universe itself—the Big Bang according to the currently accepted cosmology. Thus, man, mind, and spirit are natural expressions over billions of years of what was somehow already there.

The idea seems preposterous. Yet we willingly believe the oak tree is contained in the acorn, immanent within it, as we believe the fully fledged human being is contained within the fertilized ovum, the zygote. It is easy for the imagination to grasp these developments, perhaps partly because their mechanisms have been identified and described in detail.

So why not expand our imaginations beyond these familiar cases to the realms of existence that create acorns and zygotes, especially since their mechanisms have also been discovered and described in some detail? That, of course, is what Teilhard and Morowitz would like us to do.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
Saw my first Monarch butterfly the other day over the field in Whitehaven Park, and was struck with the familiar sense of wonder. 

But wonder is of two types. The first seems to be anthropomorphic. One wonders that this tiny, blind, fragile thing can fly so far over forests and lakes, and somehow gather with its fellows three thousand miles and a month or two later to cover the small group of trees in southern Mexico. In a way it is wondering how I could do such a thing, or how human beings could. It is putting the thing in terms of human achievement accomplished by some lesser organism.

The better sort of wonder, however, is triggered by the science of the thing itself. One supposes that the Monarch is guided by light or perhaps a magnetic sensor in its brain or nervous system which acts as a sort of rudder midst the northerly winds. And perhaps there are pheromones that eventually draw them together to that one spot. And what sort of cues make it the same spot each year? And what triggers the start of the migration each August? Everything has an explanation, if we but knew all the elements, neurological structures and physiological/environmental functions involved. But the more we find out, the greater is the wonder. There is a popular illusion that knowledge and explanation remove wonder. Perhaps it does—but only of the anthropomorphic type. However, it replaces it with greater wonder still. 

!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
Philosophers like to debate the question of how mental events (subjective thoughts, emotional affects, etc) can be created from physical events ("firing neurons," etc), and even whether they can do so. That is not a question for philosophers, however; it is a question for scientists—neurobiologists and others who are expert in that part of the metaphysics of the scientific philosophy. Those with a broader interest in that philosophy—and current academic philosophers are not among them—should be asking, "What are the consequences of the fact that mental events are created from physical events?" For those consequences are enormous.

Take music, for example. It is not sound waves emitted from instruments and speakers connected to ~CDs, though of course it is connected to them through the neural events that create what we hear as music; it is part of the metaphysical fabric.

Understanding this, we can perhaps understand music better. There is an inherent "sweetness" in melody and harmony, which may have originated in animal courtship sounds—the cooing of doves for example (as has been suggested). It is the inherent sweetness, in fact, that belongs to any sensation selected for positive response—i.e. is pleasurable. Couple this with the affect of emotions, the particular feel of their various contents, and you get the "emotive" power of music, its ability to "express" emotion. However, the emotion in music is free of its functional role in the //umwelt//—the daily life and play of emotions in managing and getting through it. One is, after all, sitting in a concert hall or listening to the music on the radio and not cooing to one's lover in preparation for sex.

Probably most of the time, however, it is the sweetness of particular melodies and harmonies in themselves, and not their power to create and express emotional affect that is the appeal of music.

I am thinking all this about music after having heard a classical guitar concert yesterday performed by the young Cuban guitarist Ernesto Tamayo. Two pieces in particular were marvels of the inherent "sweetness" of melody and harmony: a Suite in E minor by Silvious Leopold Weiss (I never heard of him before) which seemed to me as wonderful as any of Bach's cello suites, and "La Ultima Canci&oacute;n" by Augustin Barrios Mangore (I never heard of him either).

In the second half he played three modern pieces by Leo Brouwer, lacking or reducing both melody and harmony, and three of his own songs, which had both, but were used in the bland way typical of popular music. (It occurred to me once again (concerning Brouwer's pieces) that when you take melody and harmony from music it is like taking mathematics from physics or color and recognizable forms from painting and sculpture, or even the meaning of words from poetry. Take away the male dove's cooing and he will have to resort to rape rather than seduction.)

Anyway, the point here is that music plays into the metaphysical fabric of the universe, not through Pythagorean harmonies, Ideal Forms, or Music of the Spheres, but rather through nature's creation of human minds out of its "matter."

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
Going from animal mating sounds—bird calls for example—to the music of Bach and Brahms is an immense distance, but it is in the aesthetic dimension of the psyche, that intimate, problematic, and exhausting connection between value (or heightened awareness) and desire. 

But going from the music of Bach and Brahms to "the music of the spheres" is equally immense, because it bridges the gap between the aesthetic and the cognitive. That's not a problem for mourning doves cooing their ritual—their aesthetic is tied into their understanding; but it's a huge problem for the developed human psyche, whose cognitive achievements seem to have left the aesthetic and its music out of the picture.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
There is an article in this month's Smithsonian called "Probing the Biggest Mystery in the Universe," which is all about the Big Bang, the age and expansion of the universe and its ultimate fate, the necessity of positing an invisible "dark matter" to explain the fact that the universe holds together and doesn't simply fly apart, but at the same time the need for a "dark energy" to explain the fact that the expansion of the universe is speeding up.

It raises the question how far skepticism is justified with regard to the scientific metaphysics. The question also arises at the subatomic level as well as the cosmological one. It turns out that the atom, stably composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons, when "smashed" in devices like the CERN Hadron Collider, breaks up into myriads of sub-particles, and even "virtual particles" instantly passing in and out of existence.

And finally, there are attempts to integrate all this complexity and confusion between the cosmological and the sub-microscopic, between general relativity and quantum theory (the problem that occupied Einstein for thirty years), producing ideas of "parallel universes, colliding universes, bubble universes, universes with extra dimensions, universes that eternally reproduce, universes that bounce from Big Bang to Big Crunch to Big Bang" (according to the article).

So how much skepticism is justified in regard to the scientific metaphysics? Enough to justify twentieth century philosophy's decision to set science aside as irrelevant to philosophy? (Well, it didn't set it aside for reasons of skepticism anyway; it was simply foreign to what philosophers like to do—and it was hard and took too much time to learn.)

It does in fact seem similar to an earlier time when something that seemed as simple and easily understood as a drop of pond water viewed through a microscope suddenly became very complex and mysterious. The scientific metaphysics seems to disappear into the haze of mystery at dimensions of the very large and very small.

Still, there is enough to justify the metaphysics. We know the universe is very old, that it is composed of billions of galaxies and stars, that life evolved on at least one planet, and that neural systems of at least some organisms on that planet produce consciousness. That is enough. The mystery into which the very large and the very small disappears perhaps only enhances that metaphysics, providing it with the awesomeness that traditional philosophers may have felt in concocting their own metaphysical views.

What is not justified (in addition to twentieth century philosophers setting science aside as irrelevant to philosophy) is the annoying glibness of some scientists, especially astronomers and physicists, regarding their own metaphysics. For example, the article in the Smithsonian says Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University describes as "a bit of pollution…our species and our planet and our galaxy and everything we have ever seen." That kind of quip, so typical of scientists writing for a public very much needing to understand and appreciate the scientific metaphysics, is really inexcusable.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
In terms of the scientific metaphysics one can give a fairly definite meaning to that "oceanic" feeling that characterizes the type of mysticism discussed by Evelyn Underhill and William James. One can look out on nature—say the Potomac at the Harbor—and realize that what one sees—the river and trees and sky, and the act of seeing—the colors and shapes, the balmy feel of the air—and the presence and workings of the body and brain, and where they are located, all together are connected in the web of existence. Subject and object, mind and body, the perceiving and perceived, are just temporary, useful distinctions one makes for certain purposes. Existence itself absorbs them in its vastness and its multiple currents. There is nothing really problematic, vague, or confusing about such a view, except under such distinctions as subject/object, mind/body, perceiver/perceived, "slayer/slain." If one traces out the connections among things in detail, that vast oceanic connectedness becomes perfectly clear, and even obvious. We just forget about it or ignore it in the customary practical distinctions we make.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
Martin Rees writes in his book, //Before the Beginning// (p. 162) about "one of Richard Feynman's favorite metaphors" (a metaphor used in his Lectures on Physics in the early 1960s, but which I unwittingly used in an article published in //Metaphilosophy// in 1993). "Suppose," Rees writes, "you were unfamiliar with the game of chess. Then, just by watching it being played, you could gradually infer the rules of the game." Then he goes on to say, "But, in chess, learning how the pieces move is just a trivial preliminary to the absorbing progression from novice to grand master. The whole fascination of that game lies in the variety implicit in a few simple rules. Likewise, all that's happened in the universe over the last 10 billion years—the emergence of galaxies and stars, and the intricate evolution, on a planet around at least one star, that's led to creatures able to wonder about it all—may be implicit in a few fundamental equations. But exploring this complexity offers an unending challenge that's barely begun."

That seems to me precisely right (although the "few simple rules" are not, I think, just "a few fundamental equations"). Rees has drawn out the metaphor in a way that Feynman (and certainly I) didn't see. The universe is like a chess game or colossal amalgam of chess games played by grandmasters—Nature itself. Some of the "simple rules" are Newton's laws of motion and gravity, laws for the combination of chemical elements in the Periodic Table into molecular compounds, Maxwell's equations relating magnetism and electricity, the rules governing combination of nucleic acids in the genome of organisms, and natural selection in the evolution of species. However, simply understanding these rules will tell you almost nothing about the vast complexity of the universe, any more than understanding that bishops can move only on diagonals of the same color will tell you anything of a master chess game played by Fischer, Karpov, or Spassky.

The chess metaphor also applies, I think, to the development of psyches in organisms, including us. The rules are laid down by neural systems in enabling organisms to move, survive and reproduce. They involve creating sensations out of environmental stimuli; responding selectively to them; storing them neurally—i.e. remembering them; and finally, beginning with sensitization, habituation, and conditioning, developing flexibility or plasticity in managing this neural/mental content which constitutes the organism's experienced world. Out of these basic "rules" the modes of consciousness develop—what Kant called thinking, feeling, and willing, and what I call the cognitive, aesthetic, and psychological modes. The basic rules are implicit in the enormous complexity of consciousness and its creations, but they are just a "trivial preliminary" to understanding that complexity. The problem of values based on this metaphysics of science is how to manage our consciousness and our experienced world (von Uexk&uuml;ll's "umwelt") like a grandmaster. That would be a great achievement of Nature.

Finally, Rees's extension of the chess metaphor indicates why "reductionism" becomes such an obsessive problem for people in the humanities. What humanities people know of the scientific metaphysics is pretty much just its "basic rules" (if they know even that much) and so they assume science regards existence as "nothing but" those basic rules. The fault is not entirely theirs, however; science is taught mainly to train future scientists and technicians, and not to be appreciated as a full metaphysics. One could blame philosophers in the twentieth century for not trying to help with the problem.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
In the metaphysics of science—the picture of the universe created by physics, chemistry, and biology—everything has its particular structure, and it is easy to get lost among them, or get so involved in unravelling one set of them that one might as well be lost and fail to see the overall picture of evolving structures over the last thirteen billion years.

Atoms have their structures and interact with one another in thousands of ways. That is physics and chemistry. These structures, after billions of years, produce proteins and cells, which interact with one another to produce organisms, which are structures that interact with one another and the environment. In all cases, the important interactions, the most common and pervasive—for example involving chemical valences as in the periodic table (chemistry), gravity (physics), natural selection (biology)—are called "laws."

Is there anything that can be said about all these structures, something that applies to all of them, in spite of their particular identities and differences, that is evident in their evolution and development over the course of the thirteen billion year evolution of the universe?

Only this, I think: Each element, something "simple" like an atom, or complex (i.e. a structure composed of other elements) has a "nature" or set of characteristics which determines how it will interact with other structures or elements that existence brings its way. It may fail to interact altogether; it may destroy the other structure or be destroyed itself; or it may combine with it to produce a new structure, in which case the process repeats itself and evolution—"emergence"—proceeds and takes its course.

That, I think, is the most general "law" in the scientific metaphysics. Does it have a predetermined direction? In a way it does. It is guided by characteristics of the elements (atoms, molecules, protein structures, organisms) which determine how they interact. But what other elements they happen to come in contact with is not determined; it is chance, or at the most probability.

It is a wonderful vastness, this picture of the universe; a great "benign indifference" that one can feel comfortable being a part of.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!

We need to recognize and remember that nature is a design. In fact we get our very idea of what a design is by observing, manipulating, and experimenting with nature to create our own designs. And of course our designs have designers.

But the great design of nature, which we are constantly copying in our own creations, does not have such an external designer. There is simply no indication or evidence for one. It is a self-created Design, whose laws of design are inherent in the nature and characteristics of its elements.

What is devious about Paley is that he takes one of //our// designs—a watch—and sticks it among //nature's// designs where it doesn't belong. It's as if somehow a pile of sand were to be found on an ice floe at the North Pole; but in this case nature's own designs don't fit together as they should—as her own rules dictate. In both cases the conclusion must be that human beings put them there; the anomalous design of a watch on a heath and a pile of sand on an ice floe are human designs placed among nature's far more vast and impressive designs where they don't belong.

Dawkins' phrase, "blind watchmaker," is accurate enough when properly understood; but the word "blind" creates an inaccurate impression, no doubt meant to provoke the Intelligent Design people. Nature is an Intelligent Design—its design is what gives meaning to our idea of intelligence. But of course that design doesn't have a designer. "Blind" suggests something negative and inferior, but still something human. In a way Dawkins' metaphor is as false as Paley's argument.

!
{{{
[[<BACK|xxx]]|[[NEXT>>|yyy]]
}}}
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
It's interesting to compare digestive, reproductive, and neural systems from the standpoint of evolution of multi-celled organisms. All three have a function, a purpose in a sense. Digestive systems evolve to provide nutrients to each cell, most of them buried deep in the organism's body far from the outside environment that provides them. As the organism becomes larger and more complicated—developing limbs for example—the problems of cell nutrition become more difficult to solve. Hence the specialization of cells and their development into complex digestive, circulatory, and respiratory systems.

The same is true for reproductive systems. Cells simply dividing would merely increase the size of the organism. Some method must evolve for the organism to create another organism like itself. The more complicated the organism, the more complicated the reproductive system. Hence genes, DNA, meiosis and mitosis, and the ensemble of reproductive organs.

And so it is with neural systems. Animals must move to find nutrients to digest and mates to copulate with to reproduce. Neural systems accomplish this. The more complex the organism anatomically, the more complex the movements required and therefore the more complex the neural system. Receptors and effectors must be coordinated through simple processes at first—habituation, sensitization, conditioning—but then in central systems through memory and plasticity.

The difference between digestive and reproductive systems on the one hand, and neural systems on the other, is that the task of the first two reaches a limit and the systems plateau and can stop evolving further. Cells get their nutrients and the organism creates another like itself, and that is the end of it.

But movement reaches no such plateau. It can become ever more effective if, for example, the organism can anticipate changes in its environment and plan ahead; and if, for example, it can create and use tools to make its movements more effective. So there seems scarcely a limit to neural development; or rather nothing to discourage the engine of evolution to keep increasing the complexity of neural systems. That complexity, as I have constantly argued—even as long ago as Classical Dialogues—is in three dimensions: the cognitive, the aesthetic, and the psychological; or as Kant put it, thinking, feeling, and willing.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
Sitting here a moment ago eating dinner on this beautiful spring evening, cool with clear skies and slanting sunlight, with my thoughts flying all over the place, I think how different the mind's decay is from the body's. Of course the mind is a function of the body, the brain in this case, but its decay is much more interesting. The body gets creaky and arthritic, it slows down, becomes more slumped and painful in its movements, which further leads to its decay and eventual demise.

But the brain flies all over the place. Early memories become reborn and resuscitated, alive again. And they get mixed with current thoughts and preoccupations. Early desires too get refreshed and mixed with the desires that have been through experience and its outcome. I witnessed this disjointed decay of mind and body in my mother, and I seem to observe it beginning to happen in myself. The body's decay is boring and troublesome. The mind's decay is more interesting, and seems to be a little bit creative.

Why should nature have arranged it that way, that the neural system should stay intact and functional, at least in normal circumstances, longer than the other systems? Or rather, maybe the question is why the other systems of the body go downhill in a step by step straightforward fashion, when the neural system takes its downhill in all kinds of misdirections and side tracks, making a confusion of memory, knowledge, and desire.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
Speculations about the origins of religion usually find it in one of two sources: a need to explain things, or fear. It is supposed that human beings need to understand why things happen as they do, or it is supposed that they need to find some way to get rid of their fear—of death, of earthquakes and hurricanes, of starvation.

But I wonder. Maybe it is that some few talented people find themselves sometimes in a condition of very great happiness—maybe through soma or mushrooms, maybe through their own aesthetic talent, and then they look around for something to explain it or just hang it on. A great and powerful God can work very well for this.

If such is the case, what we need to do now is to find some way—these talented people have to find some way I mean—to hang this rare condition of happiness onto the scientific metaphysics.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
The scientific metaphysics has this advantage that puts it on the side of religion: it gets us out of our //umwelt//; or more precisely it tells us that our //umwelt//, our experience and our lives, are just a part of existence. That, after all, is what religions have always given us, namely, a way to get outside ourselves and show us that our concerns, our desires and pleasures, are not the substance and purpose of existence.

Religions (except for Buddhism and to some extent Hinduism) have done this in the most childish of ways, however. God gets us out, because he belongs to that larger existence and tells us what we must do to get outside our lives and join him. But it is childish because that sort of God is just a concoction of the //umwelt// we want to get out of. Freud and others had it right on that score.
!

//{{{
config.options.chkSearchTitles=true;
config.options.chkSearchText=true;
config.options.chkSearchTags=true;
config.options.chkSearchFields=true;
config.options.chkSearchTitlesFirst=false;
config.options.chkSearchList=true;
config.options.chkSearchByDate=false;
config.options.chkSearchIncremental=true;
config.options.chkSearchShadows=false; 
//}}}

<!--{{{-->
<div id='mainMenu' refresh='content' tiddler='MainMenu'></div>
<div id='sidebar'>
<div id='sidebarOptions' refresh='content' tiddler='SideBarOptions'></div>
<div id='sidebarTabs' refresh='content' force='true' tiddler='SideBarTabs'></div>
</div>
<div id='displayArea'>
<div id='messageArea'></div>
<div id='tiddlerDisplay'></div>
</div>
<!--}}}-->

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!

It's trivial, obvious, and true. Parents often put their own unsolved problems onto their children and call it virtue and sacrifice. And they get the added pleasure of being a teacher and advisor without having to develop or learn any skills beyond what they got as children from their own parents.

The thought occurs after watching a program on NHK television about parents in Korea trying to train their child to become a professional golfer—costing them about $90,000 a year! There was a scene of polite argument (before the interviewer) between the husband, a heavy peasant-looking type, who wanted the daughter to be a pro, and the wife, attractive and refined in appearance, who wanted her to learn something, to be educated. A poor marriage no doubt, but springing from the same source: people marry and have children and pass their unsolved problems on to them, shifting responsibility from themselves to them, calling their failure virtue and sacrifice.

If people, adults, solved their own problems, would they have children? Of course. Joy and pleasure wish to be shared and propagated. Would they indoctrinate them with their solutions? Of course not. Indoctrination is about power and control; joy and pleasure are about freedom and sharing. What we call "education" can go either way.

!

/***
|''Name:''|PasswordOptionPlugin|
|''Description:''|Extends TiddlyWiki options with non encrypted password option.|
|''Version:''|1.0.2|
|''Date:''|Apr 19, 2007|
|''Source:''|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#PasswordOptionPlugin|
|''Author:''|BidiX (BidiX (at) bidix (dot) info)|
|''License:''|[[BSD open source license|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#%5B%5BBSD%20open%20source%20license%5D%5D ]]|
|''~CoreVersion:''|2.2.0 (Beta 5)|
***/
//{{{
version.extensions.PasswordOptionPlugin = {
	major: 1, minor: 0, revision: 2, 
	date: new Date("Apr 19, 2007"),
	source: 'http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#PasswordOptionPlugin',
	author: 'BidiX (BidiX (at) bidix (dot) info',
	license: '[[BSD open source license|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#%5B%5BBSD%20open%20source%20license%5D%5D]]',
	coreVersion: '2.2.0 (Beta 5)'
};

config.macros.option.passwordCheckboxLabel = "Save this password on this computer";
config.macros.option.passwordInputType = "password"; // password | text
setStylesheet(".pasOptionInput {width: 11em;}\n","passwordInputTypeStyle");

merge(config.macros.option.types, {
	'pas': {
		elementType: "input",
		valueField: "value",
		eventName: "onkeyup",
		className: "pasOptionInput",
		typeValue: config.macros.option.passwordInputType,
		create: function(place,type,opt,className,desc) {
			// password field
			config.macros.option.genericCreate(place,'pas',opt,className,desc);
			// checkbox linked with this password "save this password on this computer"
			config.macros.option.genericCreate(place,'chk','chk'+opt,className,desc);			
			// text savePasswordCheckboxLabel
			place.appendChild(document.createTextNode(config.macros.option.passwordCheckboxLabel));
		},
		onChange: config.macros.option.genericOnChange
	}
});

merge(config.optionHandlers['chk'], {
	get: function(name) {
		// is there an option linked with this chk ?
		var opt = name.substr(3);
		if (config.options[opt]) 
			saveOptionCookie(opt);
		return config.options[name] ? "true" : "false";
	}
});

merge(config.optionHandlers, {
	'pas': {
 		get: function(name) {
			if (config.options["chk"+name]) {
				return encodeCookie(config.options[name].toString());
			} else {
				return "";
			}
		},
		set: function(name,value) {config.options[name] = decodeCookie(value);}
	}
});

// need to reload options to load passwordOptions
loadOptionsCookie();

/*
if (!config.options['pasPassword'])
	config.options['pasPassword'] = '';

merge(config.optionsDesc,{
		pasPassword: "Test password"
	});
*/
//}}}

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
The mechanism of natural selection is often illustrated with the famous case of the English peppered moth. The species comes in light and dark varieties. Until the late 1800s the white form was more common because both varieties rested during the day on lichen-covered trees, where the light form was better concealed and therefore escaped predators more easily than the dark form. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century pollution darkened the trees in the British midlands and the dark form was better concealed from predators; consequently its population increased while the population of the white form decreased.

It occurs to me that the same sort of mechanism could apply to human populations. Certain sorts of cultures and societies favor certain types of personality. Consequently, the population of the "favored" personality is likely to increase through increased reproduction as well as immigration by those who "like the country" and emigration by those who don't. An increase of reproductive differential of, say, ten percent, compounded over a few generations would result in a population more uniformly expressing a certain character or personality type. We speak of the Italian, German, French, British, or Irish "types." This explanation for the "natural selection" of character type, similar to the case of the peppered moth, seems plausible enough.

People often remark on the similarity of Australians and Americans, and the ease they have in visiting or living in each other's country. Of course they have language in common, but the cultural style seems very similar. It's not surprising, since both countries were settled by rejects of one sort or another, who (speaking generally) are likely to be more aggressive and individualistic.

Speaking for myself, I have deliberately chosen not to have children. I have always put it down to philosophical reasons, but I am sure it is also connected to emotional response: had I felt more comfortable, more at ease and at home in this country, I think I might very likely have chosen to have children and a family. As it is, I am part of that ten percent who I am supposing did not reproduce, thus favoring the aggressive American character that is at least as distinctive as the Italian, German, British, or French.

At the same time, every personality, however balanced, blended, or distorted by favoring one trait over another, is (I would argue) constituted of the same elements, biologically set up in neural systems to serve the needs of survival and adaptation. These are the modes of consciousness I am always talking about: the cognitive and the aesthetic, both propelled or motivated by impulse or desire (what I have called "the psychological"). All personality types embody and express them, and there seem to be Italian, German, French, British, and Australian and American ways of doing so. Nevertheless, whatever the style of personality and culture it creates, reacting back and reinforcing that personality type, the problem of values remains the same for all: how to balance and harmonize the psychic elements and personality traits that express them into a worthy and satisfying life.

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
I am now fully convinced that values within the metaphysics of science need to be based on the perfection of our species nature (to put it not very attractively); we should try to fulfill or perfect ourselves, just as all other species try to perfect themselves in accordance with the natures given them. That, I think, is //exactly// what Spinoza had in mind. To create a perfect outcome for nature, using her gifts, is a very challenging and noble ideal I think.

It may start with satisfying the needs and pleasures of food and sex. But then with neural development it becomes more complex and difficult; it becomes the task of attaining happiness.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
The problem with twentieth century philosophy, fundamentally philosophy based on logical analysis of language, is that it treats language as a closed system, isolated from everything else in existence. Thus philosophers think it can be analyzed exclusively in terms of meaning, truth, denotation, syntax, and even use. (Wittgenstein's later emphasis on "use" did not expand that narrow focus; for example, he regarded science as irrelevant to philosophy, and since science looks at language in many connecting perspectives—neural, psychological, anthropological—he could simply ignore these connections.)

But of course you can't treat language or any other subject matter as a closed system. To understand it you have to connect it to other things, the things to which it is in fact connected in existence. For example, (obviously), language is connected to mouths and brains, to evolutionary development and survival/adaptive function, and to communication in different kinds of contexts which themselves need to be understood in order to understand the "use" of language or its "multiple functions." Wittgenstein and his followers are ignorant of this fact or don't want to make the effort to learn about these connections. It's easier to discuss language and its use in the traditional isolated context of meaning, syntax, denotation, etc.

It's a little like entropy or the second law of thermodynamics that I was reading about online yesterday in the biophysicist Harold Morowitz's testimony at a Louisiana trial in the 1980s involving creationism. He said a mouse in a closed system, sealed in a jar for example, will die and decompose, eventually returning to a random assortment of molecules and atoms. That's entropy. But it happens only in a closed system. Existence, however, the life of the mouse for example, is not closed; the mouse receives air and nutrition from the outside and so resists the law. Indeed, as Morowitz testified, our planet is not a closed system, for it receives energy from the sun. (One wonders why one should hear that the universe according to the second law will eventually wind down since it—the universe!—is a "closed system" Surely the second law doesn't apply to such a vast perspective!)

In any case, and not just by analogy, language cannot be regarded as a closed system, as it is by analytic philosophy.
!

/***
|''Name:''|PlasticCalendarPlugin|
|''Description:''|This plugin creates a custom Gregorian calendar|
|''Version:''|1.3.1|
|''Date:''|Mar 13, 2007|
|''Source:''|http://www.math.ist.utl.pt/~psoares/addons.html|
|''Documentation:''|[[PlasticCalendarPlugin Documentation|PlasticCalendarPluginDoc]]|
|''Author:''|Paulo Soares|
|''License:''|[[Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License|http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/]]|
|''~CoreVersion:''|2.1.0|
***/
{{{
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
// Calendar
// --------------------------------------------------------------------

config.macros.calendar = {holidays: []};
config.macros.calendar.options = {
 // day week starts from (normally 0-Su or 1-Mo)
 calendarWeekStart: 0,
 calendarToday: "Today",
 calendarHoliday: "Holiday: ",
 calendarLongDateFormat: "0DD/0MM/YYYY",
 calendarShortDateFormat: "0DD/0MM",
 calendarTag: ["journal"]
};

/***************************************************************************
** Internal functions
***************************************************************************/
var cldTag;

config.macros.calendar.calendarIsHoliday = function(date) {
 var cm = config.macros.calendar;
 var longHoliday = date.formatString(cm.options.calendarLongDateFormat);
 var shortHoliday = date.formatString(cm.options.calendarShortDateFormat);
 for(var i = 0; i < cm.holidays.length; i++) {
 if(cm.holidays[i][0] == longHoliday || cm.holidays[i][0] == shortHoliday) {
 return cm.holidays[i];
 }
 }
 return null;
}

config.macros.calendar.onClickOtherDay = function(e) {
 var day = this.getAttribute('tiddlylink');
 story.displayTiddler(null,day,DEFAULT_EDIT_TEMPLATE);
 for(var i=0; i<cldTag.length;i++){
 story.setTiddlerTag(day, cldTag[i], 0);
 }
 story.focusTiddler(day,"text");
}

config.macros.calendar.getPopupText = function(title) {
 var popup_entries = store.getTiddlerText(title).split("\n");
 var popup = popup_entries[0];
 if(popup_entries.length>1) popup += " ...";
 return popup;
}

config.macros.calendar.findCalendar = function(child) {
 var parent;
 while (child && child.parentNode) {
 parent = child.parentNode;
 if (parent.id == "calendarWrapper") {
 return parent;
 }
 child = parent;
 }
 return null;
}

config.macros.calendar.selectDate = function(e) {
 if (!e) var e = window.event;
 var cm = config.macros.calendar;
 var calendar = cm.findCalendar(this);
 if (calendar) {
 var d = this.getAttribute("date");
 if (d != null) cm.makeCalendar(calendar, new Date(new Number(d)));
 }
 e.cancelBubble = true;
 if (e.stopPropagation) e.stopPropagation();
 return false;
}

config.macros.calendar.makeCalendar = function(calendar, dt_current) {
 var cm = config.macros.calendar;
 var currentDay = new Date(new Number(calendar.getAttribute("currentDay")));
 var setControls = calendar.getAttribute("setControls");
 calendar.setAttribute("date", dt_current.valueOf());

 while (calendar.hasChildNodes())
 calendar.removeChild(calendar.firstChild);

if(setControls==1){
 // get same date in the previous year
 var dt_prev_year = new Date(dt_current);
 dt_prev_year.setFullYear(dt_prev_year.getFullYear() - 1);
 if (dt_prev_year.getDate() != dt_current.getDate())
 dt_prev_year.setDate(0);

 // get same date in the next year
 var dt_next_year = new Date(dt_current);
 dt_next_year.setFullYear(dt_next_year.getFullYear() + 1);
 if (dt_next_year.getDate() != dt_current.getDate())
 dt_next_year.setDate(0);

 // get same date in the previous month
 var dt_prev_month = new Date(dt_current);
 dt_prev_month.setMonth(dt_prev_month.getMonth() - 1);
 if (dt_prev_month.getDate() != dt_current.getDate())
 dt_prev_month.setDate(0);

 // get same date in the next month
 var dt_next_month = new Date(dt_current);
 dt_next_month.setMonth(dt_next_month.getMonth() + 1);
 if (dt_next_month.getDate() != dt_current.getDate())
 dt_next_month.setDate(0);
}

 // get first day to display in the grid for current month
 var dt_firstday = new Date(dt_current);
 dt_firstday.setDate(1);
 dt_firstday.setDate(1 - (7 + dt_firstday.getDay() - cm.options.calendarWeekStart) % 7);

 var area, header;
 var line, cell, i;

 // 1 - calendar header table
 // 2 - print weekdays titles
 // 3 - calendar days table 
calendar.cellPadding = 0;
calendar.cellSpacing = 0;
area = createTiddlyElement(calendar, "tbody");

 // 1 - calendar header table
 header = createTiddlyElement(area,"tr", "calendarHeader");
 header.cellPadding = 0;
 header.cellSpacing = 0;

if(setControls==1){ 
var headerValues = [
 [ "<<", "selectYear", dt_prev_year.valueOf() ],
 [ "<", "selectMonth", dt_prev_month.valueOf() ],
 [ config.messages.dates.months[dt_current.getMonth()] + ' ' + dt_current.getFullYear(),
 "selectToday", currentDay.valueOf() ],
 [ ">", "selectMonth", dt_next_month.valueOf() ],
 [ ">>", "selectYear", dt_next_year.valueOf() ]
 ];

 for (i = 0; i < headerValues.length; ++i) {
 var link = createTiddlyElement(header,"td", null, null, headerValues[i][0]);
 if(i==2) link.colSpan=3;
 link.onclick = cm.selectDate;
 link.setAttribute("date", headerValues[i][2]);
 }
} else {
 var link = createTiddlyElement(header,"td", null, null, 
config.messages.dates.months[dt_current.getMonth()] + ' ' + dt_current.getFullYear());
link.colSpan=7;
}

 // 2 - print weekdays titles
 line = createTiddlyElement(area, "tr", "weekNames");
 for (var n = 0; n < 7; ++n) {
 createTiddlyElement(line, "td", null, null, config.messages.dates.shortDays[(cm.options.calendarWeekStart + n)%7]);
 }

 // 3 - calendar days table
 var dt_current_day = new Date(dt_firstday);
 var day_class;
 var title;
 var holiday;
 var popup;
 var clickHandler;

 while (dt_current_day.getMonth() == dt_current.getMonth() ||
 dt_current_day.getMonth() == dt_firstday.getMonth()) {

 // print row header
 line = createTiddlyElement(area, "tr", "calendarLine", null, null);
 for (var n_current_wday = 0; n_current_wday < 7; ++n_current_wday) {
 title = dt_current_day.formatString(cm.options.calendarLongDateFormat);
 clickHandler = cm.onClickOtherDay;
 popup = null;
 holiday = cm.calendarIsHoliday(dt_current_day);

 if (holiday != null) {
 // holidays
 day_class = (holiday.length==3)? holiday[2]: "holiDay";
 popup = cm.options.calendarHoliday + holiday[1];
 } else if (dt_current_day.getDay() == 0 || dt_current_day.getDay() == 6) {
 // weekend days
 day_class = "weekDay";
 } else {
 // print working days of current month
 day_class = "workingDay";
 }

if(dt_current_day.getMonth() == dt_current.getMonth()){
 if (currentDay.valueOf() == dt_current_day.valueOf()) {
 // print current date
 if (store.tiddlerExists(title)){
 // day has a tiddler associated with it
 day_class += " currentscheduledDay";
 clickHandler = onClickTiddlerLink;
 popup = cm.options.calendarToday + ": "+ cm.getPopupText(title);
 } else {
 day_class += " currentDay";
 popup = cm.options.calendarToday;
}
}


 if (store.tiddlerExists(title) && store.getTiddler(title).isTagged(cldTag[0]))  {
 // day has a tiddler associated with it
 day_class += " scheduledDay";
 clickHandler = onClickTiddlerLink;
 popup = cm.getPopupText(title);
 }
}

 // extra formatting for days of previous or next month
 if (dt_current_day.getMonth() != dt_current.getMonth()) {
 day_class += " otherMonthDay";
 }

 var text = dt_current_day.getDate();
 var cell = createTiddlyElement(line, "td", null, day_class, text);
 cell.onclick=clickHandler;
 cell.setAttribute("date", dt_current_day.valueOf());
 cell.setAttribute("tiddlyLink", title);
 if(popup) cell.setAttribute("title", popup);
 dt_current_day.setDate(dt_current_day.getDate()+1);
 }
 }
}

config.macros.calendar.handler = function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
 var start_date = new Array();
 var date = new Date();
 var cldParams = paramString.parseParams('calendarParams', null, true);
 var cldYear = (cldParams[0].year)?parseFloat(cldParams[0].year[0]): date.getFullYear();
 var cldMonth = (cldParams[0].month)?parseFloat(cldParams[0].month[0]): date.getMonth();
 var n_months = (cldParams[0].numberMonths)?parseFloat(cldParams[0].numberMonths[0]): 1;
 var n_cols = (cldParams[0].numberColumns)?parseFloat(cldParams[0].numberColumns[0]): 3;
 cldTag = (cldParams[0].tag)?cldParams[0].tag[0].split("#"): config.macros.calendar.options.calendarTag;
 for(var i = 0; i < n_months; i++){
 start_date[i] = new Date(cldYear, cldMonth+i, 1);
 }
 var n_rows = Math.max(1,Math.ceil(n_months/n_cols));
 n_cols = Math.min(n_cols,n_months);
 var setControls=(n_months>1)? 0: 1;
 var currentDay = new Date();
 currentDay = new Date(currentDay.getFullYear(), currentDay.getMonth(), currentDay.getDate());
 var holder = createTiddlyElement(place, "table", null,"calendarHolder");
 var holderTable = createTiddlyElement(holder, "tbody");
 for(var i = 0; i < n_rows; i++){
 var holderLine = createTiddlyElement(holderTable, "tr");
 for(var j = 0; j < n_cols; j++){
 var holderCell = createTiddlyElement(holderLine, "td");
 if(n_cols*i+j+1<=n_months){
 var calendar = createTiddlyElement(holderCell, "table", "calendarWrapper");
 calendar.setAttribute("name", "calendarWrapper");
 calendar.setAttribute("setControls", setControls);
 calendar.setAttribute("currentDay", currentDay.valueOf());
 config.macros.calendar.makeCalendar(calendar, start_date[n_cols*i+j]);
 }
 }
 }
}

function refreshCalendars(hint) {
 var calendars = document.getElementsByName("calendarWrapper");
 var i, c;
 for (i = 0; i < calendars.length; ++i) {
 c = calendars.item(i);
 if (c.id == "calendarWrapper") {
 config.macros.calendar.makeCalendar(c, new Date(new Number(c.getAttribute("date"))));
 }
 }
}

store.addNotification(null, refreshCalendars);

setStylesheet("/***\n!Calendar Styles\n***/\n/*{{{*/\n .viewer .calendarHolder {\n margin-left: auto;\n margin-right: auto;\n border: none;\n}\n\n .viewer .calendarHolder table {\n border: none;\n margin: 0;\n}\n\n .viewer .calendarHolder tr {\n border: none;\n vertical-align: top;\n}\n\n .viewer .calendarHolder td {\n border: none;\n vertical-align: top;\n}\n\n .viewer #calendarWrapper {\n width: 21em;\n border: 2px solid #4682b4;\n cursor: pointer;\n}\n\n #calendarWrapper #calendarLine td {\n height: 2.5em;\n}\n\n #calendarWrapper tr {\n border:none;\n}\n\n #calendarWrapper td {\n text-align: center;\n vertical-align: middle;\n width: 14.28%;\n border:none;\n}\n\n #calendarWrapper #calendarHeader td{\n color: #ffffff;\n background-color: #4682b4;\n height: 2em;\n}\n\n #calendarWrapper #weekNames td {\n color: #ffffff;\n background-color: #87cefa;\n height: 2em;\n}\n\n #calendarWrapper .weekDay {\n background-color: #ccff99;\n}\n\n #calendarWrapper .holiDay {\n background-color: #9acd32;\n}\n\n #calendarWrapper .currentDay {\n border: solid #ff0000 2px;\n font-weight: bold;\n}\n\n #calendarWrapper .currentscheduledDay {\n border: solid #ff0000 2px;\n font-weight: bold;\n}\n\n #calendarWrapper .workingDay {\n background-color: #ffffff;\n}\n\n #calendarWrapper .scheduledDay {\n border: solid orange 2px;\n}\n\n #calendarWrapper .otherMonthDay {\n background-color: #999;\n}\n\n/*}}}*/","CalendarStyles");

config.shadowTiddlers.PlasticCalendarPluginDoc="The documentation is missing. It is available [[here|http://www.math.ist.utl.pt/~psoares/addons.html#PlasticCalendarPluginDoc]].";
}}}

version.extensions.Holidays = {
 major: 1, minor: 1, revision: 0,
 date: new Date(2006, 4, 18), 
 type: 'config'
};

config.macros.calendar.holidays = [ ["01/01", "New Year's day"], ["25/12", "Christmas day", "Christian"] ];

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
Last night I played in an orchestra sight-reading session at the National Cathedral School. It's been quite awhile since I played in an orchestra and I was reminded again how much I prefer playing chamber music. In an orchestra you can't hear yourself and you have to worry about such things as bowing together. And there is also in most cases the unspoken competition and judgment of one another in your section. It's like socialism in its worst form: everyone is supposed to work together for a common purpose, and though the individual voice is unheard and unimportant, each person is suspicious of the other and in competition. Yet the product of it all is supposed to be and in fact may be something beautiful and significant.

In chamber music it is different. Each individual voice is heard, and none competes with the other, though failure to perform one's part well is recognized and can be punished or corrected in one way or another. Players work together, but not in competition. The end product, the product created by the group is or can be beautiful and significant; however, it is not because the individual disappears and is unheard, but precisely because the individual stands out and is heard. That is socialism in its best form.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
I'm now trying to learn Tchaikovsky's Opus 11, his first string quartet, to play with our new group. It's extremely difficult, especially the intricate rhythms and ensemble. At first I could scarcely match the music to the score as I listened to various groups on YouTube play it.

It occurs to me that trying to //understand// the piece and trying to //play// it are two different things, though obviously related. For example, the Scherzo is in 3/8 time, and it is essential to fit the sounds, the music, into this rhythmic pattern. After all, you can't know how long to hold a note unless you have this rhythmic pattern or schema in mind. But sometimes that understanding can throw the music off and interfere with the playing—for example, in the second and third bars. I must have listened to those bars a dozen times before I could get the rhythmic understanding to match or blend with the music and find a way to play the bars properly.

In a way it is a microcosm of life. The problem is to play life properly, to make of it music and a perfect, pleasurable work of art. That, I come more and more to believe, is the object of our creation and evolution. Understanding is essential to the task, but it must not interfere. And in fact it can; it can become an object and goal in itself. One sees it in musicology and criticism, which often ruins appreciation, and likely can make the playing of music more difficult. In life the understanding brought by science can also be an obstacle to playing it properly. It can happen in many ways—through distortion and simplification, through the sort of "gee whiz" pleasure it sometimes elicits; and of course through pseudoscience, the downright misrepresentation typical of so much psychology and other "sciences" concerned with the nature of human existence, human biography, and the functions of consciousness.

In one sense, though, music and nature are fundamentally different and the analogy breaks down. Tchaikovsky, like Schubert and others no doubt, had themes suddenly come into their heads—in Schubert's case, apparently, whole songs that he woke up to in the morning and hastily wrote out. Those themes then have to take on a cognitive structure if they are to be communicated and played. So key signatures, tempos, clefs, quarter notes, half notes, and all the rest of the cognitive rigmarole has to be devised for this purpose; namely to turn the theme, harmonies, and rhythms into a cognitive structure, something that can be understood and communicated for purposes of performing, making it a structure of existence.

Nature seems to have worked in the reverse The structure is laid out, hugely and instantaneously in the Big Bang's first few minutes, and then gradually over the billions of years. It's a cognitive business. Then the music appears—perhaps at first only in the brains of conscious human beings, but then potentially in the form of existence they create for themselves. That is a truly worthy and wonderful idea of a "Divine Comedy."
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!

I think Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities can be represented in neurobiological terms and the problems of their relation pretty much resolved.

Secondary qualities—colors, sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations—are products of neural systems responding to the environment. Stimuli from the environment are of three kinds—molecules, changes in pressure, and electromagnetic radiation in a very narrow band. At the cellular level these are analog stimuli; and the function of receptor cells and local circuits connected to them is to turn them into digital form. We have no idea how they do this, but the secondary qualities ("sense data" or "qualia" as we now call them) are the result.

Primary qualities—"extension, figure, motion, solidity (density), number—have a different neurobiological origin, far further along in the development of central systems. Their origin is especially clear in the somatosensory "homunculus" (Shepherd's //Neurobiology//, p. 287), the visual system (p. 372, 669-70), and to some extent in hearing (pp. 345-47).

The key point is that all these central systems represent stimuli from the environment topographically—that is, the spatial structure of the environment is represented or preserved. For example the pattern of stimuli impacting the retina is faithfully transmitted through the lateral geniculate nucleus, and represented in ocular dominance columns and cortical pegs (Shepherd, Fig 16.17, p. 372).

The same is true for the "homunculus," though here it is the spatial (and functional) parts of the body that are represented structurally in the central neural system.

(Of course such topographical representations are only possible because neural systems, at a much more basic level involving neurons and local circuits, are capable of creating boundaries in the analog stimuli from the environment. How this is done with light stimuli has been shown in the horseshoe crab //Limulus// (Shepherd, pp. 239-42).)

So neural systems have the capacity to represent the environment structurally or spatially, in addition to representing it in terms of secondary qualities—sensations or "qualia." This is the source of the "primary qualities." Once you have spatial representations, you have the possibility of geometry. All you have to do is drop the secondary qualities (mainly colors) from those representations, using mere lines. That allows for the ideas of extension, figure, and motion—all of which are spatial. Primary qualities are spatial representations stripped of their secondary qualities.

Of course both primary and secondary qualities are real, and in precisely the same sense: they are products of our neural systems interacting with the environment. Existence, as I am constantly saying, is a single fabric.

This explanation accounts incidentally for the dispassionate objectivity attributed to science. We don't respond to spatial representations stripped of the secondary qualities in which they appear to us. We respond to secondary qualities (and the "tertiary qualities" connected to them—pleasures and pains.) We respond to landscapes and walks in the countryside; we don't respond to maps and diagrams. The patterns of change in air pressure on our ear drums and in our cochleas don't excite us; music does. But both—the patterns and the music—are represented in our neural systems.

What is important in all this is that the understanding provided by neurobiology enables us to transcend our (or any organism's) umwelt. It provides a bridge between "primary" and "secondary" qualities, thus avoiding the skepticism of Hume, the subjective idealism of Berkeley, and the Ding an sich of Kant (though in some way there is also a deep unknowable within the scientific metaphysics).

Of course we can doubt the truth of what our neural systems represent for us. But when we do, we doubt the entire metaphysics put together by physics, chemistry, and biology. And no one does that. If they did—as more than a pretentious exercise—they wouldn't know where to stand or what to believe. Indeed, they couldn't even make sense of what it means to doubt—for that requires at least a belief in ourselves and others to the extent that we are doubting. Once you get that minimal requirement of what it means to doubt off the ground, you can't avoid the scientific metaphysics. I've said that before.

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
The reason I have always been attracted to Proust is that we know from the metaphysics of biology and the rest of legitimate science that memory is a reality, a wonderful production of neural systems. Without it there is no knowledge, no culture, no development of human beings and their extraordinary impact on the earth.

But to make memory more than just part of this vast metaphysics, to make it the supreme existent generating the rest of metaphysics, which really is what Proust (and in one way or another all idealists) try to do, is a mistake. You can only avoid seeing it as a mistake if, like him, you seal yourself off in a cork-lined study of one kind or another.

To see the mistake, however, shouldn't lead one to overlook what he showed us, namely, that memory //is// a fundamental part of existence, in ways we can hardly fathom.

I'm not getting to the bottom of this of course. We all lead our "subjective lives" (as they are called), and have our "lived world", our //umwelt//. The problem is that by attaching so much importance to the presentations or content of memory and subjectivity, we, like Proust, are forced into our own version of the cork-lined study in order to protect ourselves from the larger metaphysics that encompasses memory. No wonder Proust became hypochondriac in his study surrounded by medicines; no wonder all of us do the same, creating a reality cocoon for our private lives and memories and seek out medicines to preserve it. But monster reality (as Tibetan Buddhism represents it in their tankas) looks in and touches us!
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
I suppose it is possible to believe in a false cosmology—like that handsome, friendly young monk in Rome who toured a reporter from PBS around his monastery grounds, saying with a smile of their apricot tree, “We take good care of it, because it takes good care of us”—but still be in a very good psychic condition. That is to say, in spite of having false beliefs one may work out and manage the tensions and conflicts inherent in consciousness very well. 

But I think that may not happen very often. Also, grasping the truth, or trying to, and achieving some success at it is part of the psychic tension and conflict of life. Living, even happily, with cognitive dissonance is not success.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
In his excellent overview, //The Story of Psychology//, Morton Hunt writes that psychology is a patchwork of disconnected and overlapping research and discovery about the human psyche. It is no wonder. The human psyche is so vastly complex, with so many variables instantly playing off one another in daily life and biography, that it escapes the standard models of scientific method practiced in physics, chemistry, and biology.

These are the sources of complexity that put psychology outside the methods and purview of science as practiced in those other areas:

1. The enormous variety of sensory content synthesized and integrated into perceptions, the basic content of consciousness.

2. Memory, which means vast parts of that sensory content shaped and stored in our brains, ready to mingle, consciously or unconsciously, with incoming content.

3. Impulse, which evolves and develops to deal selectively with this content, powerfully regarding sex and food, but merely functionally or adaptively in weaker form (interest, attention, curiosity) to deal with other content.

4. Plasticity, which can combine all of the above any and every which way, sorting, shaping, editing, and synthesizing according to all the strengths and shades of impulse.

5. The variety and difference of circumstances—environmental "inputs"—that face each of us on a daily basis throughout our lives.

All of this makes the results of psychological theory and experiment almost irrelevant, or at least contrived and artificial. But somehow we don't think so. We take those results—at least those patches of theory and experiment we favor or that are in vogue—to be scientifically established fact.

The worst part of this, the most frustrating and dangerous consequence, is that we force the "scientific facts" onto our psyches, ignoring its complexity, and indeed our own reflective grasp of that complexity. We conclude and say to ourselves, "Well, I am just like that." We see it in standard chatter: "I am obsessive-compulsive," "extroverted," "neurotic," "bi-polar," "going through a mid-life crisis," and so forth. Or even, "I am well-adjusted, normal, and happy."

Literature, thankfully, can disabuse us of this simplistic nonsense. But it seems even literature these days—"memoirs" for example—reflects the pigeon-holing or stereotyping of psychology.

With all these psychic variables there is no way at all of predicting what a person will do, say, think, or feel in a particular circumstance—unless, of course, he has converted his consciousness into stereotypes. Then he will fulfill the prediction.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
Psychology is in a peculiar position. It wants to be scientific of course, so that means it must ground its investigations on observations which it can use to form hypotheses about the realities behind those observations. That's the way science works. For example, the chemist observes a reddish-brown gas and concludes that the gas is nitrogen dioxide.

What can the psychologist observe regarding the activity of the psyche? Only behavior. From that, and that alone, he allows himself to draw conclusions or frame hypotheses about the functioning of the psyche. At least that is his official position.

But of course the situation facing the psychologist is quite different from that facing the chemist, physicist, or biologist. We cannot observe another person's psyche, but we obviously can "observe" our own psyche and its functions in the sense that we experience it. A lot hangs on the ambiguity between the terms 'observation' and 'experience.' In the scientific method observation, seeing something, is simply one form of experience; and it is experience that counts in the formation of hypotheses.

So what is the psychologist to do with the psyche, a natural "entity" that others cannot observe, but whose function each one of us can observe in himself? He bites the bullet and chooses to ignore self-observation and accept as evidence only behavior—which to be sure he construes broadly by including "verbal behavior," i.e. what people say or report about their psychic function. But he resorts to it sparingly; after all, people often lie or are mistaken about their motives and feelings, and even their beliefs.

So the psychologist forms his hypotheses, his descriptions of psychic function solely from behavior. If these hypotheses conflict with what people believe about their own experience of psychic function, so much the worse for the latter. After all, there is a tradition going back to Copernicus of science forming hypotheses that conflict with ordinary experience and belief.

What about these hypotheses based entirely on observation of behavior? Obviously they must be enormous simplifications of the complexity each person observes—i.e. experiences—as his own psychic function. But such is the prestige of "science" in the public mind, and of course the success of psychologists (and psychiatrists) in persuading themselves and the public (which includes their patients) that their investigations are scientific, that people are willing to substitute these simplifications for what they know actually occurs in their psyches.

One could sum this up by saying the psychologist is like an instructor in medical school who has scruples about looking at naked bodies, and so tries to teach his students anatomy by studying the clothes people wear. The students can learn a few things—for example, that human beings have four fingers and a thumb by studying gloves; but they can't learn much. 
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
The problem since Copernicus—although it has been present since Democritus and Stoicism—is that the universe is shown to be without purpose. But this universe, grinding out complexity without purpose, has produced organisms that must survive and reproduce. When those organisms become conscious and can exercise some understanding of those processes and control over them, then purpose appears; it becomes part of the mechanism of the universe. It's a less grand position, but it is part of the universe nonetheless. And it creates great problems for us, our management of consciousness; and therefore for the universe as well.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
It' a wonderful mystery how neural systems create the content of consciousness from cells and tissues whose properties seem so unlike that content. The place to start in trying to solve the problem is with the conversion of environmental stimuli by receptor cells and neural tissue into sensations, the neural products that animals respond to.

The first point is that environmental stimuli are "analog"—they impact the organism's receptors in a sort of smear. Radiation as waves is analog; it occurs in frequencies or waves that are so minute as to be undifferentiated. This is what vision receptors must deal with. Changes in pressure are also wavelike and undifferentiated, and must be dealt with by the receptors registering touch (tactile receptors) and those ultimately creating sound (hearing). The third form of environmental stimulus available to organisms is chemical, which would appear not to be analog, because molecules are discrete entities. These are dealt with by receptors for smell and taste. However, molecules are so tiny that their impact on receptor cells, which by comparison are very large, must appear as an analog "smear."

So clearly the first function of sensory cells and the neural nets they excite must be to convert all this analog stimulus into digital form, //discrete// stimuli which the animal attends and responds to, and which are separate from the rest of the environmental noise. These are its sensations.

But what about their unique character—the specific nature of colors, sounds, tastes, smells, tactile sensations like hard or cold; in short, the "qualia" or contents of consciousness in higher animals? How can we explain their specific natures and the fact that they do not appear to have the properties or character of radiations, pressure changes, or chemicals?

That is indeed a mystery. However, this much can be said, I think: if they did //not// have a character or identity different from those stimuli they would not be distinguishable from the analog swarm impacting the animal. There would be no way for the animal to select from that swarm sections of it that it is necessary to respond to. Therefore sensations—what the animal responds to—//must// have a different identity from the environmental stimuli themselves. The function of receptor and neural tissues is to create for the organism that new identity.

Of course one wants to break things down into their constituents and their arrangements to more fully understand them. The same would apply to sensations. However, we are not able to do this for them, at least not at this time. But that is no reason to argue that therefore they don't exist (as some philosophers do). Nor is there any point in philosophers wringing their hands, wondering and debating how sensations can be created by neural systems. They just are.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!
Traditional Hindu/Buddhist ideas of reincarnation seem to have a place in the scientific metaphysics. After all, there are billions of galaxies, countless billions of stars with planetary systems, some‚ millions no doubt‚ capable of evolving life and organisms with neural systems and consciousness. We can believe this because the basic principles of the scientific metaphysics, from atoms to gravity to electromagnetic radiation are uniform throughout the universe. (If they were not the scientific metaphysics collapses and we have no idea what to believe.)

So neural systems and consciousness in some highly developed organisms exist throughout the universe‚ in the past, in the present, and for the billions of years of future.

Where is reincarnation in all this? Obviously in the constant appearance of consciousness. And personal reincarnation? In the appearance of the kind of consciousness one has in his own biography, on this planet when he dies or on some other planet elsewhere in this galaxy or in another. So one is always reborn and has been, because his type and style of consciousness keeps recurring.

And what of the Hindu/Buddhist solution? How is the suffering that comes with consciousness to be escaped?

Well, one could say one doesn't want to escape from consciousness itself; one wants to escape from the repetition of sickness, old age, and death, as the story is; one wants to escape from suffering in this current life and the lives this type of consciousness is destined to have.

How is one to do this? Obviously one can't. But one can try to perfect one's own consciousness, remove its suffering and feel he is fulfilling the natural and best outcome of consciousness in the universe.

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!
I'm thinking, especially as I get older, that the function of religion is to provide a framework, an encompassing context for our existence. "Our existence," as I have said many times, is our experience and biography, our umwelt. If we are a little precocious in this regard, we see that this umwelt existence is partial and perishable. So when we are young we ask ourselves, "What is the point? Why all this effort and struggle, these pleasures so exquisite but so fleeting?"

As we get older, even the less precocious are faced with the problem of framework and context. Impending death becomes a certainty that even a stunted imagination and intellect must face.

Where then is the framework that can include even our non-existence—the loss of our umwelt, the memories that are part of it, the families and friends, and all the rest? That's what religion provides, in all its forms, simple and complex.

In some ways it is like the metaphysics of science, which offers a framework and context much larger than our biography and the umwelt constituting it. But at this time, unlike traditional religions, it gives us no solace, no place in its outcome. 

Old people become lonely, their umwelt draws closer to an end, and with it the loss of their family and friends. The precocious young are no different in their fear and imaginings of death, and the trouble they have finding friends who feel and understand life as they do.

Proust's is a great and subtle attempt to solve the problem. Present limitations—like old age—are not an obstacle, since memory takes on the permanence of art. It gives the framework, the encompassing context, for the passing present which is our mortality. The umwelt is refined and elevated to existence itself. 

Of course he is mistaken and it can't be done. But it is a noble effort. 

!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
It's interesting reading Classical Dialogues almost like a first time reader now that it is on the Internet, and how it fits into the scientific metaphysics. There is none of the traditional talk of social contract,  justice, and other concepts of political theory; it is about providing the physical necessities for existence and the role of other people—a community or society—in providing them for each individual in a practical and efficient manner. It is a perspective rooted in the fact that human beings are biological creatures, an evolved species like all others, which needs to survive and use its brain, its reason and fully developed consciousness, not just its instincts, in order to do so. In a sense the metaphysics of biology replaces the metaphysics of political science.

!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
I have been watching a pair of robins across the alley now for the second or third year in a row with their nest built into a lamp base by a basement entrance. Now the eggs have hatched and the  naked young stretch their necks up, mouths agape, when the parents arrive to perch on the edge of the nest with food.

As children we are moved by this and identify with it, making up stories and hearing songs ("The north wind doth blow and we will have snow/ And what will the robin do then, poor thing," as my mother used to sing to us).

Then we grow older and are faced with the demands of life, and the further demands civilization and the kind of society we have created place on us. And we get a little education and smattering of science to learn that those early childhood responses are merely anthropomorphism, just reading ourselves into nature.

But then if we are lucky and really learn something about science and those robins, their evolution and the structure of their bodies and neural systems, we see that their behavior—building nests, laying and brooding eggs, feeding the young—is not something that we represent anthropomorphically; it is something that we in fact do and are. We too evolved, have complex bodies to nourish and replace, build nests and feed our young, using precisely the same neural systems, vastly expanded of course, to accomplish these things. We can well sing the same song of ourselves: "And what will we humans do then, poor things."
!

[[<Previous Page|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Main ToC|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Next Page>|SP-002]]
<html><img src="SP/www/Page-01.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|SP-001]] | [[Main ToC|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Next Page>|SP-003]]
<html><img src="SP/www/Page-02.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|SP-002]] | [[Main ToC|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Next Page>|SP-004]]
<html><img src="SP/www/Page-03.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|SP-003]] | [[Main ToC|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Next Page>|SP-005]]
<html><img src="SP/www/Page-04.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|SP-004]] | [[Main ToC|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Next Page>|SP-006]]
<html><img src="SP/www/Page-05.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|SP-005]] | [[Main ToC|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Next Page>|SP-007]]
<html><img src="SP/www/Page-06.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|SP-006]] | [[Main ToC|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Next Page>|SP-008]]
<html><img src="SP/www/Page-07.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|SP-007]] | [[Main ToC|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Next Page>|SP-009]]
<html><img src="SP/www/Page-08.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|SP-008]] | [[Main ToC|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Next Page>|SP-010]]
<html><img src="SP/www/Page-09.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|SP-009]] | [[Main ToC|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Next Page>|SP-011]]
<html><img src="SP/www/Page-10.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|SP-010]] | [[Main ToC|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Next Page>|SP-012]]
<html><img src="SP/www/Page-11.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|SP-011]] | [[Main ToC|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Next Page>|SP-013]]
<html><img src="SP/www/Page-12.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|SP-012]] | [[Main ToC|Science as Philosophy]] | [[Next Page>|Science as Philosophy]]
<html><img src="SP/www/Page-13.jpeg" style="height:600px"></html>

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
Plato's metaphysics satisfies; Democritus' metaphysics does not. The reason is simple. If the World of Forms is reality, and only our reason can identify and reach it, then we become immortal when we accomplish this. If atoms are reality, then with our death everything is lost; we are destroyed or dissolved into something different from us and meaningless to our existence and happiness.

(When the Abrahamic religions came along the difficulties were solved—the intellectual difficulties of Plato and the "spiritual" difficulties  of Democritus. One gets one's immortality from identity with God (we are created in his image) and the world of atoms is created for man's use. Of course the intellectual difficulties of this sort of religion are far more daunting than those faced by Plato. However, with the rise of democracy, cultural as well as political, those difficulties can be ignored.)

As it turns out, Democritus was right, and we are faced anew with his difficulties. Only Spinoza, Buddhism, and possibly Teilhard de Chardin have so far been relevant to dealing with them.
!

!
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY HISTORIAN of philosophy Wilhelm Windelband defined philosophy as the scientific attempt to understand the general nature of the universe and human existence, and to find in that understanding guidance to a worthy and satisfying life. (By the word “scientific” he meant the “methodical work of thought,” what was called //Wissenschaft// in German at the time. If you coupled that with observation and experiment, you would have pretty nearly the current meaning of the word.)

Windelband thought the nineteenth century primarily a “literary” century, but insofar as it was concerned with philosophy he saw it as a struggle between Kant (in one form or another) and what he called “the natural-science conception of phenomena,” namely, the view of the universe that physics, chemistry, and biology had been putting together over the previous 250 years. What is striking is not so much that Windelband believed the natural-science conception of phenomena was winning in the “warfare” with Kant, but that he regarded it as a philosophy by the traditional definition of the subject, a philosophy, in fact, tracing back to “the principles of Democritus.” Furthermore, although he thought it was unable to deal with the “soul” and questions of value, he seems to have assumed it would continue development in the twentieth century.

However, he would have been disappointed. Probably William James was best positioned to carry out this development, since he was not only a philosopher, but a physiologist and psychologist as well. He did indeed attempt to expand and apply the methods of the natural sciences to the broader problems of philosophy, especially problems of value, calling it “pragmatism”; but the scientific metaphysics (the “natural-science conception of phenomena”) had not yet become firmly established and incontrovertible (the physicist Ernst Mach, for example, could still argue that atoms were merely logical constructs built from sense-data), and neurobiology was still in its infancy, so that physiology was only vaguely connected to human psychical life. I think, however, had James been born seventy-five years later, he might have fulfilled Windelband's expectation. (Windelband refers only to the “extremely suggestive” work of William James.)

But philosophy took a different direction in the twentieth century, utterly unforeseen by Windelband. Its springboard was the discovery that mathematics could be equated—or even reduced—to logic by a suitable change in notation. This feat was accomplished by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead in their three volume //Principia Mathematica.// The discovery was important for two reasons. First, it suggested that what mathematics had done for physics and chemistry, the “natural-science conception of phenomena,” logical analysis could do for philosophy. In both cases, mathematics and logic, statements or propositions (as philosophers preferred to call them) could be analyzed for implication, contradiction, and consistency. In the case of the natural sciences, mathematics had proven enormously powerful in drawing implications for its metaphysics. Perhaps, philosophers believed, the same could be done for philosophy by using logic. Wittgenstein's //Tractatus// and Russell's logical atomism were the first (and last) heady products of this belief. Application of logic to language soon settled down to exposing inconsistencies and confusions inherent in language, first in the language of traditional philosophy and later in the language of ordinary discourse.

The second consequence of this identification of mathematics with logic was that it allowed philosophers to think of their subject as a kind of science. Mathematics was universally regarded as a scientific activity, though one distinct from the natural sciences. If logic, a traditional part of philosophy since Aristotle, was now proven to be identical to mathematics, then philosophy based on logic or logical analysis could likewise be thought of as a science. Hereafter logic (in its new symbolic form) would become the sine qua non of philosophy, and mastery (or at least competence) in the subject would be the price of admission into the ranks of the professional philosopher. The philosophical ideas or opinions of those who lacked this credential could be ignored as unprofessional and therefore unworthy of attention.

The net result was that the dominant philosophy in the twentieth century became the logical analysis of the //language// of metaphysics, epistemology, and theory of value rather than metaphysics, epistemology, and theory of value themselves. Also, the methods of logical analysis could be extended beyond the language of philosophy to ordinary usage and the language of non-philosophical disciplines. One could have “philosophies of” this or that discipline—psychology, religion, art, science, and so on. Indeed, one could even have philosophies of language, mathematics, and logic themselves, referring to them as “meta-analysis.”

<html><center>* * * </html>
Meanwhile the “natural-science conception of phenomena” consolidated its metaphysics and epistemology in the twentieth century, and although professing to be value-free was in fact slipping values into its view of existence through psychology. Thus it has become, as Windelband expected, a complete philosophy in the traditional sense of the term. It provides an understanding of the nature of the universe and human existence, and through psychology professes to offer guidance to a worthy and satisfying life.

Its metaphysics is, of course, extremely complicated—so complicated in fact that most scientists, being specialists, have little interest in and often little understanding of its scope and depth. However, it is fairly simple in its general outlines, and there is, I think, no better presentation of its overall form than the first three lectures of Richard Feynman's //Lectures on Physics// (reprinted in his book //Six Easy Pieces//). Problems certainly remain, especially at the subatomic and cosmological levels, but its overall picture of existence is in place and has to be accepted, for now, as incontrovertible.

The epistemology on which this metaphysics is based emerged in the last three hundred years (as Stephen Mason discusses in his //History of the Sciences//) from a fertile combination of observation and experiment, emphasized by Francis Bacon, and reasoning, emphasized by Descartes. Since the scientific metaphysics is no longer in doubt, there is no reason to question that epistemology. There can be no doubt, for example, that atoms exist, or that a water molecule is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one of oxygen, or that animal species evolved from simpler forms; consequently, there can be no reason to doubt or distrust the epistemology which grounds those conclusions.

The situation is thus quite different from that facing Socrates in fifth century B.C. Athens, or Hume in the eighteenth century. In both these periods metaphysical systems were competing with one another and all were under attack; there seemed no reason to choose one over the other, since all seemed equally plausible or implausible. Thus, epistemology was forced to become radical, resulting in Socrates' systematic doubt and Hume's skepticism. However, since the metaphysics of the scientific philosophy is firmly in place, epistemology is moved to the background as simply the attempt to describe the methods by which that metaphysics is established.

Theory of value, as mentioned, has slipped into the scientific philosophy through psychology, and as Windelband suspected, remains its weakest part. Psychology attempts to investigate human consciousness and behavior, and in the course of its investigations has proposed various ideas of what is healthy and normal, and offered them as values constituting a worthy and satisfying life.

However, the problem of values is much more difficult than that. If science is indeed a philosophy, then its theory of values must be based on or emerge from its metaphysics. That means that psychology needs to be connected systematically and in detail to the function of neural systems in organisms. It needs to understand how neural systems, from their basic function of enabling organisms to move in order to survive and reproduce, can develop in complexity to create human minds capable of producing science, art, religion, and philosophy. Then it needs to consider which among all these neural/mental functions are the most worthy and satisfying. Psychology has not even come close to dealing with such problems, and thus is not close to dealing with philosophical problems of value.
<html><center>* * * </html>
If I were to teach science as philosophy I would, of course, want students to understand in a general way how physics, chemistry, and biology now understand the universe, and how that understanding has developed over the last 400 years. For this purpose Feynman's first three lectures in his physics course would, as mentioned, serve very well. But equally important, the scientific metaphysics needs to seize the student's imagination the way Plato, Kant, Spinoza, and especially the Christian metaphysics of Aquinas and Aristotle seizes it. For example, the student needs to be properly staggered by the sheer numbers involved—the thirteen billion years of creation, the billions of galaxies that exist, the 100,000 light-year diameter of our own galaxy, the variety in the millions of species evolved on our own planet over the last three billion years, and the virtual certainty of life on other planets in the universe. He needs to consider, for example, what it means to say (as the quantum chemist Bernard Pullman wrote in his book,//The Atom in the History of Human Thought//) that at 10^^-43^^ second after the big bang the universe had a diameter of 10^^-33^^ centimeters, and in its "inflationary" phase it expanded in a "brief spurt" between 10^^-35^^ and 10^^-32^^ second by a factor of some 10^^50^^. These are astonishing numbers, and they give substance to what the medieval theologian-philosophers meant by //creatio ex nihilo//—creation from nothing.

Everything else the student needs to be concerned with involves questions of value within this metaphysical framework. The issues center on the evolution of consciousness in the neural systems of organisms and the parameters it lays down for dealing with its most effective and satisfying use.

Here one is faced with a sort of Scylla and Charybdis situation. On the one side are the analytic philosophers currently dominating academic philosophy who will try to channel the issue into the apparent conflict between “mind” and “body” language, and how that language reveals an unbridgeable or at least inscrutable gap between mental phenomena (like sensations or “qualia”) and physical phenomena (like the firing of neurons). On the other side are scientists themselves, most of whom are specialists investigating only a small area in the vast tapestry of the evolution of neural systems into minds, and do not wish to see philosophers muddying up their research with speculation.

To the philosophers I would say that one reason the gap between mental and physical phenomena appears unbridgeable is that scientists have not yet devised instruments or techniques for recording neural phenomena in their mental function. At this time neurobiology (and medicine) is limited to instruments (like EEGs) which record electrical activity, chemical assay techniques which identify chemicals like potassium and dopamine, and machines which scan the brain for metabolic changes. If, however, some technique could be devised for grafting neurons between organisms, we might come a little closer to bridging the gap. For example, if the afferent neurons running from a hair follicle on the back of two people's hands could be connected, then a stimulus to the hair of one of them might produce a tickle in both. (The example was suggested to me by a neurobiologist, who, however, knew of no attempts by neurobiologists to graft neurons.) Such an achievement would at least undermine the argument that the distinctive mark of mental events is their subjective “first person” nature; for in this case, two people are in a fairly straightforward sense experiencing the same sensation and “getting into each other's minds.”

I would also point out to these philosophers that nature exhibits numerous examples of novelty as great as the production of consciousness in neural systems. For example, oscillating electrons (or electrical current) produces light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation traveling away from those oscillations at a speed of 186,000 miles a second. There is nothing about electrons or electrical current that could have led one to expect such a novel creation. Indeed, without these kinds of novelty nature would be nothing more than a pile of atoms.

To the scientists—the evolutionary theorists, neurobiologists, ethologists, anthropologists, psychologists (and now evolutionary psychologists)—I would say that from the enormous amount of information that has been accumulated in these fields, it is possible to piece together an overall picture of the evolution of consciousness. That overall picture can be summarized as follows:

{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{1. Neural systems evolved originally to enable animals to move so that they can obtain food (survive as individuals), copulate (survive as a species), and manage threats in their environment.

2. Cells and tissues in receptor organs respond to environmental stimuli of only three kinds: chemicals, electromagnetic radiations, and changes in pressure.

3. These environmental stimuli are integrated by neural circuits into sensations. (See the [["Qualia"|Qualia]] and [["Sensations"|Sensations]] entries in Bits and Pieces.)

4. Neural and hormonal systems provide the impulse necessary to respond selectively to these sensations.

5. Selected sensations are organized into behavioral patterns—for example, the fixed action patterns described by ethologists. (See the //umwelt// entries in Bits and Pieces.)

6. Memory develops when sensory neural integrations are activated in the absence of their normal environmental stimuli. Sensitization, habituation, and conditioning are the earliest manifestations of memory. (The research of Eric Kandel and his colleagues on the sea hare //Aplysia// is particularly relevant to this question.)

7. Neural plasticity enables an animal to sort, shape, edit, and assemble this neural content into a variety of forms. This is the stage at which fully formed consciousness appears.}}}}}}}}}

Theory of value—the uses of consciousness which lead to a worthy and satisfying life—must be developed within this metaphysical framework. While setting the parameters to the functions of consciousness, the framework also allows for its enormous development. For example, sensory content limits the substance of our lives to experience, but neural plasticity allows consciousness (through thinking and the methods of science) to transcend that experience and to manipulate existence in ways that change its future content. Also, the mechanism by which sensory content is selected for behavioral response is itself capable of enormous expansion because of the expansion of the content of consciousness brought about by neural plasticity. Ideas and fictionalized experience, for example, become objects of impulse or interest, stimulating the pursuit of knowledge and the creation of art and poetry. The mechanism is even capable of working against itself, as it does in moral behavior, when impulse is converted into the power of will to //not//respond to its demands. The problem of values is how to best manage this complexity of consciousness, with all the tensions and conflicts it creates, as we work our way through life.

At a still deeper level, the problem of values—discovering the most satisfying and worthy uses of consciousness—must deal with the fact (within the scientific metaphysics of course) that with death consciousness appears to perish with the body, and that even its best and most worthy use has no permanence. The problem here is whether consciousness must be thought of as a sort of peacock tail phenomenon, an extravagant and frequently hazardous product of nature's fecundity, or whether with its best use and development it expresses a higher object or outcome of the universe. With this question the scientific metaphysics meets the traditional concerns of religion.

Mark Titus
//April 2011//

//{{{
window.reportSearchResults=function(text,matches)
{
	var title=config.macros.search.reportTitle
	var q = config.options.chkRegExpSearch ? "/" : "'";
	var body="\n";

	// numbered list of links to matching tiddlers
	body+="\n<<<";
	for(var t=0;t<matches.length;t++) {
		var date=config.options.chkSearchByDate?(matches[t].modified.formatString('YYYY.0MM.0DD 0hh:0mm')+" "):"";
		body+="\n# "+date+"[["+matches[t].title+"]]";
	}
	body+="\n<<<\n";

	// create/update the tiddler
	var tiddler=store.getTiddler(title); if (!tiddler) tiddler=new Tiddler();
	tiddler.set(title,body,config.options.txtUserName,(new Date()),"excludeLists excludeSearch");
	store.addTiddler(tiddler); story.closeTiddler(title);

	// use alternate "search again" label in <<search>> macro
	var oldprompt=config.macros.search.label;
	config.macros.search.label="search again";

	// render/refresh tiddler
	story.displayTiddler(null,title,1);
	store.notify(title,true);

	// restore standard search label
	config.macros.search.label=oldprompt;

}

//}}}

/***
|Name|SearchOptionsPlugin|
|Source|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#SearchOptionsPlugin|
|Documentation|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#SearchOptionsPluginInfo|
|Version|2.6.1|
|Author|Eric Shulman - ELS Design Studios|
|License|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#LegalStatements <br>and [[Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License|http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/]]|
|~CoreVersion|2.1|
|Type|plugin|
|Requires||
|Overrides|Story.prototype.search, TiddlyWiki.prototype.search, config.macros.search.onKeyPress|
|Description|extend core search function with additional user-configurable options|
Extend core search function with additional user-configurable options including generating a ''list of matching tiddlers'' instead of immediately displaying all matches.
!!!!!Documentation
>see [[SearchOptionsPluginInfo]]
!!!!!Configuration
<<<
<<option chkSearchTitles>> Search in titles
<<option chkSearchText>> Search in tiddler text
<<option chkSearchTags>> Search in tags
<<option chkSearchFields>> Search in data fields
<<option chkSearchShadows>> Search shadow tiddlers
<<option chkSearchTitlesFirst>> Show title matches first
<<option chkSearchByDate>> Sort matching tiddlers by date
<<option chkSearchList>> Show list of matches in [[SearchResults]]
<<option chkSearchIncremental>> Incremental (key-by-key) searching
<<<
!!!!!Revisions
<<<
2007.02.17 [2.6.1] added redefinition of config.macros.search.onKeyPress() to restore check to bypass key-by-key searching (i.e., when chkSearchIncremental==false), which had been unintentionally removed with v2.6.0
|please see [[SearchOptionsPluginInfo]] for additional revision details|
2005.10.18 [1.0.0] Initial Release
<<<
!!!!!Code
***/
//{{{
version.extensions.searchOptions = {major: 2, minor: 6, revision: 1, date: new Date(2007,2,17)};

if (config.options.chkSearchTitles===undefined) config.options.chkSearchTitles=true;
if (config.options.chkSearchText===undefined) config.options.chkSearchText=true;
if (config.options.chkSearchTags===undefined) config.options.chkSearchTags=true;
if (config.options.chkSearchFields===undefined) config.options.chkSearchFields=true;
if (config.options.chkSearchTitlesFirst===undefined) config.options.chkSearchTitlesFirst=false;
if (config.options.chkSearchList===undefined) config.options.chkSearchList=false;
if (config.options.chkSearchByDate===undefined) config.options.chkSearchByDate=false;
if (config.options.chkSearchIncremental===undefined) config.options.chkSearchIncremental=true;
if (config.options.chkSearchShadows===undefined) config.options.chkSearchShadows=false;

if (config.optionsDesc) {
	config.optionsDesc.chkSearchTitles="Search in tiddler titles";
	config.optionsDesc.chkSearchText="Search in tiddler text";
	config.optionsDesc.chkSearchTags="Search in tiddler tags";
	config.optionsDesc.chkSearchFields="Search in tiddler data fields";
	config.optionsDesc.chkSearchShadows="Search in shadow tiddlers";
	config.optionsDesc.chkSearchTitlesFirst="Search results show title matches first";
	config.optionsDesc.chkSearchList="Search results show list of matching tiddlers";
	config.optionsDesc.chkSearchByDate="Search results sorted by modification date ";
	config.optionsDesc.chkSearchIncremental="Incremental searching";
} else {
	config.shadowTiddlers.AdvancedOptions += "\n<<option chkSearchTitles>> Search in tiddler titles"
		+"\n<<option chkSearchText>> Search in tiddler text"
		+"\n<<option chkSearchTags>> Search in tiddler tags"
		+"\n<<option chkSearchFields>> Search in tiddler data fields"
		+"\n<<option chkSearchShadows>> Search in shadow tiddlers"
		+"\n<<option chkSearchTitlesFirst>> Search results show title matches first"
		+"\n<<option chkSearchList>> Search results show list of matching tiddlers"
		+"\n<<option chkSearchByDate>> Search results sorted by modification date"
		+"\n<<option chkSearchIncremental>> Incremental searching";
}

if (config.macros.search.reportTitle==undefined)
	config.macros.search.reportTitle="SearchResults";

config.macros.search.onKeyPress = function(e)
{
	if(!e) var e = window.event;
	switch(e.keyCode)
		{
		case 13: // Ctrl-Enter
		case 10: // Ctrl-Enter on IE PC
			config.macros.search.doSearch(this);
			break;
		case 27: // Escape
			this.value = "";
			clearMessage();
			break;
		}
	if (config.options.chkSearchIncremental) {
		if(this.value.length > 2)
			{
			if(this.value != this.getAttribute("lastSearchText"))
				{
				if(config.macros.search.timeout)
					clearTimeout(config.macros.search.timeout);
				var txt = this;
				config.macros.search.timeout = setTimeout(function() {config.macros.search.doSearch(txt);},500);
				}
			}
		else
			{
			if(config.macros.search.timeout)
				clearTimeout(config.macros.search.timeout);
			}
	}
}
//}}}

//{{{
Story.prototype.search = function(text,useCaseSensitive,useRegExp)
{
	highlightHack = new RegExp(useRegExp ? text : text.escapeRegExp(),useCaseSensitive ? "mg" : "img");
	var matches = store.search(highlightHack,config.options.chkSearchByDate?"modified":"title","excludeSearch");
	if (config.options.chkSearchByDate) matches=matches.reverse(); // most recent changes first
	var q = useRegExp ? "/" : "'";
	clearMessage();
	if (!matches.length) {
		if (config.options.chkSearchList) discardSearchResults();
		displayMessage(config.macros.search.failureMsg.format([q+text+q]));
	} else {
		if (config.options.chkSearchList) 
			reportSearchResults(text,matches);
		else {
			var titles = []; for(var t=0; t<matches.length; t++) titles.push(matches[t].title);
			this.closeAllTiddlers(); story.displayTiddlers(null,titles);
			displayMessage(config.macros.search.successMsg.format([matches.length, q+text+q]));
		}
	}
	highlightHack = null;
}

TiddlyWiki.prototype.search = function(searchRegExp,sortField,excludeTag)
{
	var candidates = this.reverseLookup("tags",excludeTag,false,sortField);

	// scan for matching titles first...
	var results = [];
	if (config.options.chkSearchTitles) {
		for(var t=0; t<candidates.length; t++)
			if(candidates[t].title.search(searchRegExp)!=-1)
				results.push(candidates[t]);
		if (config.options.chkSearchShadows)
			for (var t in config.shadowTiddlers)
				if ((t.search(searchRegExp)!=-1) && !store.tiddlerExists(t))
					results.push((new Tiddler()).assign(t,config.shadowTiddlers[t]));
	}
	// then scan for matching text, tags, or field data
	for(var t=0; t<candidates.length; t++) {
		if (config.options.chkSearchText && candidates[t].text.search(searchRegExp)!=-1)
			results.pushUnique(candidates[t]);
		if (config.options.chkSearchTags && candidates[t].tags.join(" ").search(searchRegExp)!=-1)
			results.pushUnique(candidates[t]);
		if (config.options.chkSearchFields && store.forEachField!=undefined) // requires TW2.1 or above
			store.forEachField(candidates[t],
				function(tid,field,val) { if (val.search(searchRegExp)!=-1) results.pushUnique(candidates[t]); },
				true); // extended fields only
	}
	// then check for matching text in shadows
	if (config.options.chkSearchShadows)
		for (var t in config.shadowTiddlers)
			if ((config.shadowTiddlers[t].search(searchRegExp)!=-1) && !store.tiddlerExists(t))
				results.pushUnique((new Tiddler()).assign(t,config.shadowTiddlers[t]));

	// if not 'titles first', or sorting by modification date,  re-sort results to so titles, text, tag and field matches are mixed together
	if(!sortField) sortField = "title";
	var bySortField=function (a,b) {if(a[sortField] == b[sortField]) return(0); else return (a[sortField] < b[sortField]) ? -1 : +1; }
	if (!config.options.chkSearchTitlesFirst || config.options.chkSearchByDate) results.sort(bySortField);

	return results;
}

// REPORT GENERATOR
if (!window.reportSearchResults) window.reportSearchResults=function(text,matches)
{
	var title=config.macros.search.reportTitle
	var q = config.options.chkRegExpSearch ? "/" : "'";
	var body="\n";

	// summary: nn tiddlers found matching '...', options used
	body+="''"+config.macros.search.successMsg.format([matches.length,q+"{{{"+text+"}}}"+q])+"''\n";
	body+="^^//searched in:// ";
	body+=(config.options.chkSearchTitles?"''titles'' ":"");
	body+=(config.options.chkSearchText?"''text'' ":"");
	body+=(config.options.chkSearchTags?"''tags'' ":"");
	body+=(config.options.chkSearchFields?"''fields'' ":"");
	body+=(config.options.chkSearchShadows?"''shadows'' ":"");
	if (config.options.chkCaseSensitiveSearch||config.options.chkRegExpSearch) {
		body+=" //with options:// ";
		body+=(config.options.chkCaseSensitiveSearch?"''case sensitive'' ":"");
		body+=(config.options.chkRegExpSearch?"''text patterns'' ":"");
	}
	body+="^^";

	// numbered list of links to matching tiddlers
	body+="\n<<<";
	for(var t=0;t<matches.length;t++) {
		var date=config.options.chkSearchByDate?(matches[t].modified.formatString('YYYY.0MM.0DD 0hh:0mm')+" "):"";
		body+="\n# "+date+"[["+matches[t].title+"]]";
	}
	body+="\n<<<\n";

	// open all matches button
	body+="<html><input type=\"button\" href=\"javascript:;\" ";
	body+="onclick=\"story.displayTiddlers(null,["
	for(var t=0;t<matches.length;t++)
		body+="'"+matches[t].title.replace(/\'/mg,"\\'")+"'"+((t<matches.length-1)?", ":"");
	body+="],1);\" ";
	body+="accesskey=\"O\" ";
	body+="value=\"open all matching tiddlers\"></html> ";

	// discard search results button
	body+="<html><input type=\"button\" href=\"javascript:;\" ";
	body+="onclick=\"story.closeTiddler('"+title+"'); store.deleteTiddler('"+title+"'); store.notify('"+title+"',true);\" ";
	body+="value=\"discard "+title+"\"></html>";

	// search again
	body+="\n\n----\n";
	body+="<<search \""+text+"\">>\n";
	body+="<<option chkSearchTitles>>titles ";
	body+="<<option chkSearchText>>text ";
	body+="<<option chkSearchTags>>tags";
	body+="<<option chkSearchFields>>fields";
	body+="<<option chkSearchShadows>>shadows";
	body+="<<option chkCaseSensitiveSearch>>case-sensitive ";
	body+="<<option chkRegExpSearch>>text patterns";
	body+="<<option chkSearchByDate>>sort by date";

	// create/update the tiddler
	var tiddler=store.getTiddler(title); if (!tiddler) tiddler=new Tiddler();
	tiddler.set(title,body,config.options.txtUserName,(new Date()),"excludeLists excludeSearch temporary");
	store.addTiddler(tiddler); story.closeTiddler(title);

	// use alternate "search again" label in <<search>> macro
	var oldprompt=config.macros.search.label;
	config.macros.search.label="search again";

	// render/refresh tiddler
	story.displayTiddler(null,title,1);
	store.notify(title,true);

	// restore standard search label
	config.macros.search.label=oldprompt;

}

if (!window.discardSearchResults) window.discardSearchResults=function()
{
	// remove the tiddler
	story.closeTiddler(config.macros.search.reportTitle);
	store.deleteTiddler(config.macros.search.reportTitle);
}
//}}}

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces]]
!
This is the text of the second entry...
!

/***
Quick and dirtly palette switcher for 2.1.x
<<selectPalette>>
WARNING this will overwrite your ColorPalette tiddler.
***/

//{{{

merge(config.macros,{

	setPalette: {

		handler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
			var paletteName = params[0] ? params[0] : tiddler.title;
			createTiddlyButton(place,"apply","Apply this palette",function(e) {
				config.macros.selectPalette.updatePalette(tiddler.title);
				return false;
			});
		}
	},

	selectPalette: {

		handler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
			createTiddlyDropDown(place,this.onPaletteChange,this.getPalettes());
		},

		getPalettes: function() {
			var result = [
				{caption:"-select palette-", name:""},
				{caption:"(Default)", name:"(default)"}
			];
			var tagged = store.getTaggedTiddlers("palette","title");
			for(var t=0; t<tagged.length; t++)
				result.push({caption:tagged[t].title, name:tagged[t].title});
			return result;
		},

		onPaletteChange: function(e) {
			config.macros.selectPalette.updatePalette(this.value);
			return true;
		},

		updatePalette: function(title) {
			if (title != "") {
				store.deleteTiddler("ColorPalette");
				if (title != "(default)")
					store.saveTiddler("ColorPalette","ColorPalette",store.getTiddlerText(title),
								config.options.txtUserName,undefined,"");
				this.refreshPalette();
				if(config.options.chkAutoSave)
					saveChanges(true);
			}
		},

		refreshPalette: function() {
			config.macros.refreshDisplay.onClick();
		}
	}
});

//}}}

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces E|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
Reading over the chapter on receptors and effectors in Neil Campbell's //Biology//, it occurs to me once again how obvious it is that sensations (the "mind" root of the mind-body problem in traditional philosophy) are receptor-neural integrations, and therefore an emergent property (one of the fundamental themes of Campbell's textbook). One can think of the combination of atoms into molecules, or monomers into polymers, as "integrations" in precisely the same way. The results of such integrations are quite different in appearance and function from the elements that are integrated. They are emergent.

That such an integration is an essential function of neural systems springs from the fact that environmental stimuli—light, pressure, and chemicals—are virtually (in the case of chemicals) and really (in the case of pressure and light) analog events, and could not be separated from their continuum to function as stimuli if sections of the continuum were not digitized—i.e. put into non-analog form. And without such digitized form—sensations—they could not initiate coordinated response from muscles and limbs, because muscles and limbs are composed of millions of cells and therefore are almost analog in form as well. Sensations are the digital form of connection between an analog environment and the virtually analog body of an organism composed of trillions of cells that must move in a coordinated way. 

Once sensations emerge in the neural systems of organisms mind is inevitable. An organism first creates an //umwelt//, and with it behavior. Much later, with sufficient memory and neural plasticity, consciousness proper appears with its enormous capacity to reshape the //umwelt// and behavior.
!

!
In his first lecture on physics to freshmen and sophomores at the California Institute of Technology in 1961-62 Richard Feynman said:

{{engindent{If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the //atomic hypothesis// (or the atomic //fact//, or whatever you wish to call it) that //all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another//. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an //enormous// amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.}}}

The Greek philosopher Democritus might have said something like that twenty-five hundred years ago. Although his books are lost, we know from the fragments that remain and what others said about him, that he believed everything in the universe was made of atoms in perpetual motion whirling in space. Large, small, smooth and slippery or jagged and hooked, they combine to form the universe—its stars and planets, and the earth and all it contains, including our bodies and our minds. All that is required to understand this is “just a little imagination and thinking”—what physics, chemistry, and biology have provided since the seventeenth century.

In spite of this success, science (as we now call the metaphysics of Democritus) has not been able to show how mind or human consciousness can be incorporated into it. Democritus had a theory for this, namely, that mind consists of “fire atoms,” extremely small and mobile atoms that can penetrate among the larger atoms of existence, creating copies or images of them which become our perceptions and thoughts.

Neurobiology has made some progress as to how this takes place. It is clear that neural systems evolved to enable animals to move in their environments—to find food and mates, and to avoid or otherwise deal with predators. Stimuli are received from the environment, assembled by central neural circuits, and transmitted to muscles or other tissues in the animals’ bodies whose coordinated activity enable it to respond. This process occurs in every complex multi-celled animal.

The first step is the conversion of stimuli from the environment into sensations. Since animals are composed entirely of cells, this process must occur at the cellular level—that is, stimuli from the environment activate receptor cells on the surface or within their bodies. These stimuli are of three types: electromagnetic radiation in the range of wavelengths we identify as light, pressures from objects or the air striking the body, and streams of molecules in the air or in direct contact with the animals’ bodies. A variety of receptor cells exist to receive and record these stimuli.

In every case these environmental stimuli exist in //analog// form and are converted into //digital// form by the receptor cells and the neural circuits connected to them. For example, the “eye” of the horseshoe crab //Limulus// can create a boundary line within a gradient of light from light to dark. That boundary gives the animal something to respond to within the analog stream of radiation. In the human eye, color pigments (carotinoids) in the retina are able to absorb small portions of the electromagnetic spectrum to create the colors we identify and respond to.

The same is true of the other sensory modalities. Specialized receptor cells in the skin, the ear, on the tongue and in the nasal passages respond to selected portions of the swarms of molecules and pressure changes in the environment. All are conversions of analog stimuli into digital form. (The variety of mechanisms of conversion employed by receptor cells and neural tissues are described fully in the chapters on sensory systems in Gordon Shepherd’s textbook, //Neurobiology//.)

The common element is that a small portion of an undifferentiated stream of stimuli is selected by the organism and given a specific identity. These selected—indeed, one could say, //created//—identities we identify as sensations (which is why Shepherd entitles his chapters on the mechanisms of selection “Sensory Systems”). It’s as if a person were given a bowl of marbles all of the same color, differing in sizes so small that he cannot perceive their difference, and asked to select a particular marble from all the rest. It would be impossible unless he could identify it with a special marker—like, for example, a different color that would distinguish it from all the other marbles. That’s the way organisms solve the problems of interacting with their environments at the cellular level: they create sensations from portions of the streams of stimuli they encounter, portions which guide their responses to that environment.

Sensations are the building blocks of consciousness. They must first be combined into perceptions and converted into objects in the environment. Then neural systems must evolve mechanisms by which they can be remembered or recalled (neurobiologists identify the first appearances of memory in habituation, sensitization, and conditioning); and finally plasticity must develop—the capacity to shape, edit, and organize this neural content, present or remembered, into a picture, experience, or awareness of the “world.” This, in the modern metaphysics of Democritus, is the way consciousness emerges in neural systems.

In 1934 the Estonian biologist Jakob von Uexk&uuml;ll published a monograph titled “A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men” (amusingly subtitled “A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds”) in which he attempted to show that every animal creates a “world” (he called it its //umwelt//) from stimuli in the environment to which it responds. Even an animal such as the common wood tick, with which he begins his essay, creates such a world. The wood tick responds to only three stimuli: butyric acid (which is secreted by the skin glands of mammals), which causes the tick to drop onto it from its perch; the shock of landing on its victim, which causes it to scramble among its hairs; and the warmth of the animal’s skin, which causes it to bore into it for its meal of blood. These three stimuli alone create an //umwelt// for the tick, “impoverished” as it may be. We can add to his account only that the three stimuli—butyric acid, the shock of landing, and the warmth of the animal’s skin—are analog stimuli, that is, they are undifferentiated gradients in the environment from which the neural system of the tick selects just portions for its response. Those portions, converted into digital form, are the sensations that constitute its tiny world.

There is nothing “mental” or “physical” in this account of sensations. That distinction makes sense only much further down the line in the evolution of neural systems and requires the development of memory and neural plasticity along with a far richer sensory world than the wood tick’s. Sensations are the creation within neural systems of environmental events cast in different form, but still part of the same single material fabric of the universe. They reside in the animal’s central neural system—its brain (as MRI studies reveal)—and can be given a general location for where they occur. They are not “fire atoms” of course, but they are fully connected to the universe of atoms.

Mark Titus
//July 2016//

(This essay appeared in Nautilus under the title //Consciousness Is Made of Atoms, Too//.)

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
I watch the mourning doves now outside the window. One—it seems the male—coos and ruffles his feathers, doubtless calling a mate, perhaps his established mate or just a girl in the neighborhood. Then he scratches and preens. If he is lucky, a lady comes by who is responsive, and then the mutual pecking and bill wrestling begins, When the time is ripe he hops onto her back and does his little thing. Then they both get themselves together with some shakes, a little more ruffling, and fly off, maybe together, maybe separately.

We are at least this complicated! We preen and ruffle and coo, dress up, put on best clothes and cosmetics, invent complicated dances and music for them, fly off together or separately after doing our little thing, if we are lucky.

Yes, of course we are like them, only immensely elaborated. But neither we nor they just "adapt," orchestrate all this complication simply to survive and reproduce. That may be the biological seed, but the fruition is a mysterious elaboration of the universe.

The ideology that infects evolutionary psychology at this point is, of course, the ideology of capitalistic struggle, life "red in tooth and claw," competition and self interest, and an entire political/economic/ethical theory that has dominated the West for over two hundred years. Its imprint onto the scientific metaphysics is perfectly ridiculous. Nature herself has a much higher ideology in mind I think. And certainly a more complicated one.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!
Nothing pleases like sex. But then the girl gets pregnant, and life becomes turmoil. Nothing pleases like food and drink. But then one overeats and drinks, falls uncomfortably asleep, and wakes up with a hangover. In both cases it is not long before the desire for both stirs again, and the process repeats itself.

Buddhism knows the process very well. However, it draws the extreme conclusion that existence—human life—is suffering. Of course it is not always so—as the pleasures of sex, food, and drink show; and there have been many discoveries and means for the alleviation of the sufferings of "sickness, old age, and death." Buddhism at its best, however, identified suffering with this endless cycle of pleasure, surfeit, unpleasant result and consequence, and the renewed pursuit of pleasure.

It's a problem easy to identify and describe, but almost impossible to solve.
!

<<search>><<closeAll>><<permaview>><<newTiddler>><<newTiddler title:"tagnameSubtopicMenu" tag:"SubtopicMenu" label:"new subtopic menu" text:"{{tableindex{
|[[subtopic1]]|[[subtopic2]]|[[subtopic3]]|
}}}">><<newTiddler title:"tagnameViewTemplate" tag:"excludeLists" label:"new viewtemplate" text:"<!--{{{-->
<div class='toolbar' macro='toolbar closeTiddler closeOthers +editTiddler > fields syncing permalink references jump'></div>
<div class='xxxx' macro='tiddler xxxxSubtopicMenu'></div><div class='title' macro='view title'></div>
<div class='viewer' macro='view text wikified'></div><div class='tagClear'></div>
<!--}}}-->
">><<saveChanges>>[[Formatting cheatsheet]]<<selectPalette>><<slider chkSliderOptionsPanel OptionsPanel "options »" "Change TiddlyWiki advanced options">>

<<tabs txtMainTab "Timeline" "Timeline" TabTimeline "All" "All tiddlers" TabAll "Tags" "All tags" TabTags "More" "More lists" TabMore>>

/***
|Name|SinglePageModePlugin|
|Source|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#SinglePageModePlugin|
|Documentation|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#SinglePageModePluginInfo|
|Version|2.8.2|
|Author|Eric Shulman - ELS Design Studios|
|License|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#LegalStatements <br>and [[Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License|http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/]]|
|~CoreVersion|2.1|
|Type|plugin|
|Requires||
|Overrides|Story.prototype.displayTiddler(), Story.prototype.displayTiddlers()|
|Description|Show tiddlers one at a time with automatic permalink, or always open tiddlers at top/bottom of page.|
This plugin allows you to configure TiddlyWiki to navigate more like a traditional multipage web site with only one tiddler displayed at a time.
!!!!!Documentation
>see [[SinglePageModePluginInfo]]
!!!!!Configuration
<<<
<<option chkSinglePageMode>> Display one tiddler at a time
><<option chkSinglePageKeepFoldedTiddlers>> Don't auto-close folded tiddlers
><<option chkSinglePagePermalink>> Automatically permalink current tiddler
<<option chkTopOfPageMode>> Always open tiddlers at the top of the page
<<option chkBottomOfPageMode>> Always open tiddlers at the bottom of the page
<<option chkSinglePageAutoScroll>> Automatically scroll tiddler into view (if needed)

Notes:
* The "display one tiddler at a time" option can also be //temporarily// set/reset by including a 'paramifier' in the document URL: {{{#SPM:true}}} or {{{#SPM:false}}}.
* If more than one display mode is selected, 'one at a time' display takes precedence over both 'top' and 'bottom' settings, and if 'one at a time' setting is not used, 'top of page' takes precedence over 'bottom of page'.
* When using Apple's Safari browser, automatically setting the permalink causes an error and is disabled.
<<<
!!!!!Revisions
<<<
2008.03.14 [2.8.2] in displayTiddler(), if editing specified tiddler, just move it to top/bottom of story *without* re-rendering (prevents discard of partial edits).
| Please see [[SinglePageModePluginInfo]] for previous revision details |
2005.08.15 [1.0.0] Initial Release.  Support for BACK/FORWARD buttons adapted from code developed by Clint Checketts.
<<<
!!!!!Code
***/
//{{{
version.extensions.SinglePageMode= {major: 2, minor: 8, revision: 2, date: new Date(2008,3,14)};
//}}}
//{{{
config.paramifiers.SPM = { onstart: function(v) {
	config.options.chkSinglePageMode=eval(v);
	if (config.options.chkSinglePageMode && config.options.chkSinglePagePermalink && !config.browser.isSafari) {
		config.lastURL = window.location.hash;
		if (!config.SPMTimer) config.SPMTimer=window.setInterval(function() {checkLastURL();},1000);
	}
} };
//}}}
//{{{
if (config.options.chkSinglePageMode==undefined) config.options.chkSinglePageMode=false;
if (config.options.chkSinglePageKeepFoldedTiddlers==undefined) config.options.chkSinglePageKeepFoldedTiddlers=true;
if (config.options.chkSinglePagePermalink==undefined) config.options.chkSinglePagePermalink=true;
if (config.options.chkTopOfPageMode==undefined) config.options.chkTopOfPageMode=false;
if (config.options.chkBottomOfPageMode==undefined) config.options.chkBottomOfPageMode=false;
if (config.options.chkSinglePageAutoScroll==undefined) config.options.chkSinglePageAutoScroll=true;

if (config.optionsDesc) {
	config.optionsDesc.chkSinglePageMode="Display one tiddler at a time";
	config.optionsDesc.chkSinglePageKeepFoldedTiddlers="Don't auto-close folded tiddlers";
	config.optionsDesc.chkSinglePagePermalink="Automatically permalink current tiddler";
	config.optionsDesc.chkSinglePageAutoScroll="Automatically scroll tiddler into view (if needed)";
	config.optionsDesc.chkTopOfPageMode="Always open tiddlers at the top of the page";
	config.optionsDesc.chkBottomOfPageMode="Always open tiddlers at the bottom of the page";
} else {
	config.shadowTiddlers.AdvancedOptions += "\
		\n<<option chkSinglePageMode>> Display one tiddler at a time \
		\n<<option chkSinglePageKeepFoldedTiddlers>> Don't auto-close folded tiddlers \
		\n<<option chkSinglePagePermalink>> Automatically permalink current tiddler \
		\n<<option chkSinglePageAutoScroll>> Automatically scroll tiddler into view (if needed) \
		\n<<option chkTopOfPageMode>> Always open tiddlers at the top of the page \
		\n<<option chkBottomOfPageMode>> Always open tiddlers at the bottom of the page";
}
//}}}
//{{{
config.SPMTimer = 0;
config.lastURL = window.location.hash;
function checkLastURL()
{
	if (!config.options.chkSinglePageMode)
		{ window.clearInterval(config.SPMTimer); config.SPMTimer=0; return; }
	if (config.lastURL == window.location.hash) return; // no change in hash
	var tids=convertUTF8ToUnicode(decodeURIComponent(window.location.hash.substr(1))).readBracketedList();
	if (tids.length==1) // permalink (single tiddler in URL)
		story.displayTiddler(null,tids[0]);
	else { // restore permaview or default view
		config.lastURL = window.location.hash;
		if (!tids.length) tids=store.getTiddlerText("DefaultTiddlers").readBracketedList();
		story.closeAllTiddlers();
		story.displayTiddlers(null,tids);
	}
}

if (Story.prototype.SPM_coreDisplayTiddler==undefined)
	Story.prototype.SPM_coreDisplayTiddler=Story.prototype.displayTiddler;
Story.prototype.displayTiddler = function(srcElement,title,template,animate,slowly)
{
	var opt=config.options;
	if (opt.chkSinglePageMode) {
		// close all tiddlers except current tiddler, tiddlers being edited, and tiddlers that are folded (optional)
		story.forEachTiddler(function(tid,elem) {
			if (	tid==title
				|| elem.getAttribute("dirty")=="true"
				|| (opt.chkSinglePageKeepFoldedTiddlers && elem.getAttribute("folded")=="true"))
				return;
			story.closeTiddler(tid);
		});
	}
	else if (opt.chkTopOfPageMode)
		arguments[0]=null;
	else if (opt.chkBottomOfPageMode)
		arguments[0]="bottom";
	if (opt.chkSinglePageMode && opt.chkSinglePagePermalink && !config.browser.isSafari) {
		window.location.hash = encodeURIComponent(convertUnicodeToUTF8(String.encodeTiddlyLink(title)));
		config.lastURL = window.location.hash;
		document.title = wikifyPlain("SiteTitle") + " - " + title;
		if (!config.SPMTimer) config.SPMTimer=window.setInterval(function() {checkLastURL();},1000);
	}
	var tiddlerElem=document.getElementById(story.idPrefix+title); // ==null unless tiddler is already display
	if (tiddlerElem && tiddlerElem.getAttribute("dirty")=="true") { // editing... move tiddler without re-rendering
		var isTopTiddler=(tiddlerElem.previousSibling==null);
		if (!isTopTiddler && (opt.chkSinglePageMode || opt.chkTopOfPageMode))
			tiddlerElem.parentNode.insertBefore(tiddlerElem,tiddlerElem.parentNode.firstChild);
		else if (opt.chkBottomOfPageMode)
			tiddlerElem.parentNode.insertBefore(tiddlerElem,null);
		else this.SPM_coreDisplayTiddler.apply(this,arguments); // let CORE render tiddler
	} else
		this.SPM_coreDisplayTiddler.apply(this,arguments); // let CORE render tiddler
	var tiddlerElem=document.getElementById(story.idPrefix+title);
	if (tiddlerElem&&opt.chkSinglePageAutoScroll) {
		var yPos=ensureVisible(tiddlerElem); // scroll to top of tiddler
		var isTopTiddler=(tiddlerElem.previousSibling==null);
		if (opt.chkSinglePageMode||opt.chkTopOfPageMode||isTopTiddler)
			yPos=0; // scroll to top of page instead of top of tiddler
		if (opt.chkAnimate) // defer scroll until 200ms after animation completes
			setTimeout("window.scrollTo(0,"+yPos+")",config.animDuration+200); 
		else
			window.scrollTo(0,yPos); // scroll immediately
	}
}

if (Story.prototype.SPM_coreDisplayTiddlers==undefined)
	Story.prototype.SPM_coreDisplayTiddlers=Story.prototype.displayTiddlers;

Story.prototype.displayTiddlers = function() {
	// suspend single-page mode (and/or top/bottom display options) when showing multiple tiddlers
	var opt=config.options;
	var saveSPM=opt.chkSinglePageMode; opt.chkSinglePageMode=false;
	var saveTPM=opt.chkTopOfPageMode; opt.chkTopOfPageMode=false;
	var saveBPM=opt.chkBottomOfPageMode; opt.chkBottomOfPageMode=false;
	this.SPM_coreDisplayTiddlers.apply(this,arguments);
	opt.chkBottomOfPageMode=saveBPM;
	opt.chkTopOfPageMode=saveTPM;
	opt.chkSinglePageMode=saveSPM;
}
//}}}

Philosophile

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces]]
!
It's interesting how Skinner's "operant conditioning" is similar to Darwin's "natural selection. In both an event occurs -- a behavior for Skinner, a mutation for Darwinism -- which is successful or leads somewhere: it is rewarded for Skinner and adaptive for Darwin. Both have outcomes of change and creation of complexity.  

!

/***
|''Name:''|SparklinePlugin|
|''Description:''|Sparklines macro|
***/
//{{{
if(!version.extensions.SparklinePlugin) {
version.extensions.SparklinePlugin = {installed:true};

//--
//-- Sparklines
//--

config.macros.sparkline = {};
config.macros.sparkline.handler = function(place,macroName,params)
{
	var data = [];
	var min = 0;
	var max = 0;
	var v;
	for(var t=0; t<params.length; t++) {
		v = parseInt(params[t]);
		if(v < min)
			min = v;
		if(v > max)
			max = v;
		data.push(v);
	}
	if(data.length < 1)
		return;
	var box = createTiddlyElement(place,"span",null,"sparkline",String.fromCharCode(160));
	box.title = data.join(",");
	var w = box.offsetWidth;
	var h = box.offsetHeight;
	box.style.paddingRight = (data.length * 2 - w) + "px";
	box.style.position = "relative";
	for(var d=0; d<data.length; d++) {
		var tick = document.createElement("img");
		tick.border = 0;
		tick.className = "sparktick";
		tick.style.position = "absolute";
		tick.src = "data:image/gif,GIF89a%01%00%01%00%91%FF%00%FF%FF%FF%00%00%00%C0%C0%C0%00%00%00!%F9%04%01%00%00%02%00%2C%00%00%00%00%01%00%01%00%40%02%02T%01%00%3B";
		tick.style.left = d*2 + "px";
		tick.style.width = "2px";
		v = Math.floor(((data[d] - min)/(max-min)) * h);
		tick.style.top = (h-v) + "px";
		tick.style.height = v + "px";
		box.appendChild(tick);
	}
};


}
//}}}

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
One wonders to what extent Spinoza's metaphysics was generated and sustained by Scholastic and Talmudic challenge and excitement in argument and triumph in proving a conclusion—the satisfaction, the victory of reaching the QED. The metaphysics itself, in its content alone, seems somehow lacking in satisfaction. Rejoicing in the blessedness that is virtue (power, strength, arete) stated in the final Proposition of his //Ethics// seems empty of satisfaction—i.e. the permanent, continuous, perfect pleasure that he states was always his goal. It may have the satisfaction awarded the conqueror and victor, but not the satisfaction, I think, of the poet or lover. 
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
Spinoza's basic metaphysics is, of course, that mind and matter are two aspects of a single fundamental substance, which is God. It involves all kinds of obsolete ideas of reality, Greek and medieval, and there really is no point in trying to make sense of it and argue over it.

But it achieves a remarkable clarity in the context of the scientific metaphysics. First, matter is understood in great detail. Second, it is perfectly clear in the scientific metaphysics that mind is a creation of neural systems, and though it is not at all fully understood how they accomplish this, it is clear that they do. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to say that mind and matter are two aspects of one and the same thing. If you want to call it Substance or God, that seems acceptable in the sense that it is only thinking of nature—mind/matter—as a whole, a vastness of existence which is opposed to nothingness. It is the something that we cannot explain when we ask, "Why not nothing? Why existence instead of non-existence?"

Since that question can raise as much argument and metaphysical rigmarole as Spinoza's metaphysics does, it is probably just as well to let it alone. Perhaps it is enough that the question can excite the sense of awe, wonder, and acceptance expressed in the Psalm of David: "I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."
!

/***

''Inspired by [[TiddlyPom|http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~tuspam/tiddlypom.html]]''

|Name|SplashScreenPlugin|
|Created by|SaqImtiaz|
|Location|http://tw.lewcid.org/#SplashScreenPlugin|
|Version|0.21 |
|Requires|~TW2.08+|
!Description:
Provides a simple splash screen that is visible while the TW is loading.

!Installation
Copy the source text of this tiddler to your TW in a new tiddler, tag it with systemConfig and save and reload. The SplashScreen will now be installed and will be visible the next time you reload your TW.

!Customizing
Once the SplashScreen has been installed and you have reloaded your TW, the splash screen html will be present in the MarkupPreHead tiddler. You can edit it and customize to your needs.

!History
* 20-07-06 : version 0.21, modified to hide contentWrapper while SplashScreen is displayed.
* 26-06-06 : version 0.2, first release

!Code
***/
//{{{
var old_lewcid_splash_restart=restart;

restart = function()
{   if (document.getElementById("SplashScreen"))
        document.getElementById("SplashScreen").style.display = "none";
      if (document.getElementById("contentWrapper"))
        document.getElementById("contentWrapper").style.display = "block";
    
    old_lewcid_splash_restart();
   
    if (splashScreenInstall)
       {if(config.options.chkAutoSave)
			{saveChanges();}
        displayMessage("TW SplashScreen has been installed, please save and refresh your TW.");
        }
}


var oldText = store.getTiddlerText("MarkupPreHead");
if (oldText.indexOf("SplashScreen")==-1)
   {var siteTitle = store.getTiddlerText("SiteTitle");
   var splasher='\n\n<style type="text/css">#contentWrapper {display:none;}</style><div id="SplashScreen" style="border: 3px solid #ccc; display: block; text-align: center; width: 320px; margin: 100px auto; padding: 50px; color:#000; font-size: 28px; font-family:Tahoma; background-color:#eee;"><b>'+siteTitle +'</b> is loading<blink> ...</blink><br><br><span style="font-size: 14px; color:red;">Requires Javascript.</span></div>';
   if (! store.tiddlerExists("MarkupPreHead"))
       {var myTiddler = store.createTiddler("MarkupPreHead");}
   else
      {var myTiddler = store.getTiddler("MarkupPreHead");}
      myTiddler.set(myTiddler.title,oldText+splasher,config.options.txtUserName,null,null);
      store.setDirty(true);
      var splashScreenInstall = true;
}
//}}}

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
There is a squirrel nest, built entirely of leaves and twigs, high in the tree outside my window. Now that the leaves have fallen it is clearly visible as a compact cluster that somehow holds together in high winds.

If a person of average intelligence, or even an engineer, were given a pile of leaves and some twigs and instructed to do what the squirrel has done he would not be able to do it; or if he did, it would take a lot of thought and testing.

Yet the squirrel does it—without intelligence, reflection, or the kind of thinking that goes into experimenting. Apparently it is done in tiny incremental steps carried out piece by piece by the neural system, registered somehow in its neural system without what we recognize in ourselves as memory, thought, or planning.

The evolution of neural systems is a mystery, We can count neurons, measure electrical potentials in them, identify general areas in central systems that seem more or less in control of certain functions; but we haven't a clue how a squirrel can accomplish something that a thinking, remembering, reflective, "scientific" mind could not accomplish, or if it did so, only after much research and labor.

Evolutionary psychologists/anthropologists don't touch these questions of complexity in neural systems. In fact, they don't seem even to recognize them. They simply spin just-so stories, talking about "nest-building," "language development," "pair bonding," and all the other superficial behavioral analogues between animals and humans.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
In the micro-world—the world of atoms ultimately—one resorts to statistics. In the macro-world—beginning with molecular compounds—one resorts to structure.

The interface or transition is often complex and confusing, leading to debate over which method is best for understanding.

Take human populations, for example. The individual human being is, of a course, a structural entity—one does not understand its physiology and anatomy and their multiple functions statistically. But put those functions into social behavior among thousands or millions of people, and statistics becomes important for understanding and management—for example for insurance or economic and political management. In effect, individuals become atoms and their behavior is approached like Brownian movement.

The difference in approach and the confusion it creates is nicely illustrated in a discussion Adam and I had on a walk through Prime Hook Sanctuary in Lewes. At one place the path was ribboned off because further along a tree had fallen and was resting on another tree. As we approached we wondered whether we should walk around it or stoop and walk under. Adam was in favor of walking around on the basis of probability that it might fall while we were underneath—a sort of reverse Pascal's wager. I was in favor of going under on the basis of Newtonian physics, forces, gravity, structural engineering principles, and so forth. In Adam's work in genetics and his hobby of creating structures out of random combinations of color tiles, he tends to push probability to an entire epistemology sufficient for all understanding. I am uncomfortable with probability and statistics in general, and tend to regard them (as has been said) as only a measure of our ignorance.

It was an interesting discussion, but we ended up walking around the tree. The thrill of danger was apparently too much for both of us!

A few months later Adam and I talked again by phone about probability and structure, and rules of selection regarding development of genomes and the intriguing color patterns he has created—one of which (a forty second movie clip) shows along the top of the PECO building in Philadelphia on Friday nights.

I suggested to him that pure probability only works as a tool for understanding where there is no structure, as, for example, in Brownian movement where all particles are the same or can safely be regarded as the same. If instead the particles have different structures—as Democritus and Lucretius supposed in saying some are round and smooth, some have rough edges and hooks, some are bigger and heavier, for example—then you have rules of selection given by the structures themselves, and probability does not exist and statistics is not an effective tool for understanding.

I can't say if this applies to quantum mechanics, because I don't understand it very well; but it seems to apply to the evolution of genomes. DNA is obviously a structure, and the sequences of codons is selected for by contacts with the environment. That is a structural matter: one structure (the genome) interacting with another structure (the environment). It is called "natural selection," and it is mediated (one could say) by the body of an organism.
!

/*{{{*/
/*FONT ADJUSTMENTS*/
body {font-family: Trebuchet MS; font-size: 10pt;}
#mainMenu .tiddlyLinkExisting, #mainMenu .tiddlyLinkNonExisting {font-family: Trebuchet MS; font-size: 10pt;}
#mainMenu {font-family: Trebuchet MS; font-size: 10pt;}
#mainMenu h1 {font-size: 10pt;}
#mainMenu th {background-color:[[ColorPalette::SecondaryPale]]; color:[[ColorPalette::SecondaryDark]];}
#mainMenu table {border:none;}
#mainMenu tr {background-color:white;}
#mainMenu {background-color:[[ColorPalette::PrimaryLight]];}
.viewer {line-height: 1.7em;}
/*WIDEN MAINMENU*/
#mainMenu {width: 22em;}
#mainMenu {text-align: left;}
#displayArea {margin: 0em 23em 0em 23em;}
.teeny {font-size: 9pt; text-align: center;}
/*TABLE HEADER*/
.viewer th {color: #000; background-color: #eeeeee;} 
/*TIDDLER TOPMARGIN AND BUTTON BORDER*/
a.button{border: 0;} 
.viewer { margin-top: 1em; }
/*UNORDERED and ORDERED LISTS TWEAK*/
.viewer li {padding-top: 0.0em; padding-bottom: 0.0em;} 
/*LINELESS BLOCKQUOTES*/
.viewer blockquote {border-left: 0px; margin-top:0em; margin-bottom:0em; }
/*HEADLINE COLOR, etc*/
h1,h2,h3,h4,h5 { color: #000; background: none; font-family: Trebuchet MS;}
/*TuDuSlider*/
.tuduSlider .button{font-family: Trebuchet MS; font-weight: bold; font-size: 10pt; color: black;}
/* GIFFMEX TWEAKS TO STYLESHEETPRINT (so that nothing but tiddler title and text are printed) */
@media print {#mainMenu {display: none ! important;}}
@media print {#topMenu {display: none ! important;}}
@media print {#sidebar {display: none ! important;}}
@media print {#messageArea {display: none ! important;}} 
@media print {#toolbar {display: none ! important;}}
@media print {.header {display: none ! important;}}
@media print {.tiddler .subtitle {display: none ! important;}}
@media print {.tiddler .toolbar {display; none ! important; }}
@media print {.tiddler .tagging {display; none ! important; }}
@media print {.tiddler .tagged {display; none ! important; }}
@media print {#displayArea {margin: 1em 1em 0em 1em;}}
@media print {.pageBreak {page-break-before: always;}}
/*CSS FOR BIBLE FORMATTING*/
.engindent {margin-left: 2em; display:block;}
.gkindent {font-family: Gentium; font-size: 16pt; margin-left: 2em; display:block;}
.greek {font-family: Gentium; font-size: 16pt;}
.hebrewNoAlign{font-family: Gentium; font-size: 20pt;}
.hebrewRightAlign{text-align:right; font-family: Gentium; font-size: 20pt; display:block;}
.hebAlignAndIndent{text-align:right; font-family: Gentium; font-size: 20pt; margin-right: 2em; display:block;}
.red {color: #ff3300; font-weight: bold;}
.blue {color: #0000cc; font-weight: bold;}
.green {color: #22bb00; font-weight: bold;}
.gold {color: #bbaa55; font-weight: bold;}
.purple {color: #9922ff; font-weight: bold;}
.gray {color: #777777; font-weight: bold;}
.magenta{color: #cc0066; font-weight: bold;}
.teal {color: #008888; font-weight: bold;}
.burgundy {color: #990000; font-weight: bold;}
.orange {color: #ff8866; font-weight: bold;}
/*INVISIBLE TABLE*/
.viewer .invisiblecomm table {border-color: white;}
.viewer .invisiblecomm table td { font-size: 1em; font-family: Verdana; border-color: white; padding: 10px 20px 10px 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; padding-bottom: 20px;} 
.viewer .invisiblecomm table th {color:[[ColorPalette::PrimaryMid]]; background-color: white; border-color: white; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 1.2em; font-weight: bold; padding: 10px 20px 10px 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;} 
.viewer .invisiblecomm table tr.leftColumn { background-color: #bbbbbb; }
/*OTHER TABLES*/
.menubox { display:block; padding:1em; -moz-border-radius:1em; border:1px solid; background:[[ColorPalette::TertiaryDark]]; color:#000; }
.menubox2 { display:block; padding: .25em; border:none; margin: 0; background:[[ColorPalette::TertiaryDark]]; [[ColorPalette::SecondaryDark]]; text-align: center; font-size: 1.6em;}
.menubox3 { display:block; padding:.25em; border:none; margin: 0; background:[[ColorPalette::TertiaryDark]]; [[ColorPalette::SecondaryDark]]; text-align: center; font-size: 2.5em;}
.viewer th {background-color:[[ColorPalette::SecondaryPale]]; [[ColorPalette::SecondaryDark]]}
.tableindex table, .tableindex td, .tableindex tr { font-size: 1em; border: solid white; background-color:[[ColorPalette::SecondaryPale]]; [[ColorPalette::SecondaryDark]]}
/*}}}*/

/*{{{*/
* html .tiddler {height:1%;}

body {font-size:.75em; font-family:arial,helvetica; margin:0; padding:0;}

h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none;}
h1,h2,h3 {padding-bottom:1px; margin-top:1.2em;margin-bottom:0.3em;}
h4,h5,h6 {margin-top:1em;}
h1 {font-size:1.35em;}
h2 {font-size:1.25em;}
h3 {font-size:1.1em;}
h4 {font-size:1em;}
h5 {font-size:.9em;}

hr {height:1px;}

a {text-decoration:none;}

dt {font-weight:bold;}

ol {list-style-type:decimal;}
ol ol {list-style-type:lower-alpha;}
ol ol ol {list-style-type:lower-roman;}
ol ol ol ol {list-style-type:decimal;}
ol ol ol ol ol {list-style-type:lower-alpha;}
ol ol ol ol ol ol {list-style-type:lower-roman;}
ol ol ol ol ol ol ol {list-style-type:decimal;}

.txtOptionInput {width:11em;}

#contentWrapper .chkOptionInput {border:0;}

.externalLink {text-decoration:underline;}

.indent {margin-left:3em;}
.outdent {margin-left:3em; text-indent:-3em;}
code.escaped {white-space:nowrap;}

.tiddlyLinkExisting {font-weight:bold;}
.tiddlyLinkNonExisting {font-style:italic;}

/* the 'a' is required for IE, otherwise it renders the whole tiddler in bold */
a.tiddlyLinkNonExisting.shadow {font-weight:bold;}

#mainMenu .tiddlyLinkExisting,
	#mainMenu .tiddlyLinkNonExisting,
	#sidebarTabs .tiddlyLinkNonExisting {font-weight:normal; font-style:normal;}
#sidebarTabs .tiddlyLinkExisting {font-weight:bold; font-style:normal;}

.header {position:relative;}
.header a:hover {background:transparent;}
.headerShadow {position:relative; padding:4.5em 0em 1em 1em; left:-1px; top:-1px;}
.headerForeground {position:absolute; padding:4.5em 0em 1em 1em; left:0px; top:0px;}

.siteTitle {font-size:3em;}
.siteSubtitle {font-size:1.2em;}

#mainMenu {position:absolute; left:0; width:10em; text-align:right; line-height:1.6em; padding:1.5em 0.5em 0.5em 0.5em; font-size:1.1em;}

#sidebar {position:absolute; right:3px; width:16em; font-size:.9em;}
#sidebarOptions {padding-top:0.3em;}
#sidebarOptions a {margin:0em 0.2em; padding:0.2em 0.3em; display:block;}
#sidebarOptions input {margin:0.4em 0.5em;}
#sidebarOptions .sliderPanel {margin-left:1em; padding:0.5em; font-size:.85em;}
#sidebarOptions .sliderPanel a {font-weight:bold; display:inline; padding:0;}
#sidebarOptions .sliderPanel input {margin:0 0 .3em 0;}
#sidebarTabs .tabContents {width:15em; overflow:hidden;}

.wizard {padding:0.1em 1em 0em 2em;}
.wizard h1 {font-size:2em; font-weight:bold; background:none; padding:0em 0em 0em 0em; margin:0.4em 0em 0.2em 0em;}
.wizard h2 {font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold; background:none; padding:0em 0em 0em 0em; margin:0.4em 0em 0.2em 0em;}
.wizardStep {padding:1em 1em 1em 1em;}
.wizard .button {margin:0.5em 0em 0em 0em; font-size:1.2em;}
.wizardFooter {padding:0.8em 0.4em 0.8em 0em;}
.wizardFooter .status {padding:0em 0.4em 0em 0.4em; margin-left:1em;}
.wizard .button {padding:0.1em 0.2em 0.1em 0.2em;}

#messageArea {position:fixed; top:2em; right:0em; margin:0.5em; padding:0.5em; z-index:2000; _position:absolute;}
.messageToolbar {display:block; text-align:right; padding:0.2em 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em;}
#messageArea a {text-decoration:underline;}

.tiddlerPopupButton {padding:0.2em 0.2em 0.2em 0.2em;}
.popupTiddler {position: absolute; z-index:300; padding:1em 1em 1em 1em; margin:0;}

.popup {position:absolute; z-index:300; font-size:.9em; padding:0; list-style:none; margin:0;}
.popup .popupMessage {padding:0.4em;}
.popup hr {display:block; height:1px; width:auto; padding:0; margin:0.2em 0em;}
.popup li.disabled {padding:0.4em;}
.popup li a {display:block; padding:0.4em; font-weight:normal; cursor:pointer;}
.listBreak {font-size:1px; line-height:1px;}
.listBreak div {margin:2px 0;}

.tabset {padding:1em 0em 0em 0.5em;}
.tab {margin:0em 0em 0em 0.25em; padding:2px;}
.tabContents {padding:0.5em;}
.tabContents ul, .tabContents ol {margin:0; padding:0;}
.txtMainTab .tabContents li {list-style:none;}
.tabContents li.listLink { margin-left:.75em;}

#contentWrapper {display:block;}
#splashScreen {display:none;}

#displayArea {margin:1em 17em 0em 14em;}

.toolbar {text-align:right; font-size:.9em;}

.tiddler {padding:1em 1em 0em 1em;}

.missing .viewer,.missing .title {font-style:italic;}

.title {font-size:1.6em; font-weight:bold;}

.missing .subtitle {display:none;}
.subtitle {font-size:1.1em;}

.tiddler .button {padding:0.2em 0.4em;}

.tagging {margin:0.5em 0.5em 0.5em 0; float:left; display:none;}
.isTag .tagging {display:block;}
.tagged {margin:0.5em; float:right;}
.tagging, .tagged {font-size:0.9em; padding:0.25em;}
.tagging ul, .tagged ul {list-style:none; margin:0.25em; padding:0;}
.tagClear {clear:both;}

.footer {font-size:.9em;}
.footer li {display:inline;}

.annotation {padding:0.5em; margin:0.5em;}

* html .viewer pre {width:99%; padding:0 0 1em 0;}
.viewer {line-height:1.4em; padding-top:0.5em;}
.viewer .button {margin:0em 0.25em; padding:0em 0.25em;}
.viewer blockquote {line-height:1.5em; padding-left:0.8em;margin-left:2.5em;}
.viewer ul, .viewer ol {margin-left:0.5em; padding-left:1.5em;}

.viewer table, table.twtable {border-collapse:collapse; margin:0.8em 1.0em;}
.viewer th, .viewer td, .viewer tr,.viewer caption,.twtable th, .twtable td, .twtable tr,.twtable caption {padding:3px;}
table.listView {font-size:0.85em; margin:0.8em 1.0em;}
table.listView th, table.listView td, table.listView tr {padding:0px 3px 0px 3px;}

.viewer pre {padding:0.5em; margin-left:0.5em; font-size:1.0em; line-height:1.0em; overflow:auto;}
.viewer code {font-size:1.0em; line-height:1.0em;}

.editor {font-size:1.1em;}
.editor input, .editor textarea {display:block; width:100%; font:inherit;}
.editorFooter {padding:0.25em 0em; font-size:.9em;}
.editorFooter .button {padding-top:0px; padding-bottom:0px;}

.fieldsetFix {border:0; padding:0; margin:1px 0px 1px 0px;}

.sparkline {line-height:1em;}
.sparktick {outline:0;}

.zoomer {font-size:1.1em; position:absolute; overflow:hidden;}
.zoomer div {padding:1em;}

* html #backstage {width:99%;}
* html #backstageArea {width:99%;}
#backstageArea {display:none; position:relative; overflow: hidden; z-index:150; padding:0.3em 0.5em 0.3em 0.5em;}
#backstageToolbar {position:relative;}
#backstageArea a {font-weight:bold; margin-left:0.5em; padding:0.3em 0.5em 0.3em 0.5em;}
#backstageButton {display:none; position:absolute; z-index:175; top:0em; right:0em;}
#backstageButton a {padding:0.1em 0.4em 0.1em 0.4em; margin:0.1em 0.1em 0.1em 0.1em;}
#backstage {position:relative; width:100%; z-index:50;}
#backstagePanel {display:none; z-index:100; position:absolute; margin:0em 3em 0em 3em; padding:1em 1em 1em 1em;}
.backstagePanelFooter {padding-top:0.2em; float:right;}
.backstagePanelFooter a {padding:0.2em 0.4em 0.2em 0.4em;}
#backstageCloak {display:none; z-index:20; position:absolute; width:100%; height:100px;}

.whenBackstage {display:none;}
.backstageVisible .whenBackstage {display:block;}
/*}}}*/

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
There is a temptation to think that we are, each one of us, locked into our own private //umwelt//. We are tempted to that conclusion because consciousness and experience are products of neural systems, and we use that fact to reinforce traditional mind-body dualism and its apparent consequence or corollary that there must be an unknowable or impassible barrier between mind and body because they are different metaphysical "kinds," different sorts of existents.

But it is not so. An individual's //umwelt// is a product of, a creation of, not just his neural system, //but his neural system in interaction with the environment//. It is a joint construction, and hence part of the whole fabric of existence.

The //umwelt// can get cut off and degenerate into the privacy of mere mind, subjectivity in the traditional dualistic sense (and popular conception), when we close our eyes and ears so to speak, when we ignore experience and let our neural system, our thoughts and images, run by themselves producing any old thing, guided or unbalanced by the psychic mechanisms that serve us so well in their evolved biological role. Then the //umwelt// does indeed become private; but in fact it is no longer the //umwelt//.

How do we prevent the //umwelt// from degenerating into mere subjectivity? Simply by paying attention to experience, keeping our consciousness tied to observation and the flow of the environment as it interacts with our senses, our receptors, to be precise. We can use that attention, refining our observations and manipulating them through experiment to reach conclusions about that environment as it exists independently of our //umwelt//. In short, we can do science. But we can do art and music too, also using the same sorts of observation and manipulation of the //umwelt//. Or we can use those observations and manipulations merely to serve our desires, pleasures, and self-interest, shaping the //umwelt// to our private interests. In all these cases we are using (in different proportion) the psychic-neural mechanisms evolved over millions of years that enable organisms to move their bodies in order to survive and reproduce.

It's as simple as that. The human //umwelt// is in fact what Teilhard de Chardin calls the "noosphere."
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
Freud's idea of sublimation is subtly mistaken, and that subtle mistake makes all the difference. In his theory the sublimated pleasure, for example (and especially) erotic pleasure, keeps its content, though in twisted form. All the pleasures of art and culture, and even religion itself, is thus an expression of sexuality, or slightly more generally, the id and its content.

A more accurate view, I think, is that erotic pleasures (or more generally the pleasures of the id) are the first and most basic expressions of pleasure, of sensory, sensitized content that arouses impulse. The function of art and culture, of religion in its best forms, is to //expand// that sensitized sensory content to include more of existence, the existence that the intellect reveals, to give it the richness of erotic content. Impulse, motivation, desire, so at home with erotic pleasure and those other basic pleasures connected to organic survival, becomes lost and confused with this expanded content. The "tears in the heart of beauty" (the "Snow" chapter in Mann's //Magic Mountain//) may be explained this way; desire is lost, trying to find its original satisfaction in this expanded content, expressing its frustration in tears. (After all, we weep out of frustration for the most part.) In religion, in the state of nirvanic meditation and perhaps prayer—(though so much prayer seems involved with help in solving a problem or fulfilling a wish)—the sensitized content becomes so fully expanded, to include existence itself, that desire just falls away in complete impotence. That, I think, is the true nature of "sublimation."

One obvious way (provided in part by the intellect) of expanding sensory and perceptual content is anthropomorphism—giving to the content of nature (trees, birds, animals, clouds) human form. In that way nature becomes imbued with emotional content, something which we (and our desires) are very familiar with. But the intellect is capable of still more. It can represent nature as it truly is—as chemistry, physics, and biology show it to be—and take that for its expanded content. Desire certainly has a problem with this: first tears, then silence. That, I think, is the message of the best of religions.
!

Subtopic menus are menus at the top of the topic tiddlers, like the one above, which has three subtopics: "Welcome", "Instructions", and "Subtopic menu instructions". You can have a separate subtopic menu for as many topics as you add to your mainmenu. There are three steps to creating a new subtopic menu. You may do these steps in any order you wish:
#''Create tiddlers for each of the subtopics within a topic.'' Tag them all with one appropriate tag pertaining to the topic. This will link them all so that they appear in the subtopic menu.
#''Create a subtopic menu tiddler.'' This will be the tiddler where the menu that appears above the other tiddlers is stored. In the Sidebar, click on 'new subtopic menu'. Replace 'tagname' in the title with the name of the tag you added to the tiddlers above. Then add the title of your subtopic tiddlers in the table provided, within the double brackets {{{[[ ]]}}}. Three table cells have been provided. Delete or add table cells as needed.
#''Create a custom ~ViewTemplate for your topic.'' This will tell ~TiddlyWiki to show your subtopic menu at the top of all the tiddlers that you have tagged with that topic's tag. In the Sidebar, click on 'new viewtemplate'. Replace 'tagname' with the tag you added to the tiddlers above. Do this for the title of the tiddler, as well as in the two instances of 'tagname' in the viewtemplate's code (it will look like the line shown below before you change it).
<!--{{{-->
<div class='tagnameMacro='tiddler tagnameSubtopicmenu'></div>
<!--}}}-->
That's it. A menu of links to the tiddlers you have tagged and added to your subtopic menu tiddler should appear above the tiddler title of each of those tiddlers.

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
An item in the "News Scan" section of the April issue of Scientific American describes the discovery of a neural connection in mice between odors and sounds. The researcher, Daniel Wesson, made the discovery when he noticed that neural activity in the olfactory tubercle spiked when he set his coffee mug down on the bench where he was working with the mice.

It seems fairly obvious why nature would have evolved a neural connection to coordinate odors and sounds ("smounds" as the article calls it). A predator can be detected either by sound or smell, and joining the two would provide an enhancement of that ability.

The article then goes on to generalize the phenomenon to account for synesthesia: "The existence of a smound sense has broad implications. It may help elucidate the defective processing behind mysterious disorders such as synesthesia, in which patients taste colors and see flavors." That seems true. I spent a lot of time in my dissertation days at Emory worrying about synesthesia (the visual expression of the sounds "takete" and "oolumu" for example) and its place in aesthetic expression. Here, it seems, is a legitimate neural explanation for it.

But why call it a "disorder" involving "defective processing" suffered by certain "patients"? If it is neurally grounded and has possible adaptive value, it should be regarded as perfectly normal. Certainly in art it is considered normal, and in fact a valuable asset and expressive device.

However, it is valuable and expressive and normal only so far as experience is concerned. It is not helpful in describing or understanding the existence that creates experience. (That, no doubt, is the reason the article calls synesthesia a "disorder of defective processing.") Our neural systems were designed to deal with an environment by creating experience or a "lived world" for organisms. By creating synesthesia they seem to have created something useful, at least for mice; and also something very expressive, at least for humans.
!

/***
|Name|TaggedTemplateTweak|
|Source|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#TaggedTemplateTweak|
|Documentation|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#TaggedTemplateTweakInfo|
|Version|1.1.0|
|Author|Eric Shulman - ELS Design Studios|
|License|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#LegalStatements <br>and [[Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License|http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/]]|
|~CoreVersion|2.1|
|Type|plugin|
|Requires||
|Overrides|Story.prototype.chooseTemplateForTiddler()|
|Description|use alternative ViewTemplate/EditTemplate for tiddler's tagged with specific tag values|
This tweak extends story.chooseTemplateForTiddler() so that ''whenever a tiddler is marked with a specific tag value, it can be viewed and/or edited using alternatives to the standard tiddler templates.'' 
!!!!!Documentation
>see [[TaggedTemplateTweakInfo]]
!!!!!Revisions
<<<
2008.01.22 [*.*.*] plugin size reduction - documentation moved to [[TaggedTemplateTweakInfo]]
2007.06.23 [1.1.0] re-written to use automatic 'tag prefix' search instead of hard coded check for each tag.  Allows new custom tags to be used without requiring code changes to this plugin.
| please see [[TaggedTemplateTweakInfo]] for previous revision details |
2007.06.11 [1.0.0] initial release
<<<
!!!!!Code
***/
//{{{
version.extensions.taggedTemplate= {major: 1, minor: 1, revision: 0, date: new Date(2007,6,23)};
Story.prototype.taggedTemplate_chooseTemplateForTiddler = Story.prototype.chooseTemplateForTiddler
Story.prototype.chooseTemplateForTiddler = function(title,template)
{
	// get default template from core
	var template=this.taggedTemplate_chooseTemplateForTiddler.apply(this,arguments);

	// if the tiddler to be rendered doesn't exist yet, just return core result
	var tiddler=store.getTiddler(title); if (!tiddler) return template;

	// look for template whose prefix matches a tag on this tiddler
	for (t=0; t<tiddler.tags.length; t++) {
		var tag=tiddler.tags[t];
		if (store.tiddlerExists(tag+template)) { template=tag+template; break; }
		// try capitalized tag (to match WikiWord template titles)
		var cap=tag.substr(0,1).toUpperCase()+tag.substr(1);
		if (store.tiddlerExists(cap+template)) { template=cap+template; break; }
	}

	return template;
}
//}}}

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
Over the last few weeks I have been walking along the towpath by the Potomac up to Little Falls and Lock 5. As I eat my lunch I watch the sun sparkling on the flat expanses of water, listen to the unceasing turbulence of water over the rocks, and occasionally catch sight of the flight of a pair of American mergansers with their flashing wings in the sunlight.

These landscape beauties, as Thomas Mann described them in the "Snow" chapter of //The Magic Mountain//, and which I have so often talked and written about over the years, evoke tears, the "tears in the heart of beauty." Why? Because we feel the beauty is out there in the landscape and we cannot reach out and possess it. We die; the landscape lives on with all its beauty while we molder in the darkness of the grave or the oblivion of non-existence.

That, I think, is the reason for our tears. The object of our desire, the Sun of the Good in Plato's mythology, the metaphysical homesickness of Plotinus, the scene of "tear-glistening splendor" in Hans Castorp's vision, the sun-drenched views on the Potomac—all evade our grasp.

But we are mistaken, I think. That landscape does not exist without our perception, the radiation striking our retinas and synthesized in our brains into the landscape itself, the millions of hairs in our cochleas set into vibration and synthesized by the brain into the turbulence of the rushing waters, the hair follicles and skin receptors setting off the train of events culminating in the creation of the cool breeze. The landscape, in short, is not "out there"; but neither is it "in here," in my body and mind. It is both; it is a single fabric, and we are part of that fabric. What we long for and wish to possess, therefore, we already have and are.

The trick and the task is to carry that landscape away with us, to make our daily existence into its kind of nature.

All this is connected to, and confused by, the idea of intentionality. It is true that our consciousness is or can be "about" something. It is or can be about what exists beyond our sensations and perceptions; it is about the radiations, vibrations in the air, and all the other things that exist and are as physics, chemistry, and biology tell us. But it is not about our experience, and therefore it is not about the landscape. It is not about the sun-sparkled waters, their noisy turbulence, the cool breezes, the flashing wings of the mergansers. It is about only a portion of that vast creation. With the other portion it is identical. We may weep at beauty, but not because we cannot possess it.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
I wrote in "Science As Philosophy" that if I were to teach philosophy again, the first thing I would try to do would be to flesh out the scientific metaphysics so that it seizes the students' imagination the way Plato, Kant, and especially the Christian metaphysics of Aquinas and Aristotle seizes it. To a large extent that is what Teilhard de Chardin achieves in //The Phenomenon of Man//. Some statements taken at random:

{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{"…it may be said that life no sooner started than it swarmed…The first cells multiplied almost instantaneously—as crystallization spreads in a supersaturated solution. For surely the early earth was in a state of biological super-tension" (p. 92-93). }}}}}}}}}

In speaking of the advent of sex, he writes: 

	{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{"In itself, cell division seems to be due to the simple need of the living particle to find a remedy for its molecular fragility" and "the more the phenomenon of cellular division spreads, the more it gains in virulence. Once fission has started, nothing from within can arrest its devouring and creating conflagration…[T]he elemental ripple of life that emerges from each individual unit does not spread outwards in a monotonous circle formed of individual units exactly like itself. It is diffracted and becomes iridescent…" (p. 104-5). Sex, "the first conjugation of two elements" is a mechanism "whereby a single individual can pulverize itself into a myriad of germs" (p. 106).}}}}}}}}}

Here is a complete passage describing "the wave of life in movement" about seven million years ago (p. 152):

	{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{A great calm seems to be reigning on the surface of the earth at this time. From South Africa to South America, across Europe and Asia, are fertile steppes and dense forests. Then other steppes and other forests. And amongst this endless verdure are myriads of antelopes and zebras, a variety of proboscidians in herds, deer with every kind of antler, tigers, wolves, foxes and badgers, all similar to those we have today. In short the landscape is not too dissimilar from that which we are today seeking to preserve in National Parks—on the Zambesi, in the congo, or in Arizona. Except for a few lingering archaic forms, so familiar is this scene that we have to make an effort to realize that nowhere is there so much as a wisp of smoke rising from camp or village.}}}}}}}}}

It's a wonderful passage. From lulling us into a sense of pastoral familiarity he suddenly confronts us with the fact that we are not there; we don't exist. He might have gone even further; he might have said that millions of years before that, before sentient life existed, the universe was invisible and soundless.

He concludes his chapter on the growth and ramification of phyla with this:

{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{	We already knew that everywhere the active phyletic lines grew warm with consciousness towards the summit. But in one well-marked region at the heart of the mammals, where the most powerful brains made by nature are to be found, they became red hot. And right at the heart of that glow burns a point of incandescence…We must not lose sight of that line crimsoned by the dawn. After thousands of years rising below the horizon, a flame bursts forth at a strictly localized point….Thought is born.}}}}}}}}}





!

{{{
<html>
<div style="color: rgb(100, 100, 150); font-family: Monaco;">
<big><big><b>
xxxx
</html>
}}}

!
If one were to jump from the fact of electromagnetic radiation to an image on a television set with no knowledge of the intervening technology, he would hardly believe what he saw; he would call it a “hard” and even an inscrutable problem how the radiation could be connected to the image. But the technology does in fact connect them.

In the same way, if one jumps from electromagnetic radiation to the “images”—sensations, perceptions, “qualia”—that we experience, with no knowledge of neural function, he would say it is a hard problem—what philosophers in fact call the “hard problem of consciousness.” But neurobiology does connect them.

A good place to start in understanding this connection is with the two compound eyes of the horseshoe crab //Limulus// (which I briefly discussed in "Sensations in the Metaphysics of Democritus").  In a single ommatidium of the //Limulus// eye a light-sensitive cell (called the eccentric cell) converts a tiny portion of the analog gradient of light into a contrast between dark and light—a “pixel” one could say. There are about a thousand ommatidia in each eye, which has a curved surface so that light is received at slightly different angles. The “pixels” from two thousand eccentric cells are connected by horizontal cells into layers of integration which thus creates a boundary line, an image on the “television set” which is its brain.

It is the same with our own eyes and brains, though of course the integrating processes and results are immensely more complex. The retinas of each of our eyes contains about 120 million rod cells which are sensitive to light and dark, shape, and movement, and some 6 million cone cells containing pigments which are sensitive to those small portions of the spectrum which we recognize as colors. The millions of “pixels” thus created are similarly connected through layers of horizontal cells and transmitted through the optic nerve to the lateral geniculate nucleus and from there to the visual centers of the brain, where they are integrated and connected still further into the images we see on the “television set” of our brain. 

The same is true of our other senses—hearing, taste, smell, and tactile sensations. They all have specialized receptor cells for converting portions of the analog environment—electromagnetic radiation, changes in pressures, and swarms of molecules—into neural “pixels” which are integrated and passed into central areas of the brain where they are assembled into the flow of sensations and perceptions we call experience, what the biologist Jakob von Uexk&uuml;ll called our //umwelt// or “lived world.” The television set of simpler organisms becomes an entire theater for human beings.

How does the idea of consciousness arise as something different from this vast creation of our neural systems interacting with the environment, a kind of existence that requires a non-neurobiological explanation? William James provided an answer a hundred years ago. He pointed out that “mind” is one way of classifying experience; “body” is another. Both descriptions are useful, depending on the circumstances, but there is no fundamental difference between them. As he put it in his first essay of //Essays in Radical Empiricism//:

{{engindent{{{engindent{Just so, I maintain, does a given undivided portion of experience, taken in one context of associates, play the part of a knower, of a state of mind, of 'consciousness'; while in a different context the same undivided bit of experience plays the part of a thing known, of an objective 'content.' In a word, in one group it figures as a thought, in another group as a thing. And, since it can figure in both groups simultaneously we have every right to speak of it as subjective and objective, both at once.}}}}}}

So, for example, one’s experience of a red rose can be understood in the context of botany, as an identifying characteristic of a species, in which case it is regarded as an objective property of the rose; or it can be put in the context of the flow and transitory nature of experience, in which case it becomes a property of one’s mind and its subjectivity. But it is the same experience, neither objective nor objective, or as James said, “both at once.”

James was addressing the classical distinction between “mind” and “body,” a distinction given its most systematic and eloquent expression by Plato (in the Allegory of the Cave for example). However, the “hard problem of consciousness” has made another appearance (mingled with the traditional one) as the “problem of subjectivity.” It is argued that the feeling of “what it is like” to experience the color red is unique to the individual experiencing it and cannot be experienced in the same way by other people. Subjectivity is a unique and distinguishing feature of consciousness. We cannot know what it is for one person to experience another person’s subjectivity, “what it is like to be him/her” any more than we can know “what it is like to be a bat,” as one well-known paper put it.

But I think James’s analysis applies here as well. Each person’s experience exists in the context of his/her own body and brain; that is its subjective existence. But it can also be said that two people are having the “same experience” when they are looking at the same rose. Those are two different contexts useful in getting around in our world of experience (our //umwelt//). We may argue about precise details of the rose or whether we see it in the same way, in which case we are arguing over experience in two different contexts. In the “objective” context (of a species classification for example) precision of observation is important; in a “subjective” context (as in the analysis of a still life of roses) that objective context becomes mingled with a “subjective” one concerning taste and aesthetic appreciation. But it is the same “undivided bit of experience” that we are arguing over. 

It seems there is one way that two people could share the context of each others’ subjectivity: their neural systems could be joined together. A few years ago I emailed the neurobiologist Gordon Shepherd at Yale and asked if he knew of any attempts to graft neurons between organisms. He replied that he didn’t know of any, but if it were possible to graft afferent neurons from the hair follicles on the backs of two people’s hands, it seems likely they would both experience the same tickle!

Until such techniques are developed, however, we will have to continue to rely on conventional means of exploring and sharing subjectivity—literature, art, music, and relationships built on empathy. There are barriers to success of course, but “the hard problem of consciousness” is not one of them.

Mark Titus 
//January 2017//

!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces D|Bits and Pieces (D)]]
!
A nerve is a wonderful thing, a wonderful cell. It picks up something from one end, a "stimulus," and transports it to the other end, a "response." The something it picks up at one end is from the environment; the something at the other end is a muscle or ligament, a tissue or a limb. So the organism moves itself in the environment.

But single nerves won't work for a complex organism made up of trillions of cells. So those nerve cells connect with each other in between the stimulated cells and the responding cells. That's where sensation, memory, sensitization, habituation, conditioning, all the components of what will become consciousness begin to take shape and reside. Miraculous and wonderful.

As a child I looked through a microscope and marveled at a cell, not knowing what was going on, but appreciating that wonderful things were happening. Now I know—well I did then, I suppose, in a merely calculated sense—that our bodies are made up of trillions of these wonderful happenings, all in coordination. "I am that" one could say; my thoughts, my activity, my biography are that. There is more astonishment in this metaphysics than ever appeared in twenty five hundred years of Western philosophy. And it fills in the intuitions of Eastern philosophies. 
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
The idea of the "noosphere" developed by Teilhard de Chardin seems to apply to existence in a literal and straightforward way. It identifies all products of organisms' //umwelten// (the ethologist Jakob von Uexk&uuml;ll's term for the experienced world of organisms), from the termite mound to the Egyptian pyramid, to the skyscrapers of Shanghai.

 It is true that these "artifacts" can be described by the concepts of physics, chemistry and biology—after all, they are built out of chemical elements and compounds according to mechanical and physical "laws" by organisms with neural and digestive systems. 

But their function, use, and purpose escapes these descriptions; one needs concepts of the noosphere to describe them. These are the concepts of history and religion, art and philosophy, psychology (properly construed) and literature. All these express the reality of the noosphere envelope surrounding and even holding together the physical, chemical, and biological realities. Indeed, the noosphere is so real and powerful that it is capable of disorganizing and shredding the physical, chemical, and biological world, which is what happens when an organism so mismanages its //umwelt// that it drives itself into extinction.
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!

PHILOSOPHY

1. Philosophy as traditionally understood is the attempt to understand the general nature of the universe and human existence, and to find in that understanding guidance to a worthy and satisfying life. (Wilhelm Windelband, //History of Philosophy// 1893)

2. Classical Greece provided three views on the nature of the universe and human existence: the systems of Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle.

3. The second part of the definition concerning a worthy and satisfying life dominates the Hellenistic period (Stoicism, Epicureanism) and later Christianity. Philosophy becomes the "handmaiden of religion" and Plato and Aristotle live on in this form. Democritus is forgotten.

4. The Renaissance brings revival of secular philosophy, and with Copernicus (1543) the beginning of modern science based on the metaphysics of Democritus—the idea that all things are made of atoms. This becomes explicit in Dalton's book (1809) titled //New System of Chemical Philosophy//; Feynman's statement in //Lectures on Physics//, 1-2.

5. Descartes and Bacon provide the epistemology for this new metaphysics.
{{engindent{     a. Scope of Descartes' doubt.
     b. Why observations can be trusted.}}}
6. The term 'science' now refers to this new metaphysics; 'scientific' refers to the epistemology on which it is based. The "human sciences" (psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, etc) are not yet part of this metaphysics because they ignore consciousness, or substitute behavior for it. They are forced to do this to meet the epistemological standards of observation. (Group behavior—as in sociology and economics—partially meets those standards.)

7. Note on philosophy since 1913 (publication of Russell and Whitehead's //Principia Mathematica//).


VALUE

1. Finding a worthy and satisfying life within the scientific metaphysics.

2. As in tradition, it must be found through the best and most satisfying use of our minds.

3. Mind in the scientific metaphysics.
{{engindent{	a. Democritus on mind (Windelband, p. 113).
	b. Mind as an evolved function (like digestion and reproduction) in organisms.}}}{{engindent{{{engindent{1) Seven stages of development (in [[Science As Philosophy]])
		2) The umwelt
		3) Three modes of consciousness}}}}}}
4. Creating a worthy and satisfying life is harmonizing the modes of consciousness. This is fulfilling our individual and social (species) natures, and bringing nature to consciousness of itself.
{{engindent{a. //Classical Dialogues// chapters [[Human Nature|Chapter 4 - Human Nature]] and [[Religion|Chapter 7 - Religion]] pretty well describe the modes of consciousness and their interactions, and the problems of harmonizing them.}}}



!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces E|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
Thomas Berry, an "heir" to Teilhard de Chardin according to PBS, which announced his death at age ninety-one last week, writes in //The Great Work// (written in his mid-eighties!):

{{engindent{{{engindent{ To appreciate the numinous aspect of the universe…we need to understand that we ourselves activate one of the deepest dimensions of the universe. We can recognize in ourselves our special intellectual, emotional, and imaginative capacities. That these capacities have existed as dimensions of the universe from the beginning is clear since the universe is ever integral with itself...The human is neither an addendum nor an intrusion into the universe…In ourselves the universe is revealed to itself as we are revealed in the universe.}}}}}}
Those are very good thoughts, and they are true, echoing Spinoza and de Chardin in the West (lonely voices!), but resonating in the East.

The problem is that Berry seems to regard our "intellectual, emotional, and imaginative capacities" as inherently harmonious. In fact these three capacities are in fierce tension and competition with each other. They are the biologically evolved modes of consciousness, but they create enormous problems for ourselves and for the planet and environment we evolved from and live within.

Berry (at least so far—pp. 31-32) doesn't seem to recognize this—the fact that creation would evolve something that uses its very nature to destroy itself and its source. He celebrates the North American Indians, for example, in their appreciation of nature and its rhythms, but forgets or ignores the fact that they tortured and scalped their prisoners, other Indians or white men who—using their own "intellectual, emotional, and imaginative capacities"—were also intent on destroying their enemies.

Existence is not as benign as Berry seems to think, or not in the way he seems to think. He studied Hinduism and certainly knew about Kali and Buddhism, and he also studied the scientific metaphysics. He should, I think, have recognized that the "noosphere" is more complicated than intellectual understanding and aesthetic appreciation, and that it also embodies those fierce drives biologically rooted in sex, food, and survival.

We do not just understand and appreciate; we also want to possess and destroy what we can't possess. Some of us understand that, which only adds to our misery.

Still, Berry and Teilhard are right in their overall cosmology, which perfectly fits with the metaphysics of physics, chemistry, and biology. The two men are just too simplistic, I think, about the "noosphere." After all, if it is a natural creation, like the biosphere, why should it destroy itself and the spheres below that created it?
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!

Heidegger talks about being "thrown into the World." He seems never to have bothered to define "World," just assuming our umwelt is the "World," existence itself.

Well, talk about being "thrown into the world" in terms of the scientific metaphysics! We are, each one of us with our birth, thrown into an existence created over millions of years as beings with an umwelt created by our neural systems responding to and trying to manage an environment. That is being thrown indeed!

Of course Heidegger, by following Husserl in "bracketing" science, had no idea what the full difficulties of human existence really are.

!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (B)]]
!
Aristotle's definition of time as the measure of motion seems to work quite well in both the world of physics and the "subjective" world explored by Augustine and Proust. In the world of physics it is used simply as another variable in equations of motion, and receives an elaborate update in relativity. In the subjective world it can be illustrated this way: As one grows older, what happened fifteen years ago seems like yesterday (as they say); not because a lot hasn't happened—i.e. motion has occurred—but because life has become more of a routine and the changes that have occurred one has paid less attention to. When one was young, however, in college say, one is aware of everything and how everything—including one's body—is changing; and of course there is less routine. So time "moves swiftly"; the college senior thinks of his freshman year as "ages ago."
!

/%
|Name|ToggleRightSidebar|
|Source|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#ToggleRightSidebar|
|Version|1.0.0|
|Author|Eric Shulman - ELS Design Studios|
|License|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#LegalStatements <br>and [[Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License|http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/]]|
|~CoreVersion|2.1|
|Type|script|
|Requires|InlineJavascriptPlugin|
|Overrides||
|Description|show/hide right sidebar (SideBarOptions)|

Usage: <<tiddler ToggleRightSidebar>>

Config settings:
	config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarLabelShow (◄)
	config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarLabelHide (►)
	config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarTipShow ("show right sidebar")
	config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarTipHide ("hide right sidebar")

%/<script label="show/hide right sidebar">
	var sb=document.getElementById('sidebar'); if (!sb) return;
	var show=sb.style.display=='none';
	if (!show) { sb.style.display='none'; var margin='1em'; }
	else { sb.style.display='block'; var margin=config.options.txtDisplayAreaRightMargin||''; }
	if (typeof(place)!='undefined') {
		place.innerHTML=show?
			config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarLabelHide:config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarLabelShow;
		place.title=show?
			config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarTipHide:config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarTipShow;
	}
	document.getElementById('displayArea').style.marginRight=margin;
	config.options.chkShowRightSidebar=show;
	saveOptionCookie('chkShowRightSidebar');
	var sm=document.getElementById('storyMenu'); if (sm) config.refreshers.content(sm);
	return false;
</script><script>
	if (config.options.chkShowRightSidebar==undefined)
		config.options.chkShowRightSidebar=true;
	if (!config.options.txtDisplayAreaRightMargin||!config.options.txtDisplayAreaRightMargin.length)
		config.options.txtDisplayAreaRightMargin="18em";
	if (config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarLabelShow==undefined)
		config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarLabelShow=config.browser.isSafari?"&#x25c0;":"&#x25c4;";
	if (config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarLabelHide==undefined)
		config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarLabelHide="&#x25ba;";
	if (config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarTipShow==undefined)
		config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarTipShow="show right sidebar";
	if (config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarTipHide==undefined)
		config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarTipHide="hide right sidebar";

	var show=config.options.chkShowRightSidebar;
	document.getElementById('sidebar').style.display=show?"block":"none";
	document.getElementById('displayArea').style.marginRight=show?
		config.options.txtDisplayAreaRightMargin:"1em";
	place.lastChild.innerHTML=show?
		config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarLabelHide:config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarLabelShow;
	place.lastChild.title=show?
		config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarTipHide:config.options.txtToggleRightSideBarTipShow;
	place.lastChild.style.fontWeight="normal";
</script>

|!History:|!<<back>>|>|!<<history>>|>|!<<forward>>|
|!Font size:|>|>|>|>|! <<fontSize>>|
|!Sidebar:|>|>|>|>|!<<tiddler ToggleRightSidebar>>|
!EditTools:
[[Setup|Welcome to the Webview TiddlyWiki]]
[[SubTopics|ConfigSubTopics]]
[[Insert Figure|InFig]]
[[Emphasis Text|TextMonaco]]
[[Navigation Code|NavCode]]
!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (A)]]
!

I visited the Main Castle at the Smithsonian today to look at the winners of a photography contest held in 2009. The grand prize was awarded to a photograph of two children, young monks seated before candles, while behind them loomed the huge head of a Buddha sleeping on his side. The entire scene glowed in the orange light of the candles.

Then I walked across the Mall to the Museum of Natural History to stand again before the enormous aquarium containing an Indonesian coral reef with its fantastic array of fish, anemones, and sea urchins. Almost every time I visit that exhibit some youngster will point at the tank and exclaim "Nemo!" One of the mothers finally explained to me that "Nemo" was the name of a fish—the clown fish apparently—in a Disney film.

So we have two corruptions. The first, the grand prize winner, is of two children who should be out playing and growing through the stages of life into adulthood, and then in old age taking their places before candles in prayer or meditation as the Buddha watches or sleeps behind them. The second is of children who have little or no conception of the grand metaphysics before them and turn it into a familiar entertainment from their childish lives.

They are reverse corruptions. The first denies youth the realities of growing into life. The second turns the realities of life into the childishness of youth. Those poor young "monks" cannot know reality, because they are denied it by what is imposed on them. The children exclaiming "Nemo!" cannot know, or are not likely to know, reality because of the childishness placed on them by adults—those who raise them on Sesame Street and Disney. The first is a corruption of religion; the second is a corruption of science.

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces F|Bits and Pieces (F)]]
!

I'm thinking of Paul Tillich lecturing on "Ultimate Concern" when I was a junior in college. It seemed to me then a desperate attempt to save religion through a plunge into subjectivity.

Now, however, I begin to think of religion as an attitude or stance toward existence—which may have been what Tillich intended. Existence, of course, must now be understood as science presents it: a vast universe of billions of galaxies, stars, and planets on which life has, had, and will originate and evolve into creatures like ourselves who possess consciousness. It is a universe of such size and extremes of force and power that we can't get our imaginations around it. But these powers and forces create us, and we exist briefly, fragile and vulnerable, in a tiny pocket within them.

What attitude or stance should we take to this existence? That is our "ultimate concern." It may be no different from the "ultimate concern" of Jesus and the Abrahamic prophets, of Siddhartha Gautama, or the authors of the Rg Veda and the Upanishads. Theirs was simply directed toward a different metaphysics. 

!

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
Ethologists and evolutionary psychologists think that in describing animal or human behavior, they are describing objective realities like atoms, molecules, chemical compounds, animal tissues or animal organs. But behavior—that which they identify and describe—is not like that. In fact what they are describing is the content of their own umwelt, the human umwelt, and guessing at the content of the animal umwelt.

Existence in the scientific metaphysics goes beyond umwelt description. Observations merely serve as evidence for what lies behind them. Reddish-brown color of a gas, for example, is only evidence for the presence of nitrogen dioxide, and tells us nothing about the nature, structure, or "behavior" of that gas.

Psychologists should be trying to describe animal and human umwelten. That is their province. They should realize that umwelten are part of existence, created by nature in an organism's neural system interacting with its environment. An animal responds to its umwelt and moves within it, adapting, surviving, and reproducing. Describing behavior alone is a confused project, unknowingly mixing umwelt knowledge with knowledge of nature given through physics, chemistry, and biology.
!

/***
|''Name:''|UploadPlugin|
|''Description:''|Save to web a TiddlyWiki|
|''Version:''|4.1.3|
|''Date:''|Feb 24, 2008|
|''Source:''|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#UploadPlugin|
|''Documentation:''|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#UploadPluginDoc|
|''Author:''|BidiX (BidiX (at) bidix (dot) info)|
|''License:''|[[BSD open source license|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#%5B%5BBSD%20open%20source%20license%5D%5D ]]|
|''~CoreVersion:''|2.2.0|
|''Requires:''|PasswordOptionPlugin|
***/
//{{{
version.extensions.UploadPlugin = {
	major: 4, minor: 1, revision: 3,
	date: new Date("Feb 24, 2008"),
	source: 'http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#UploadPlugin',
	author: 'BidiX (BidiX (at) bidix (dot) info',
	coreVersion: '2.2.0'
};

//
// Environment
//

if (!window.bidix) window.bidix = {}; // bidix namespace
bidix.debugMode = false;	// true to activate both in Plugin and UploadService
	
//
// Upload Macro
//

config.macros.upload = {
// default values
	defaultBackupDir: '',	//no backup
	defaultStoreScript: "store.php",
	defaultToFilename: "index.html",
	defaultUploadDir: ".",
	authenticateUser: true	// UploadService Authenticate User
};
	
config.macros.upload.label = {
	promptOption: "Save and Upload this TiddlyWiki with UploadOptions",
	promptParamMacro: "Save and Upload this TiddlyWiki in %0",
	saveLabel: "save to web", 
	saveToDisk: "save to disk",
	uploadLabel: "upload"	
};

config.macros.upload.messages = {
	noStoreUrl: "No store URL in parmeters or options",
	usernameOrPasswordMissing: "Username or password missing"
};

config.macros.upload.handler = function(place,macroName,params) {
	if (readOnly)
		return;
	var label;
	if (document.location.toString().substr(0,4) == "http") 
		label = this.label.saveLabel;
	else
		label = this.label.uploadLabel;
	var prompt;
	if (params[0]) {
		prompt = this.label.promptParamMacro.toString().format([this.destFile(params[0], 
			(params[1] ? params[1]:bidix.basename(window.location.toString())), params[3])]);
	} else {
		prompt = this.label.promptOption;
	}
	createTiddlyButton(place, label, prompt, function() {config.macros.upload.action(params);}, null, null, this.accessKey);
};

config.macros.upload.action = function(params)
{
		// for missing macro parameter set value from options
		if (!params) params = {};
		var storeUrl = params[0] ? params[0] : config.options.txtUploadStoreUrl;
		var toFilename = params[1] ? params[1] : config.options.txtUploadFilename;
		var backupDir = params[2] ? params[2] : config.options.txtUploadBackupDir;
		var uploadDir = params[3] ? params[3] : config.options.txtUploadDir;
		var username = params[4] ? params[4] : config.options.txtUploadUserName;
		var password = config.options.pasUploadPassword; // for security reason no password as macro parameter	
		// for still missing parameter set default value
		if ((!storeUrl) && (document.location.toString().substr(0,4) == "http")) 
			storeUrl = bidix.dirname(document.location.toString())+'/'+config.macros.upload.defaultStoreScript;
		if (storeUrl.substr(0,4) != "http")
			storeUrl = bidix.dirname(document.location.toString()) +'/'+ storeUrl;
		if (!toFilename)
			toFilename = bidix.basename(window.location.toString());
		if (!toFilename)
			toFilename = config.macros.upload.defaultToFilename;
		if (!uploadDir)
			uploadDir = config.macros.upload.defaultUploadDir;
		if (!backupDir)
			backupDir = config.macros.upload.defaultBackupDir;
		// report error if still missing
		if (!storeUrl) {
			alert(config.macros.upload.messages.noStoreUrl);
			clearMessage();
			return false;
		}
		if (config.macros.upload.authenticateUser && (!username || !password)) {
			alert(config.macros.upload.messages.usernameOrPasswordMissing);
			clearMessage();
			return false;
		}
		bidix.upload.uploadChanges(false,null,storeUrl, toFilename, uploadDir, backupDir, username, password); 
		return false; 
};

config.macros.upload.destFile = function(storeUrl, toFilename, uploadDir) 
{
	if (!storeUrl)
		return null;
		var dest = bidix.dirname(storeUrl);
		if (uploadDir && uploadDir != '.')
			dest = dest + '/' + uploadDir;
		dest = dest + '/' + toFilename;
	return dest;
};

//
// uploadOptions Macro
//

config.macros.uploadOptions = {
	handler: function(place,macroName,params) {
		var wizard = new Wizard();
		wizard.createWizard(place,this.wizardTitle);
		wizard.addStep(this.step1Title,this.step1Html);
		var markList = wizard.getElement("markList");
		var listWrapper = document.createElement("div");
		markList.parentNode.insertBefore(listWrapper,markList);
		wizard.setValue("listWrapper",listWrapper);
		this.refreshOptions(listWrapper,false);
		var uploadCaption;
		if (document.location.toString().substr(0,4) == "http") 
			uploadCaption = config.macros.upload.label.saveLabel;
		else
			uploadCaption = config.macros.upload.label.uploadLabel;
		
		wizard.setButtons([
				{caption: uploadCaption, tooltip: config.macros.upload.label.promptOption, 
					onClick: config.macros.upload.action},
				{caption: this.cancelButton, tooltip: this.cancelButtonPrompt, onClick: this.onCancel}
				
			]);
	},
	options: [
		"txtUploadUserName",
		"pasUploadPassword",
		"txtUploadStoreUrl",
		"txtUploadDir",
		"txtUploadFilename",
		"txtUploadBackupDir",
		"chkUploadLog",
		"txtUploadLogMaxLine"		
	],
	refreshOptions: function(listWrapper) {
		var opts = [];
		for(i=0; i<this.options.length; i++) {
			var opt = {};
			opts.push();
			opt.option = "";
			n = this.options[i];
			opt.name = n;
			opt.lowlight = !config.optionsDesc[n];
			opt.description = opt.lowlight ? this.unknownDescription : config.optionsDesc[n];
			opts.push(opt);
		}
		var listview = ListView.create(listWrapper,opts,this.listViewTemplate);
		for(n=0; n<opts.length; n++) {
			var type = opts[n].name.substr(0,3);
			var h = config.macros.option.types[type];
			if (h && h.create) {
				h.create(opts[n].colElements['option'],type,opts[n].name,opts[n].name,"no");
			}
		}
		
	},
	onCancel: function(e)
	{
		backstage.switchTab(null);
		return false;
	},
	
	wizardTitle: "Upload with options",
	step1Title: "These options are saved in cookies in your browser",
	step1Html: "<input type='hidden' name='markList'></input><br>",
	cancelButton: "Cancel",
	cancelButtonPrompt: "Cancel prompt",
	listViewTemplate: {
		columns: [
			{name: 'Description', field: 'description', title: "Description", type: 'WikiText'},
			{name: 'Option', field: 'option', title: "Option", type: 'String'},
			{name: 'Name', field: 'name', title: "Name", type: 'String'}
			],
		rowClasses: [
			{className: 'lowlight', field: 'lowlight'} 
			]}
};

//
// upload functions
//

if (!bidix.upload) bidix.upload = {};

if (!bidix.upload.messages) bidix.upload.messages = {
	//from saving
	invalidFileError: "The original file '%0' does not appear to be a valid TiddlyWiki",
	backupSaved: "Backup saved",
	backupFailed: "Failed to upload backup file",
	rssSaved: "RSS feed uploaded",
	rssFailed: "Failed to upload RSS feed file",
	emptySaved: "Empty template uploaded",
	emptyFailed: "Failed to upload empty template file",
	mainSaved: "Main TiddlyWiki file uploaded",
	mainFailed: "Failed to upload main TiddlyWiki file. Your changes have not been saved",
	//specific upload
	loadOriginalHttpPostError: "Can't get original file",
	aboutToSaveOnHttpPost: 'About to upload on %0 ...',
	storePhpNotFound: "The store script '%0' was not found."
};

bidix.upload.uploadChanges = function(onlyIfDirty,tiddlers,storeUrl,toFilename,uploadDir,backupDir,username,password)
{
	var callback = function(status,uploadParams,original,url,xhr) {
		if (!status) {
			displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.loadOriginalHttpPostError);
			return;
		}
		if (bidix.debugMode) 
			alert(original.substr(0,500)+"\n...");
		// Locate the storeArea div's 
		var posDiv = locateStoreArea(original);
		if((posDiv[0] == -1) || (posDiv[1] == -1)) {
			alert(config.messages.invalidFileError.format([localPath]));
			return;
		}
		bidix.upload.uploadRss(uploadParams,original,posDiv);
	};
	
	if(onlyIfDirty && !store.isDirty())
		return;
	clearMessage();
	// save on localdisk ?
	if (document.location.toString().substr(0,4) == "file") {
		var path = document.location.toString();
		var localPath = getLocalPath(path);
		saveChanges();
	}
	// get original
	var uploadParams = new Array(storeUrl,toFilename,uploadDir,backupDir,username,password);
	var originalPath = document.location.toString();
	// If url is a directory : add index.html
	if (originalPath.charAt(originalPath.length-1) == "/")
		originalPath = originalPath + "index.html";
	var dest = config.macros.upload.destFile(storeUrl,toFilename,uploadDir);
	var log = new bidix.UploadLog();
	log.startUpload(storeUrl, dest, uploadDir,  backupDir);
	displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.aboutToSaveOnHttpPost.format([dest]));
	if (bidix.debugMode) 
		alert("about to execute Http - GET on "+originalPath);
	var r = doHttp("GET",originalPath,null,null,username,password,callback,uploadParams,null);
	if (typeof r == "string")
		displayMessage(r);
	return r;
};

bidix.upload.uploadRss = function(uploadParams,original,posDiv) 
{
	var callback = function(status,params,responseText,url,xhr) {
		if(status) {
			var destfile = responseText.substring(responseText.indexOf("destfile:")+9,responseText.indexOf("\n", responseText.indexOf("destfile:")));
			displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.rssSaved,bidix.dirname(url)+'/'+destfile);
			bidix.upload.uploadMain(params[0],params[1],params[2]);
		} else {
			displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.rssFailed);			
		}
	};
	// do uploadRss
	if(config.options.chkGenerateAnRssFeed) {
		var rssPath = uploadParams[1].substr(0,uploadParams[1].lastIndexOf(".")) + ".xml";
		var rssUploadParams = new Array(uploadParams[0],rssPath,uploadParams[2],'',uploadParams[4],uploadParams[5]);
		var rssString = generateRss();
		// no UnicodeToUTF8 conversion needed when location is "file" !!!
		if (document.location.toString().substr(0,4) != "file")
			rssString = convertUnicodeToUTF8(rssString);	
		bidix.upload.httpUpload(rssUploadParams,rssString,callback,Array(uploadParams,original,posDiv));
	} else {
		bidix.upload.uploadMain(uploadParams,original,posDiv);
	}
};

bidix.upload.uploadMain = function(uploadParams,original,posDiv) 
{
	var callback = function(status,params,responseText,url,xhr) {
		var log = new bidix.UploadLog();
		if(status) {
			// if backupDir specified
			if ((params[3]) && (responseText.indexOf("backupfile:") > -1))  {
				var backupfile = responseText.substring(responseText.indexOf("backupfile:")+11,responseText.indexOf("\n", responseText.indexOf("backupfile:")));
				displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.backupSaved,bidix.dirname(url)+'/'+backupfile);
			}
			var destfile = responseText.substring(responseText.indexOf("destfile:")+9,responseText.indexOf("\n", responseText.indexOf("destfile:")));
			displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.mainSaved,bidix.dirname(url)+'/'+destfile);
			store.setDirty(false);
			log.endUpload("ok");
		} else {
			alert(bidix.upload.messages.mainFailed);
			displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.mainFailed);
			log.endUpload("failed");			
		}
	};
	// do uploadMain
	var revised = bidix.upload.updateOriginal(original,posDiv);
	bidix.upload.httpUpload(uploadParams,revised,callback,uploadParams);
};

bidix.upload.httpUpload = function(uploadParams,data,callback,params)
{
	var localCallback = function(status,params,responseText,url,xhr) {
		url = (url.indexOf("nocache=") < 0 ? url : url.substring(0,url.indexOf("nocache=")-1));
		if (xhr.status == httpStatus.NotFound)
			alert(bidix.upload.messages.storePhpNotFound.format([url]));
		if ((bidix.debugMode) || (responseText.indexOf("Debug mode") >= 0 )) {
			alert(responseText);
			if (responseText.indexOf("Debug mode") >= 0 )
				responseText = responseText.substring(responseText.indexOf("\n\n")+2);
		} else if (responseText.charAt(0) != '0') 
			alert(responseText);
		if (responseText.charAt(0) != '0')
			status = null;
		callback(status,params,responseText,url,xhr);
	};
	// do httpUpload
	var boundary = "---------------------------"+"AaB03x";	
	var uploadFormName = "UploadPlugin";
	// compose headers data
	var sheader = "";
	sheader += "--" + boundary + "\r\nContent-disposition: form-data; name=\"";
	sheader += uploadFormName +"\"\r\n\r\n";
	sheader += "backupDir="+uploadParams[3] +
				";user=" + uploadParams[4] +
				";password=" + uploadParams[5] +
				";uploaddir=" + uploadParams[2];
	if (bidix.debugMode)
		sheader += ";debug=1";
	sheader += ";;\r\n"; 
	sheader += "\r\n" + "--" + boundary + "\r\n";
	sheader += "Content-disposition: form-data; name=\"userfile\"; filename=\""+uploadParams[1]+"\"\r\n";
	sheader += "Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8" + "\r\n";
	sheader += "Content-Length: " + data.length + "\r\n\r\n";
	// compose trailer data
	var strailer = new String();
	strailer = "\r\n--" + boundary + "--\r\n";
	data = sheader + data + strailer;
	if (bidix.debugMode) alert("about to execute Http - POST on "+uploadParams[0]+"\n with \n"+data.substr(0,500)+ " ... ");
	var r = doHttp("POST",uploadParams[0],data,"multipart/form-data; ;charset=UTF-8; boundary="+boundary,uploadParams[4],uploadParams[5],localCallback,params,null);
	if (typeof r == "string")
		displayMessage(r);
	return r;
};

// same as Saving's updateOriginal but without convertUnicodeToUTF8 calls
bidix.upload.updateOriginal = function(original, posDiv)
{
	if (!posDiv)
		posDiv = locateStoreArea(original);
	if((posDiv[0] == -1) || (posDiv[1] == -1)) {
		alert(config.messages.invalidFileError.format([localPath]));
		return;
	}
	var revised = original.substr(0,posDiv[0] + startSaveArea.length) + "\n" +
				store.allTiddlersAsHtml() + "\n" +
				original.substr(posDiv[1]);
	var newSiteTitle = getPageTitle().htmlEncode();
	revised = revised.replaceChunk("<title"+">","</title"+">"," " + newSiteTitle + " ");
	revised = updateMarkupBlock(revised,"PRE-HEAD","MarkupPreHead");
	revised = updateMarkupBlock(revised,"POST-HEAD","MarkupPostHead");
	revised = updateMarkupBlock(revised,"PRE-BODY","MarkupPreBody");
	revised = updateMarkupBlock(revised,"POST-SCRIPT","MarkupPostBody");
	return revised;
};

//
// UploadLog
// 
// config.options.chkUploadLog :
//		false : no logging
//		true : logging
// config.options.txtUploadLogMaxLine :
//		-1 : no limit
//      0 :  no Log lines but UploadLog is still in place
//		n :  the last n lines are only kept
//		NaN : no limit (-1)

bidix.UploadLog = function() {
	if (!config.options.chkUploadLog) 
		return; // this.tiddler = null
	this.tiddler = store.getTiddler("UploadLog");
	if (!this.tiddler) {
		this.tiddler = new Tiddler();
		this.tiddler.title = "UploadLog";
		this.tiddler.text = "| !date | !user | !location | !storeUrl | !uploadDir | !toFilename | !backupdir | !origin |";
		this.tiddler.created = new Date();
		this.tiddler.modifier = config.options.txtUserName;
		this.tiddler.modified = new Date();
		store.addTiddler(this.tiddler);
	}
	return this;
};

bidix.UploadLog.prototype.addText = function(text) {
	if (!this.tiddler)
		return;
	// retrieve maxLine when we need it
	var maxLine = parseInt(config.options.txtUploadLogMaxLine,10);
	if (isNaN(maxLine))
		maxLine = -1;
	// add text
	if (maxLine != 0) 
		this.tiddler.text = this.tiddler.text + text;
	// Trunck to maxLine
	if (maxLine >= 0) {
		var textArray = this.tiddler.text.split('\n');
		if (textArray.length > maxLine + 1)
			textArray.splice(1,textArray.length-1-maxLine);
			this.tiddler.text = textArray.join('\n');		
	}
	// update tiddler fields
	this.tiddler.modifier = config.options.txtUserName;
	this.tiddler.modified = new Date();
	store.addTiddler(this.tiddler);
	// refresh and notifiy for immediate update
	story.refreshTiddler(this.tiddler.title);
	store.notify(this.tiddler.title, true);
};

bidix.UploadLog.prototype.startUpload = function(storeUrl, toFilename, uploadDir,  backupDir) {
	if (!this.tiddler)
		return;
	var now = new Date();
	var text = "\n| ";
	var filename = bidix.basename(document.location.toString());
	if (!filename) filename = '/';
	text += now.formatString("0DD/0MM/YYYY 0hh:0mm:0ss") +" | ";
	text += config.options.txtUserName + " | ";
	text += "[["+filename+"|"+location + "]] |";
	text += " [[" + bidix.basename(storeUrl) + "|" + storeUrl + "]] | ";
	text += uploadDir + " | ";
	text += "[[" + bidix.basename(toFilename) + " | " +toFilename + "]] | ";
	text += backupDir + " |";
	this.addText(text);
};

bidix.UploadLog.prototype.endUpload = function(status) {
	if (!this.tiddler)
		return;
	this.addText(" "+status+" |");
};

//
// Utilities
// 

bidix.checkPlugin = function(plugin, major, minor, revision) {
	var ext = version.extensions[plugin];
	if (!
		(ext  && 
			((ext.major > major) || 
			((ext.major == major) && (ext.minor > minor))  ||
			((ext.major == major) && (ext.minor == minor) && (ext.revision >= revision))))) {
			// write error in PluginManager
			if (pluginInfo)
				pluginInfo.log.push("Requires " + plugin + " " + major + "." + minor + "." + revision);
			eval(plugin); // generate an error : "Error: ReferenceError: xxxx is not defined"
	}
};

bidix.dirname = function(filePath) {
	if (!filePath) 
		return;
	var lastpos;
	if ((lastpos = filePath.lastIndexOf("/")) != -1) {
		return filePath.substring(0, lastpos);
	} else {
		return filePath.substring(0, filePath.lastIndexOf("\\"));
	}
};

bidix.basename = function(filePath) {
	if (!filePath) 
		return;
	var lastpos;
	if ((lastpos = filePath.lastIndexOf("#")) != -1) 
		filePath = filePath.substring(0, lastpos);
	if ((lastpos = filePath.lastIndexOf("/")) != -1) {
		return filePath.substring(lastpos + 1);
	} else
		return filePath.substring(filePath.lastIndexOf("\\")+1);
};

bidix.initOption = function(name,value) {
	if (!config.options[name])
		config.options[name] = value;
};

//
// Initializations
//

// require PasswordOptionPlugin 1.0.1 or better
bidix.checkPlugin("PasswordOptionPlugin", 1, 0, 1);

// styleSheet
setStylesheet('.txtUploadStoreUrl, .txtUploadBackupDir, .txtUploadDir {width: 22em;}',"uploadPluginStyles");

//optionsDesc
merge(config.optionsDesc,{
	txtUploadStoreUrl: "Url of the UploadService script (default: store.php)",
	txtUploadFilename: "Filename of the uploaded file (default: in index.html)",
	txtUploadDir: "Relative Directory where to store the file (default: . (downloadService directory))",
	txtUploadBackupDir: "Relative Directory where to backup the file. If empty no backup. (default: ''(empty))",
	txtUploadUserName: "Upload Username",
	pasUploadPassword: "Upload Password",
	chkUploadLog: "do Logging in UploadLog (default: true)",
	txtUploadLogMaxLine: "Maximum of lines in UploadLog (default: 10)"
});

// Options Initializations
bidix.initOption('txtUploadStoreUrl','');
bidix.initOption('txtUploadFilename','');
bidix.initOption('txtUploadDir','');
bidix.initOption('txtUploadBackupDir','');
bidix.initOption('txtUploadUserName','');
bidix.initOption('pasUploadPassword','');
bidix.initOption('chkUploadLog',true);
bidix.initOption('txtUploadLogMaxLine','10');


// Backstage
merge(config.tasks,{
	uploadOptions: {text: "upload", tooltip: "Change UploadOptions and Upload", content: '<<uploadOptions>>'}
});
config.backstageTasks.push("uploadOptions");


//}}}

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces E|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
I am sitting here watching the young maple on the street outside my window beginning to break into bud, and think how the warming sun is fattening its cells. Many events! Then I think of my watching the tree and all the things happening in my brain and body that make such a thing possible. Many events! Democritus turns out to have been right in his basic supposition. But the reality turns out to be vastly more complicated and magnificent than his explanations and imagination—indeed, any human imagination—could encompass.

Still, for the full task of philosophy, one need not know this metaphysics in detail. It is enough to know its vast size and shape. (If something in it comes up to undermine the whole structure, then of course one needs to pay attention.) The full task of philosophy is of course to place ourselves within this metaphysics. We haven't done it and don't do it; in fact we haven't much got beyond the shock delivered by Copernicus. The task is to find satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment within that framework.

Maybe in a way it is simple, with the simplicity that nature gives to all its species: get along and thrive with one another in accordance with your neural gifts. House sparrows do it, even with their "fighting." We hardly do it at all, using our gifts, very likely, to destroy ourselves, even though we are trying to do what the sparrows succeed in doing without the gifts we have!

Well, the story, the full story, has not yet been told and recorded. It would be nice if there were a god who recorded and could tell this story, because it would give us some fear and incentive. As it is, there is only fear and no incentive.
!

<!--{{{-->
<div class='toolbar' macro='toolbar closeTiddler closeOthers +editTiddler > fields syncing permalink references jump'></div>
<div class='title' macro='view title'></div>
<div class='viewer' macro='view text wikified'></div>
<div class='tagClear'></div>
<!--}}}-->

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces E|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
Jakob von Uexk&uuml;ll ends his strange monograph, //A Stroll through the Worlds of Animals and Men//, with the observation that the most universal, encompassing and complete //Umwelt// is God's. That would be fine, except that God, even for the mystic biologist, does not have a nervous system. And even if he did, the //umwelt// of one nervous system excludes the //umwelt// of another, or overlaps it only in part. The //umwelt// of a mollusk and of a fly ("illustrated" in the monograph) are incompatible. It doesn't seem that a set of receptors and  neural system of one organism could create the //umwelt// of another. Still, the //umwelt// idea is a really good one, and has the seeds of carrying the transition from biological to human existence.
!

This is just a modest adaptation of ~TiddlyWiki for use as a webpage. I created it for my own use, but thought others might like an empty template of it. To see a working example of the Webview ~TiddlyWiki, [[see here|http://www.giffmex.org/webviewtwexample.html]]. ''Features of WebviewTW:''
*I have reduced as much clutter as possible, so as not to confuse first time visitors to your site: the header is gone, the sidebar hidden, and Tiddler elements such as author, date created, tagged and tagging have been removed. The mainmenu has a toolbox, which itself can be gutted if desired, when you are ready to upload.
*Only one tiddler opens at a time.
*There is a way to create a series of tiddlers linked in a colorful subtopic menu above the tiddler titles (the three squares above are an example of a subtopic menu and include the instructions necessary to create one). These are good just as subtopic menus, but are also meant for slideshows and linear tutorials and lessons. The idea is similar to the [[PresentationPlugin|http://lewcid.googlepages.com/presentation_empty_full.html#Documentation]], but this setup operates in a different way.
*Saving options have been set to ~SaveBackup:unchecked, and Animations:disabled, and the sidebar is hidden by default. (See [[z_configOptions]] to change these)
*In edit mode there are a number of easyEdit menus. See [[Formatting cheatsheet]] for details. There are also several color palettes to choose from (found in the Sidebar).
*The UploadPlugin and SplashScreenPlugin are installed. For directions for the UploadPlugin, see [[this external link|http://www.giffmex.org/twfortherestofus.html#%5B%5BSimple%20instructions%20for%20BidiX's%20UploadPlugin%5D%5D]]. My apologies to Alan Hecht, the creator of the ~WebViewPlugin - there is no relation between this adaptation and that plugin, which is not used here.

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces E|Bits and Pieces (E)]]
!
Wittgenstein writes to Norman Malcolm regarding a student, "He is a pupil of Moore's & is an excellent man & has a real talent for philosophy, too." (Ray Monk, //Wittgenstein//, p. 458)

What is this "talent for philosophy" that you hear repeated, like everything Wittgenstein said and did, by academic philosophers? It's doing the quirky kinds of analysis and engaging in the kinds of debates Wittgenstein designed and sold academic philosophers into accepting.

If you want to talk about "real talent for philosophy," you had better look at real philosophers—Plato, Aristotle, the pre-Socratics, Augustine, Aquinas, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Locke—I want to name them all. What "real talent" did they have? First and most obviously, they wanted to reach a general understanding of existence and human life—i.e. a metaphysics. Second, they (most of them I think) had a sense of wonder and mystery about existence, even the most ordinary experience; they had an aesthetic awareness of existence to mingle with the cognitive approach to metaphysics. And third, they had the intelligence, ambition, and need to carry these concerns to some kind of fruition. That's what "real talent for philosophy" is.

It is a strange story in twentieth century philosophy, how mathematics and logic became equated, how Bertrand Russell brought Wittgenstein into the picture promoting him as a sort of "genius," and how Wittgenstein wandered off into his self-referenced conceits, dragging academic philosophy at Cambridge and then the U. S. and Australia into those conceits. Ray Monk, a good biographer, but himself a "pupil" of Wittgenstein's influence, doesn't seem even to have a suspicion or raise a doubt about this story.

Well, Wittgenstein was a fraud. He wasn't a fraud like P.T. Barnum, but more like David Koresh or Jim Jones of the Waco and Guiana suicide/massacres. P.T's was a little more honorable, you could say, because he knew what he was doing and didn't deceive himself. And his victims, you could say, were correspondingly more stupid and disgraceful.

The fraudulence of Wittgenstein, Koresh, and Jones is more complicated. Their craziness is complicated from a psychological standpoint—the megalomania and conceit of it—but equally so, pathetically so, in the psychic state of those who chose to adore and follow them.

The beauty of Ray Monk's biography is that, as one of Wittgenstein's followers, he naively reveals, in all his innocence, Wittgenstein's fraudulence. He probably would have burned at Waco or drank Kool Aid in Guiana.

What also emphatically comes across from Monk's biography—in addition to Wittgenstein's repellent personality and dismal life—is the bankruptcy of philosophy as he managed to shape it for the twentieth century. That bankruptcy is easily explained: it stems from the fact that philosophers think they don't have to know anything; they just have to "philosophize," as Wittgenstein put it. Why don't they have to know anything? First, because they had pronounced metaphysics dead, a mass of confusion, and so they didn't really have to know the history of philosophy. Second, they chose to set science aside as irrelevant to philosophy, merely "superficial knowledge", as Wittgenstein called it, failing to see that it is a metaphysics. (It astonishes me how analytic philosophy set science aside as firmly as their enemies, Husserl and the phenomenologists who "bracketed" it.)

Consequently, philosophers like Wittgenstein are left with the practice of epistemology in a knowledge vacuum. One just thinks about whatever "puzzles" happen to cross one's mind and argues over them with others who also happen to like to "philosophize" about them.

Wittgenstein's own reading was slapdash, and in his addiction to detective pulp fiction, trashy. A little bit of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Freud, Tagore, and Augustine, just enough to feed his crude and rather adolescent ruminations on religion and aesthetics. And that awful person Otto Weininger that Wittgenstein was attracted to! K&ouml;hler he mentions, just enough to launch his "remarks" on "seeing as," but not giving Gestalt psychology, or psychology in general (and certainly not physiology), enough attention to see that the so-called problems and puzzles he deals with might have rather straightforward solutions.

[[<Previous Page|A Korean Autobiography]] | [[Main Page|A Korean Autobiography]] | [[Next Page>|YJL-002]]
! ~Yang-Ja Lee Essay: page 001
<html><img src="YJL/www/SCAN0004.JPG" style="height:1100px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|YJL-001]] | [[Main Page|A Korean Autobiography]] | [[Next Page>|YJL-003]]
! ~Yang-Ja Lee Essay: page 002
<html><img src="YJL/www/SCAN0005.JPG" style="height:1100px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|YJL-002]] | [[Main Page|A Korean Autobiography]] | [[Next Page>|YJL-004]]
! ~Yang-Ja Lee Essay: page 003
<html><img src="YJL/www/SCAN0006.JPG" style="height:1100px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|YJL-003]] | [[Main Page|A Korean Autobiography]] | [[Next Page>|YJL-005]]
! ~Yang-Ja Lee Essay: page 004
<html><img src="YJL/www/SCAN0007.JPG" style="height:1100px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|YJL-004]] | [[Main Page|A Korean Autobiography]] | [[Next Page>|YJL-006]]
! ~Yang-Ja Lee Essay: page 005
<html><img src="YJL/www/SCAN0008.JPG" style="height:1100px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|YJL-005]] | [[Main Page|A Korean Autobiography]] | [[Next Page>|YJL-007]]
! ~Yang-Ja Lee Essay: page 006
<html><img src="YJL/www/SCAN0009.JPG" style="height:1100px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|YJL-006]] | [[Main Page|A Korean Autobiography]] | [[Next Page>|YJL-008]]
! ~Yang-Ja Lee Essay: page 007
<html><img src="YJL/www/SCAN0010.JPG" style="height:1100px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|YJL-007]] | [[Main Page|A Korean Autobiography]] | [[Next Page>|YJL-009]]
! ~Yang-Ja Lee Essay: page 008
<html><img src="YJL/www/SCAN0011.JPG" style="height:1100px"></html>

[[<Previous Page|YJL-008]] | [[Main Page|A Korean Autobiography]] | [[Next Page>|A Korean Autobiography]]
! ~Yang-Ja Lee Essay: page 009
<html><img src="YJL/www/SCAN0012.JPG" style="height:1100px"></html>

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces (C)]]
!
There is a Zen story I read years ago where a Zen master is asked what it is like before enlightenment, during enlightenment, and after enlightenment. He answers, "Before enlightenment a tree is a tree, a stone is a stone; during enlightenment everything is a bit confused; after enlightenment a tree is a tree, a stone is a stone; but everything is a little off the ground."

One might give this a little more precision from the perspective of the scientific metaphysics, especially from what neurobiology has discovered. "Before enlightenment" we take our //umwelt//, the world constructed from experience and the intentionality we give it, to be reality, existence full and complete. "During enlightenment" we begin to understand that that world of experience—its sensations, perceptions, and empirical objects (e.g. stones and trees)—are constructions built by and in our neural systems, our brains, from environmental stimuli which are in their natures quite unlike those constructions. "After enlightenment" we realize that those constructions are nevertheless part of the larger fabric of existence. One continues with one's empirical life and its intentionality as before,  but there is no bite in it. Things are "a little off the ground."
!

Background: #fff
Foreground: #000
PrimaryPale: #ccccff
PrimaryLight: #ccccff
PrimaryMid: #333366
PrimaryDark: #014
SecondaryPale: #bbbbff
SecondaryLight: #fe8
SecondaryMid: #db4
SecondaryDark: #333366
TertiaryPale: #eee
TertiaryLight: #ccc
TertiaryMid: #999
TertiaryDark: #9999cc
Error: #f88

Background: #fff
Foreground: #000
PrimaryPale: #ffccff
PrimaryLight: #ffccff
PrimaryMid: #ff0066
PrimaryDark: #014
SecondaryPale: #ffcccc
SecondaryLight: #fe8
SecondaryMid: #db4
SecondaryDark: #ff0066
TertiaryPale: #eee
TertiaryLight: #ccc
TertiaryMid: #999
TertiaryDark: #ff99cc
Error: #f88

/***An adaptation of [[easyFormat]]***/
//{{{
config.commands.Color = new TWkd.Ease('Color','change the color of selected text');

config.commands.Color.addMode({
 name:'Red',
 tooltip:'turns selection red',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Color.putInPlace("{{red{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Color.addMode({
 name:'Blue',
 tooltip:'turns selection blue',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Color.putInPlace("{{blue{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Color.addMode({
 name:'Green',
 tooltip:'turns selection green',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Color.putInPlace("{{green{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Color.addMode({
 name:'Gold',
 tooltip:'turns selection gold',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Color.putInPlace("{{gold{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Color.addMode({
 name:'Gray',
 tooltip:'turns selection gray',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Color.putInPlace("{{gray{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Color.addMode({
 name:'Magenta',
 tooltip:'turns selection magenta',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Color.putInPlace("{{magenta{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Color.addMode({
 name:'Purple',
 tooltip:'turns selection purple',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Color.putInPlace("{{purple{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Color.addMode({
 name:'Teal',
 tooltip:'turns selection teal',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Color.putInPlace("{{teal{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Color.addMode({
 name:'Burgundy',
 tooltip:'turns selection burgundy',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Color.putInPlace("{{burgundy{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
//}}}

/***
|!''Name:''|!easyFormat|
|''Description:''|the format command format selection according to your choice|
|''Version:''|0.1.0|
|''Date:''|13/01/2007|
|''Source:''|[[TWkd|http://yann.perrin.googlepages.com/twkd.html#easyFormat]]|
|''Author:''|[[Yann Perrin|YannPerrin]]|
|''License:''|[[BSD open source license]]|
|''~CoreVersion:''|2.x|
|''Browser:''|Firefox 1.0.4+; Firefox 1.5; InternetExplorer 6.0|
|''Requires:''|@@color:red;''E.A.S.E''@@|
***/
//{{{
config.commands.Format = new TWkd.Ease('Format','format selection accordingly to chosen mode');

config.commands.Format.addMode({
 name:'Bold',
 tooltip:'turns selection into bold text',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Format.putInPlace("''"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"''",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Format.addMode({
 name:'Italic',
 tooltip:'turns selection into italic text',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Format.putInPlace("//"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"//",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Format.addMode({
 name:'Underline',
 tooltip:'underlines selected text',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Format.putInPlace("__"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"__",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Format.addMode({
 name:'Highlight',
 tooltip:'highlight selection',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Format.putInPlace("@@"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"@@",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Format.addMode({
 name:'Hyperlink',
 tooltip:'turns selection into a link using double brackets',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Format.putInPlace("[["+TWkd.context.selection.content+"]]",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
//}}}

/***An adaptation of [[easyFormat]]***/
//{{{
config.commands.Greek = new TWkd.Ease('Greek','formatting for Greek text');

config.commands.Greek.addMode({
 name:'Greek',
 tooltip:'formats Greek text correctly',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Greek.putInPlace("{{greek{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Greek.addMode({
 name:'GkIndent1x',
 tooltip:'formats Gk and indents text 1x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Greek.putInPlace("{{gkindent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Greek.addMode({
 name:'GkIndent2x',
 tooltip:'formats Gk and indents text 2x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Greek.putInPlace("{{gkindent{{{gkindent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Greek.addMode({
 name:'GkIndent3x',
 tooltip:'formats Gk and indents text 3x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Greek.putInPlace("{{gkindent{{{gkindent{{{gkindent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}}}}}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Greek.addMode({
 name:'GkIndent4x',
 tooltip:'formats Gk and indents text 4x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Greek.putInPlace("{{gkindent{{{gkindent{{{gkindent{{{gkindent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}}}}}}}}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Greek.addMode({
 name:'GkIndent5x',
 tooltip:'formats Gk and indents text 5x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Greek.putInPlace("{{gkindent{{{gkindent{{{gkindent{{{gkindent{{{gkindent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
//}}}

/***An adaptation of [[easyFormat]]***/
//{{{
config.commands.Hebrew = new TWkd.Ease('Hebrew','formatting for Hebrew text');

config.commands.Hebrew.addMode({
 name:'HebrewNoAlign',
 tooltip:'formats Hebrew text correctly',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Hebrew.putInPlace("{{hebrewNoAlign{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Hebrew.addMode({
 name:'HebrewRightAlign',
 tooltip:'formats Hebrew text correctly and aligns text to the right',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Hebrew.putInPlace("{{hebrewRightAlign{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Hebrew.addMode({
 name:'HebIndent1x',
 tooltip:'formats Heb and indents text 1x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Hebrew.putInPlace("{{hebAlignAndIndent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Hebrew.addMode({
 name:'HebIndent2x',
 tooltip:'formats Heb and indents text 2x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Hebrew.putInPlace("{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Hebrew.addMode({
 name:'HebIndent3x',
 tooltip:'formats Heb and indents text 3x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Hebrew.putInPlace("{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}}}}}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Hebrew.addMode({
 name:'HebIndent4x',
 tooltip:'formats Heb and indents text 4x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Hebrew.putInPlace("{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}}}}}}}}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Hebrew.addMode({
 name:'HebIndent5x',
 tooltip:'formats Heb and indents text 5x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Hebrew.putInPlace("{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{{{hebAlignAndIndent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
//}}}

/***
This is an adaptation of:
|!''Name:''|!easyFormat|
|''Description:''|the format command format selection according to your choice|
|''Version:''|0.1.0|
|''Date:''|13/01/2007|
|''Source:''|[[TWkd|http://yann.perrin.googlepages.com/twkd.html#easyFormat]]|
|''Author:''|[[Yann Perrin|YannPerrin]]|
|''License:''|[[BSD open source license]]|
|''~CoreVersion:''|2.x|
|''Browser:''|Firefox 1.0.4+; Firefox 1.5; InternetExplorer 6.0|
|''Requires:''|@@color:red;''E.A.S.E''@@|
***/
//{{{
config.commands.Highlighting = new TWkd.Ease('Highlighting','highlight selected text with a color chosen from the list');
config.commands.Highlighting.addMode({
 name:'Red',
 tooltip:'highlights selection red',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Highlighting.putInPlace("@@bgcolor(#ff6666):"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"@@",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Highlighting.addMode({
 name:'Blue',
 tooltip:'highlights selection blue',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Highlighting.putInPlace("@@bgcolor(#ccccff):"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"@@",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Highlighting.addMode({
 name:'Yellow',
 tooltip:'highlights selection yellow',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Highlighting.putInPlace("@@"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"@@",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Highlighting.addMode({
 name:'Green',
 tooltip:'highlights selection green',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Highlighting.putInPlace("@@bgcolor(#99ff99):"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"@@",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Highlighting.addMode({
 name:'Brown',
 tooltip:'highlights selection brown',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Highlighting.putInPlace("@@bgcolor(#cc9966):"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"@@",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Highlighting.addMode({
 name:'Grey',
 tooltip:'highlight selection',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Highlighting.putInPlace("@@bgcolor(#cccc99):"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"@@",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Highlighting.addMode({
 name:'Orange',
 tooltip:'turns selection into unicode text, for Greek characters',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Highlighting.putInPlace("@@bgcolor(#ff9933):"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"@@",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
//}}}

/***An adaptation of [[easyFormat]]***/
//{{{
config.commands.Indent = new TWkd.Ease('Indent','indents selected text as a blockquote');

config.commands.Indent.addMode({
 name:'Indent1x',
 tooltip:'indents text 1x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Indent.putInPlace("{{engindent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Indent.addMode({
 name:'Indent2x',
 tooltip:'indents text 2x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Indent.putInPlace("{{engindent{{{engindent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Indent.addMode({
 name:'Indent3x',
 tooltip:'indents text 3x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Indent.putInPlace("{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}}}}}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Indent.addMode({
 name:'Indent4x',
 tooltip:'indents text 4x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Indent.putInPlace("{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}}}}}}}}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Indent.addMode({
 name:'Indent5x',
 tooltip:'indents text 5x',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Indent.putInPlace("{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{{{engindent{"+TWkd.context.selection.content+"}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
//}}}

/***An adaptation of [[easyFormat]]***/
//{{{
config.commands.Notes = new TWkd.Ease('Notes','add notes and popups');

config.commands.Notes.addMode({
 name:'Syntax',
 tooltip:'adds syntax note',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Notes.putInPlace("((syntax(add note here)))",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Notes.addMode({
 name:'Translation',
 tooltip:'adds syntax note',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Notes.putInPlace("&#149; ((translation(add note here)))",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Notes.addMode({
 name:'Text',
 tooltip:'adds textual note',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Notes.putInPlace("&#149; ((text(add note here)))",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Notes.addMode({
 name:'Gramm.',
 tooltip:'adds grammatical note',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Notes.putInPlace("&#149; ((gram(add note here)))",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Notes.addMode({
 name:'Popup',
 tooltip:'adds popup note to selected text',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Notes.putInPlace("(("+TWkd.context.selection.content+"(add note here)))",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
//}}}

/***An adaptation of [[easyFormat]]***/
//{{{
config.commands.Tableheader = new TWkd.Ease('Tableheader','add the header row for a formatted table');

config.commands.Tableheader.addMode({
 name:'Invisible',
 tooltip:'adds the header row for a 3-column invisible table',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Tableheader.putInPlace("XXXXX",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});

config.commands.Tableheader.addMode({
 name:'Sortable',
 tooltip:'adds the header row for a 3-column sortable table',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Tableheader.putInPlace("|sortable|k||||h",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});

config.commands.Tableheader.addMode({
 name:'Standard',
 tooltip:'adds the header row for a 3-column standard table',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Tableheader.putInPlace("|!|!|!|",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});

//}}}

/***An adaptation of [[easyFormat]]***/
//{{{
config.commands.Tables = new TWkd.Ease('Tables','add preformatted empty tables');

config.commands.Tables.addMode({
 name:'Invisible',
 tooltip:'adds borderless table',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Tables.putInPlace("{{invisiblecomm{\n|!|!|!|\n||||\n||||\n||||\n}}}",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Tables.addMode({
 name:'Sortable',
 tooltip:'adds a sortable table',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Tables.putInPlace("|sortable|k\n||||h\n||||\n||||\n||||",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Tables.addMode({
 name:'Standard',
 tooltip:'adds a standard table',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Tables.putInPlace("|!|!|!|\n||||\n||||\n||||",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Tables.addMode({
 name:'light gray cell',
 tooltip:'inserts a light gray color code into a table cell',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Tables.putInPlace("bgcolor(#eeeeee):",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
config.commands.Tables.addMode({
 name:'dark gray cell',
 tooltip:'inserts a dark gray color code into a table cell',
 operation:function(){
config.commands.Tables.putInPlace("bgcolor(#cccccc):",TWkd.context.selection);
 }
});
//}}}

{{engindent{{{engindent{//"It is very difficult and beyond my power to write my half-past days and my thoughts, especially in English. But as I think it will be interesting and worthful because even though it is too small, too trifling and no more than a footprint of water bird on sand which will be leveled, soft again while the surf surges into continually, it's made up what I am now, I will try to do exert myself."//}}}}}}
{{engindent{{{engindent{//"Through the window the snow has been falling thick and fast. Can it be a great misfortune that I have no one to talk; to give something from heart and no place to go like this snowing? I have thought it does not matter so very much what it is one loves in this world but love something one must. I have nothing -- this is my misfortune now."// }}}}}}

Background: #fff
Foreground: #000
PrimaryPale: #eeeeee
PrimaryLight: #eeeeee
PrimaryMid: #666666
PrimaryDark: #014
SecondaryPale: #cccccc
SecondaryLight: #fe8
SecondaryMid: #db4
SecondaryDark: #666666
TertiaryPale: #eee
TertiaryLight: #ccc
TertiaryMid: #999
TertiaryDark: #bbbbbb
Error: #f88

Background: #fff
Foreground: #000
PrimaryPale: #ddeeaa
PrimaryLight: #ddeeaa
PrimaryMid: #666633
PrimaryDark: #014
SecondaryPale: #bbdd88
SecondaryLight: #fe8
SecondaryMid: #db4
SecondaryDark: #666633
TertiaryPale: #eee
TertiaryLight: #ccc
TertiaryMid: #999
TertiaryDark: #aacc88
Error: #f88

Background: #fff
Foreground: #000
PrimaryPale: #ddccff
PrimaryLight: #ddccff
PrimaryMid: #5500aa
PrimaryDark: #014
SecondaryPale: #ddbbff
SecondaryLight: #fe8
SecondaryMid: #db4
SecondaryDark: #5500aa
TertiaryPale: #eee
TertiaryLight: #ccc
TertiaryMid: #999
TertiaryDark: #ccaaff
Error: #f88

<?php
/***
! User settings
Edit these lines according to your need
***/
//{{{
$AUTHENTICATE_USER = true;	// true | false
$USERS = array(
	'UserName1'=>'Password1', 
	'UserName2'=>'Password2', 
	'UserName3'=>'Password3'); // set usernames and strong passwords
$DEBUG = false;				// true | false
$CLEAN_BACKUP = true; 		// during backuping a file, remove overmuch backups
$FOLD_JS = true; 			// if javascript files have been expanded during download the fold them
error_reporting(E_ERROR | E_WARNING | E_PARSE);
//}}}
/***
!Code
No change needed under
***/
//{{{

/***
 * store.php - upload a file in this directory
 * version :1.6.1 - 2007/08/01 - BidiX@BidiX.info
 * 
 * see : 
 *	http://tiddlywiki.bidi.info/#UploadPlugin for usage
 *	http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.file-upload.php 
 *		for details on uploading files
 * usage : 
 *	POST  
 *		UploadPlugin[backupDir=<backupdir>;user=<user>;password=<password>;uploadir=<uploaddir>;[debug=1];;]
 *		userfile <file>
 *	GET
 *
 * each external javascript file included by download.php is change by a reference (src=...)
 *
 * Revision history
 * V1.6.1 - 2007/08/01
 * Enhancement: Add javascript folding
 * V1.6.0 - 2007/05/17
 * Enhancement: Add backup management
 * V1.5.2 - 2007/02/13
 * Enhancement: Add optional debug option in client parameters
 * V1.5.1 - 2007/02/01
 * Enhancement: Check value of file_uploads in php.ini. Thanks to Didier Corbière
 * V1.5.0 - 2007/01/15
 * Correct: a bug in moving uploadFile in uploadDir thanks to DaniGutiérrez for reporting
 * Refactoring
 * V 1.4.3 - 2006/10/17 
 * Test if $filename.lock exists for GroupAuthoring compatibility
 * return mtime, destfile and backupfile after the message line
 * V 1.4.2 - 2006/10/12
 *  add error_reporting(E_PARSE);
 * v 1.4.1 - 2006/03/15
 *	add chmo 0664 on the uploadedFile
 * v 1.4 - 2006/02/23
 * 	add uploaddir option :  a path for the uploaded file relative to the current directory
 *	backupdir is a relative path
 *	make recusively directories if necessary for backupDir and uploadDir
 * v 1.3 - 2006/02/17
 *	presence and value of user are checked with $USERS Array (thanks to PauloSoares)
 * v 1.2 - 2006/02/12 
  *	POST  
 *		UploadPlugin[backupDir=<backupdir>;user=<user>;password=<password>;]
 *		userfile <file>
*	if $AUTHENTICATE_USER
 *		presence and value of user and password are checked with 
 *		$USER and $PASSWORD
 * v 1.1 - 2005/12/23 
 *	POST  UploadPlugin[backupDir=<backupdir>]  userfile <file>
 * v 1.0 - 2005/12/12 
 *	POST userfile <file>
 *
 * Copyright (c) BidiX@BidiX.info 2005-2007
 ***/
//}}}

//{{{

if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'GET') {
	/*
	 * GET Request
	 */
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
	<head>
		<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" >
		<title>BidiX.info - TiddlyWiki UploadPlugin - Store script</title>
	</head>
	<body>
		<p>
		<p>store.php V 1.6.1
		<p>BidiX@BidiX.info
		<p>&nbsp;</p>
		<p>&nbsp;</p>
		<p>&nbsp;</p>
		<p align="center">This page is designed to upload a <a href="http://www.tiddlywiki.com/">TiddlyWiki<a>.</p>
		<p align="center">for details see : <a href="http://TiddlyWiki.bidix.info/#HowToUpload">TiddlyWiki.bidix.info/#HowToUpload<a>.</p>	
	</body>
</html>
<?php
exit;
}

/*
 * POST Request
 */
	 
// Recursive mkdir
function mkdirs($dir) {
	if( is_null($dir) || $dir === "" ){
		return false;
	}
	if( is_dir($dir) || $dir === "/" ){
		return true;
	}
	if( mkdirs(dirname($dir)) ){
		return mkdir($dir);
	}
	return false;
}

function toExit() {
	global $DEBUG, $filename, $backupFilename, $options;
	if ($DEBUG) {
		echo ("\nHere is some debugging info : \n");
		echo("\$filename : $filename \n");
		echo("\$backupFilename : $backupFilename \n");
		print ("\$_FILES : \n");
		print_r($_FILES);
		print ("\$options : \n");
		print_r($options);
}
exit;
}

function ParseTWFileDate($s) {
	// parse date element
	preg_match ( '/^(\d\d\d\d)(\d\d)(\d\d)\.(\d\d)(\d\d)(\d\d)/', $s , $m );
	// make a date object
	$d = mktime($m[4], $m[5], $m[6], $m[2], $m[3], $m[1]);
	// get the week number
	$w = date("W",$d);

	return array(
		'year' => $m[1], 
		'mon' => $m[2], 
		'mday' => $m[3], 
		'hours' => $m[4], 
		'minutes' => $m[5], 
		'seconds' => $m[6], 
		'week' => $w);
}

function cleanFiles($dirname, $prefix) {
	$now = getdate();
	$now['week'] = date("W");

	$hours = Array();
	$mday = Array();
	$year = Array();
	
	$toDelete = Array();

	// need files recent first
	$files = Array();
	($dir = opendir($dirname)) || die ("can't open dir '$dirname'");
	while (false !== ($file = readdir($dir))) {
		if (preg_match("/^$prefix/", $file))
        array_push($files, $file);
    }
	$files = array_reverse($files);
	
	// decides for each file
	foreach ($files as $file) {
		$fileTime = ParseTWFileDate(substr($file,strpos($file, '.')+1,strrpos($file,'.') - strpos($file, '.') -1));
		if (($now['year'] == $fileTime['year']) &&
			($now['mon'] == $fileTime['mon']) &&
			($now['mday'] == $fileTime['mday']) &&
			($now['hours'] == $fileTime['hours']))
				continue;
		elseif (($now['year'] == $fileTime['year']) &&
			($now['mon'] == $fileTime['mon']) &&
			($now['mday'] == $fileTime['mday'])) {
				if (isset($hours[$fileTime['hours']]))
					array_push($toDelete, $file);
				else 
					$hours[$fileTime['hours']] = true;
			}
		elseif 	(($now['year'] == $fileTime['year']) &&
			($now['mon'] == $fileTime['mon'])) {
				if (isset($mday[$fileTime['mday']]))
					array_push($toDelete, $file);
				else
					$mday[$fileTime['mday']] = true;
			}
		else {
			if (isset($year[$fileTime['year']][$fileTime['mon']]))
				array_push($toDelete, $file);
			else
				$year[$fileTime['year']][$fileTime['mon']] = true;
		}
	}
	return $toDelete;
}

function replaceJSContentIn($content) {
	if (preg_match ("/(.*?)<!--DOWNLOAD-INSERT-FILE:\"(.*?)\"--><script\s+type=\"text\/javascript\">(.*)/ms", $content,$matches)) {
		$front = $matches[1];
		$js = $matches[2];
		$tail = $matches[3];
		if (preg_match ("/<\/script>(.*)/ms", $tail,$matches2)) {		
			$tail = $matches2[1];
		}
		$jsContent = "<script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"$js\"></script>";
		$tail = replaceJSContentIn($tail);
		return($front.$jsContent.$tail);
	}
	else
		return $content;
}

// Check if file_uploads is active in php config
if (ini_get('file_uploads') != '1') {
   echo "Error : File upload is not active in php.ini\n";
   toExit();
}

// var definitions
$uploadDir = './';
$uploadDirError = false;
$backupError = false;
$optionStr = $_POST['UploadPlugin'];
$optionArr=explode(';',$optionStr);
$options = array();
$backupFilename = '';
$filename = $_FILES['userfile']['name'];
$destfile = $filename;

// get options
foreach($optionArr as $o) {
	list($key, $value) = split('=', $o);
	$options[$key] = $value;
}

// debug activated by client
if ($options['debug'] == 1) {
	$DEBUG = true;
}

// authenticate User
if (($AUTHENTICATE_USER)
	&& ((!$options['user']) || (!$options['password']) || ($USERS[$options['user']] != $options['password']))) {
	echo "Error : UserName or Password do not match \n";
	echo "UserName : [".$options['user']. "] Password : [". $options['password'] . "]\n";
	toExit();
}



// make uploadDir
if ($options['uploaddir']) {
	$uploadDir = $options['uploaddir'];
	// path control for uploadDir   
    if (!(strpos($uploadDir, "../") === false)) {
        echo "Error: directory to upload specifies a parent folder";
        toExit();
	}
	if (! is_dir($uploadDir)) {
		mkdirs($uploadDir);
	}
	if (! is_dir($uploadDir)) {
		echo "UploadDirError : $uploadDirError - File NOT uploaded !\n";
		toExit();
	}
	if ($uploadDir{strlen($uploadDir)-1} != '/') {
		$uploadDir = $uploadDir . '/';
	}
}
$destfile = $uploadDir . $filename;

// backup existing file
if (file_exists($destfile) && ($options['backupDir'])) {
	if (! is_dir($options['backupDir'])) {
		mkdirs($options['backupDir']);
		if (! is_dir($options['backupDir'])) {
			$backupError = "backup mkdir error";
		}
	}
	$backupFilename = $options['backupDir'].'/'.substr($filename, 0, strrpos($filename, '.'))
				.date('.Ymd.His').substr($filename,strrpos($filename,'.'));
	rename($destfile, $backupFilename) or ($backupError = "rename error");
	// remove overmuch backup
	if ($CLEAN_BACKUP) {
		$toDelete = cleanFiles($options['backupDir'], substr($filename, 0, strrpos($filename, '.')));
		foreach ($toDelete as $file) {
			$f = $options['backupDir'].'/'.$file;
			if($DEBUG) {
				echo "delete : ".$options['backupDir'].'/'.$file."\n";
			}
			unlink($options['backupDir'].'/'.$file);
		}
	}
}

// move uploaded file to uploadDir
if (move_uploaded_file($_FILES['userfile']['tmp_name'], $destfile)) {
	if ($FOLD_JS) {
		// rewrite the file to replace JS content
		$fileContent = file_get_contents ($destfile);
		$fileContent = replaceJSContentIn($fileContent);
		if (!$handle = fopen($destfile, 'w')) {
	         echo "Cannot open file ($destfile)";
	         exit;
	    }
	    if (fwrite($handle, $fileContent) === FALSE) {
	        echo "Cannot write to file ($destfile)";
	        exit;
	    }
	    fclose($handle);
	}
    
	chmod($destfile, 0644);
	if($DEBUG) {
		echo "Debug mode \n\n";
	}
	if (!$backupError) {
		echo "0 - File successfully loaded in " .$destfile. "\n";
	} else {
		echo "BackupError : $backupError - File successfully loaded in " .$destfile. "\n";
	}
	echo("destfile:$destfile \n");
	if (($backupFilename) && (!$backupError)) {
		echo "backupfile:$backupFilename\n";
	}
	$mtime = filemtime($destfile);
	echo("mtime:$mtime");
} 
else {
	echo "Error : " . $_FILES['error']." - File NOT uploaded !\n";

}
toExit();
//}}}
?>

[[<-BACK to Bits and Pieces|Bits and Pieces]]
!
Enter TEXT . . . .
!

<html>
<div style="color: rgb(100, 100, 150); font-family: Monaco;"><big><b>
TITLE OR HEADER OR DESCRIPTOR . . . .. 
</html>
1. [[x |1.0.1]]
2. [[y |1.0.2]]
3. [[z |1.0.3]]
!!

<html>
<div style="color: rgb(100, 100, 150); font-family: Monaco;"><big><b>
TITLE OR HEADER OR DESCRIPTOR . . . .. 
</html>
1. [[x |1.1.1]]
2. [[y |1.1.2]]
3. [[z |1.1.3]]
!!

<html>
<div style="color: rgb(100, 100, 150); font-family: Monaco;"><big><b>
TITLE OR HEADER OR DESCRIPTOR . . . .. 
</html>
1. [[x |1.2.1]]
2. [[y |1.2.2]]
3. [[z |1.2.3]]
!!

<html>
<div style="color: rgb(100, 100, 150); font-family: Monaco;"><big><b>
TITLE OR HEADER OR DESCRIPTOR . . . .. 
</html>
1. [[x |1.3.1]]
2. [[y |1.3.2]]
3. [[z |1.3.3]]
!

{{tableindex{
|[[topic-01-00]]|[[topic-01-01]]|[[topic-01-02]]| [[topic-01-03]]|
}}}

<!--{{{-->
<div class='toolbar' macro='toolbar closeTiddler closeOthers +editTiddler > fields syncing permalink references jump'></div>
<div class='topic-01' macro='tiddler topic-01SubtopicMenu'></div><div class='title' macro='view title'></div>
<div class='viewer' macro='view text wikified'></div><div class='tagClear'></div>
<!--}}}-->

{{tableindex{
|[[Subject01]]|[[Subject02]]|[[subtopic3]]|
}}}

<!--{{{-->
<div class='toolbar' macro='toolbar closeTiddler closeOthers +editTiddler > fields syncing permalink references jump'></div>
<div class='topic1' macro='tiddler topic1SubtopicMenu'></div>
<div class='title' macro='view title'></div>
<div class='viewer' macro='view text wikified'></div>
<div class='tagClear'></div>
<!--}}}-->

<!--{{{-->
<div class='toolbar' macro='toolbar closeTiddler closeOthers +editTiddler > fields syncing permalink references jump'></div>
<div class='webview' macro='tiddler webviewindex'></div>
<div class='title' macro='view title'></div>
<div class='viewer' macro='view text wikified'></div>
<div class='tagClear'></div>
<!--}}}-->

{{tableindex{
|[[Welcome|Welcome to the Webview TiddlyWiki]]|[[Instructions]]|[[Subtopic menu instructions]]|
}}}

config.options.chkSaveBackups = false;
config.options.chkEnableAnimations = false;
config.options.chkShowRightSidebar= false;
config.options.chkSinglePageMode= true;
config.options.chkSinglePagePermalink= false;