Two types of WALL-E and Freud and Japan

July 02, 2009

There are a few movies in which machines take over the earth. In the "Terminator" series of movies, the machines get so bolshy that they decied to wipe out those irrational humans. In other films however, such as the recent Disney film "WALL-E," the machines take over, but they attempt to have the best interests of humans at heart. They are continuing to obey one of the laws of robotics, or some such.

Okay...let us say that at some point in the future, machines have taken over. They run human society. They make the laws and policies, and they make them in such a way as to make us humans happy. After a lot of experimentation the machines find that human happiness is something that we don't get used to easily. It needs practice (would you agree?). Upon this observation, and with a view to the fact that resources for producing happiness are limited, the machines decide that rather than giving humans a mediocre life for all of their lives, it is best to give us humans a period of happiness and a period of relative suffering. The machines decide that humans should spend a period of their lives that has quite a lot of suffering, and a period of our lives that is fairly happy. Bearing in mind that it takes a while to get used to happiness, the machines decide that it would be best to diivide human life (or lifespan) in the middle and make one half of it happy and one half of it more painful. So the machines decide that since learning how to have fun takes a while, and providing the resources for people to have fun requires effort, the cut human life (about 70 years) in the middle and decide that one half will contain work and the other half will contain play.

But then the machines reach a disagreement about which half should contain the work and which half should contain the play? Which would you rather?

Some of the machines decide that giving the young folk the fun time is a good idea. They reason that by so doing, young people will havve a great time and then in the second half of their lives while they are working and suffering they will be able to look back and remember the great time they had, and work to provide the great time that they experienced for the next gneeration.

Some of the machines decide that giving older people the good time is the way to go. They reason that if people suffer while they are young then it won't be so bad because they will know that they have good times ahead of them.

Making Sense of Scientology

June 11, 2009

In a manner of speaking, I am a bit of a scientologist with a small "s," in that I am kind of religious, but also I am scientist. Or I am a scientist but also I am kind of religious. I am not sure what my religion is. I am interested in more than one religion. I try to understand what religions have to say from my sciency perspective. I have spent a lot of time trying to understand what Christianity has to say, and perhaps even more time trying to make a sciency sense out of Shinto mythology. I like to think that there is truth in what Christians have to say (about people rising from the dead for instance) and what Shinto has to say (about the world being created by gods, for instance). That is hard work!

Recently I have been having a look at what Scientology has to say, particularly the more extraordinary claims of Scientology, the ones that some people like to make fun out of, about Xemu, and aliens being blown up.

Before I write about the really weird parts of Scientology, the first thing I like about Scientology is the self-analysis part of it. This comes before all the weird "space opera" (sic).

Scientologists, seem to like to get to grips with all the things that they do not like to get to grips with! That is to say, that usually there are a lot of things that we do not like to remember, and as a consequence we do not remember. Things that we are embarrassed about, things that we are ashamed of, things that make us cringe, things that make us well up with emotion. We have, in common parlance, hang-ups. We have things about which we have been criticised, actions that we do not like to admit, desires that do no like to admit to, desires that we do not know why we have, fears that we do not face, etc. From what little I know about scientology, in the early stages, initiates are encouraged to confront and examine this hidden things. They use skin conductivity as a measure of stressful hidden-ness. In other words, if I hook you up to a conductivity measuring device and ask you "We did you last hate your father" or "When did you last masturbate" or "What is your shame" or I have no idea but there are things that we don't like to talk about. We don't even know what they are ourselves. But if you are hooked up to a skin conductivity meter then there will sometimes be an indication of when the question has hit a nerve. That is to say that the meter will show when the question is one that we have difficulty facing up to. And why the hell not? Why don't we face up to everything? Why can't we speak about all these things and confess them, describe them, and leave them behind? When one faces ones fears and shames and complexes, they tend to turn to dust. Scientologists, I believe, encourage people to face up to everything. And to, in common parlance, "get over it". When I went for a personality test in Edinburgh about 22 years ago one of their members told me that they adress the fears and complexes of their members in pairs at a distances of a few inches. Imagine if someone got right in your face and talked, criticised, asked for answers to all your complexes at a distance of only a few inches. "So you have a small penis, what of it?" "you are a bald ageing twat", "You write drivel on the internet," "You are a filanderer, why?" etc.
Perhaps that is all there is to scientology in a way? I have no idea. Perhaps all they do is to un-supress people? Free people, force people to confront, all their sweaty emotions, experiences, complexes, hang-ups. Is there a person that you have ever met that can confront themselves fully? I am not that person. I am not sure whether or not such a procedure would benefit myself or not, but I have sympathy with the endeavour. To be honest, I tend to "audit" people that I meet. I am in love with self-revelation. I like that sweaty feeling in myself and others, because I believe that it can be overcome.

Leaving that aside. I am not sure if Scientologist really do address their "complexes" or not, what of the space opera? This is really weird. There are places on the internet where one can hear of a sort of "mythology" about Xenu, about aliens being blown up, and then attachig themselves to others. And about how we live in a world where peole are infested with aliens. I am not a expert on Scientoogy but the concept that we have been invaded by aliens is one that my sciency mind does not object to quite as much as it is common to do so.

Okay so that was a long preamble. What I really meant to write about is the Xenu, aliens bit. I see the story as a sort of mythology. L Ron Hubbard was, or may have been, a modern mythologist.

I want to add some more preamble. What scientology needs, its seems to me, or indeed what any religion with a mythology needs, is a theory of mythology, or a theory about language. A semiotics? Not sure. Anyway, on the face of it mythologies are generally whacked, crazy, stupid. "So a giant guy made the world in 6 days?" "So a primal couple gave birth to the world?!" Yada yada. It sounds really silly. People, like me, of a sciency persuasion, are of course inclined to think that these stories, mythologies are so much primitive trash. So, is there any way of saving mythologies? Well, I have a couple of ideas. One is more wishwashy than the other.

The first, the wishy washier one, is to say that there is a problem with language: that language is not up to describing the way the world is. Saying that is easy. But when saying that in the language which you are trying to say is limited leads to enevitable contradictions. These contradictions are enough to make readers tell you to take a hike. But Wittgenstien in one of his coloured books used some good metaphors. He talked about simplified languages, more simple than the one he, and I, are using. Imagine if you are a soldier. Soldiers, according to the films I see on TV, use hand signals such as fist to say things like "advance" or "whatch out to your left" or "try and out-flank the enemy." Now imagine that there are a group of soldiers in a war, say Vietnam, and they are advancing on what they believe to be a group of Vietcong. Then one of the hand-signalling soldiers realises that that are in fact advancing upon a group of Belgian tourists who have got lost in the jungle. That hand-signalling soldier does not have the hand-signals to say what is going on. He only has the signals for "advance,(a fist)" "crawl,(a level palm)," "out-flank(a two fingered pointing motion, say)." But then one of the soldiers realises that he is walking towards a group of Belgian holiday makers, who are trying to light a barbeque. How does he signal this fact to his comrades? Well, I guess he might try and use really strange signals. Signals, like a three fingered pointing, punching, palming, wave that his comrades would say "Hey, this guy is, from the point of view of our code, making no sense." Perhaps mythologies, such as people rising from the dead, or a couple of gods giving birth to the world, or a Xenu space opera, are all similarly the result of someone trying to use a language that is limited to describe a situation that goes beyong the limits of that language.

Secondly, I have thought about parables. "Parables" as in the ones that prophets in the Bible like to use. One time there was a prophet that met a king that was stealing someones wife. Instead of saying "You are stealing someones wife and that is bad," instead he told a story about a sheperd that had a lot of sheep but all the same stole sheep from another shepard that only had a few. The story he told, the parable he told, was an irreality. There was no sheperd stealing sheep. But in order to convey what he wanted to convey he had to use a irreal story. Why is that sometimes a parable, a metaphoric story, works better than a straight forward explanation of things? It seems to me that when you are trying to explain NOT what is, but what is not, what the listener has not seen, a mistake on the part of the listener, it helps to use a NON real story. If the prophet had said "You are taking someone else's wife" then the king may have said "Yeah, sure. What of it?" and his REAL story would have had no effect. But by talking about a story that is not real, he managed to get the king to see the mistake that he king was making. I wonder if mythologies may be like parables. Stories that are about IRREALITIES that make us see the mistakes that we are making. Normal stories are about the world. Parable stories (parabolic stories?) are about the mistakes, the world that we are not seeing.

Anyway...

So, however one understands mythology, whatever theory of mythology that one takes, it seems to me that really weird stories, i.e. mythologies, such as the story of Xemu, may be communicative even if they sound like BS.

Finally, returning to the weird mythology of Scientology. L Ron Hubbard said (1) that we are infested with aliens from the deep distant past. And (2) that we need to get rid of these aliens. Well, it seems to me that a lot of "scientists" also say that we, humans, are infested with aliens. That is to say that several psychologists argue that have 'others' within the self. Freud says that we have created a "super ego," based in some way upon our father or our idea or fatherhood, within ourselves. Jung says that we have an animus, that is somehow like a group of elders, guys, that populate our heads. Jamese Herbert Mead says that we create within ourselves a "generalised other" from an amalgam of the view points of ourselves that other people have. Hermans and Kempen (in their book "the dialogical self") argue taht this other is a multi-faceted, that we have relationships with a variety of others, fathers, mothers, friends, that we model within ourselves. All these so called "scientific" theories, by more-or-less respected scientists say that there are others within the self. Also, all these scientists do not recommend that we get rid of the others. Why not? They argue that the self, the self that we have, is dependent upon the internalisation of these others.

Buddhists recommend that people get rid of their "selves." Alas Buddhists do not talk too much about what is required of getting rid of the self. As far as I am aware, there is not all that much talk within Buddhism of "in order to get rid of your (false) self you must get rid of the others." But again afaik there is some talk within Buddhism of this sort of "other-ridding" endeavour.

I listened to a L Ron Hubbard speech about Xenu on the Internet. Towards the end he spoke about how he did not (seem to)approve of Christianity in a way, in that it perpetuated fractured, or "crucified" veiws of the self. All of the "Scientists" mentioned above, (not the Buddhists though) are from the Christian tradition. It seems to me that within Christendom, it is seen as normal and preferable to remain fractured, to keep those others in the self. (BTW I am conscious of the fact that I am using the word "self" to refer to two very different things).

Anyway, I can see sense in the call to "get rid of aliens within the self," from a Buddhist perspective at least. In that respect, the space opera, the mythology of Scientology makes a little bit of sense to me.

Finally, okay, why not just use Freud, Mead, Lacan, Hermans and Kempen, to talk about the others that are within the self? I am not sure. But perhaps the stories that these "scientists" tell do not make the situation sound weird enough. Reading Mead (Mead is pretty down to earth sort of guy) it sounds all so common place and normal and rational that one should have a "generalised other" inside oneself. Perhaps the advantage of telling people that they are infested with aliens is that (like a parable) it drives home the idea that we, the listeners, should be doing something about it: we should be trying to get rid of them.

The Mystery of the Mirror

May 21, 2009

I am reading a book in Japanese by Takano Youtarou called something like "The mystery of the mirror."

In the book the author attempts to explain why reflections in mirros are right left reversed, and not up down reversed.

He starts by summarising a lot of other explanations of why this phenomena occurs.

Then he says that there are two things going on.

But before I say what he says is going on I will mention my own take, because I want to be able to say "I have told you so", and because I think that my take will be similar, and I want to see how similar it is, and because I think that I will say something a little different.

I do think that mirrors are mysterious in a way, but more because I think that humans are mysterious or rather in error about themselves, ourselves. I am a sort of Buddhist. I think that there is a mistake going on in human consciousness, and perhaps mirrors are one way of getting to the nub of the human error. Anway....

What about images in mirrors? Are they right left reversed, but not up and down reversed? Takano stress that mirrors are mysterious because they are right left, but not up down, reversed.

First of all...
1) I have trouble ditinguishing my right and my left. When I am told to turn left or right, the first thing I do is look at my wrists, and see which side my watch is on and I know that is the left side, so I know which way to turn. I am not sure why I find it so difficult to tell which is right and left but I know I do.
2) I don't find the right left thing in mirrors very notable. It is almost like I feel it is obvious (even though I am sure that the author is right, it is mysterious).
3) I think that we don't really feel a "reversal" all the time. If I were to ask a hundred people, what appears strangely right left reversed in mirrors, then I think that there would be two answers that come up a lot.
3.1) The guy in the mirror (me) is wearing his watch on the other hand.
3.2) Writing is reversed in the mirror - mirror writing.
at the same time, (3 continued) when I look at other things (other than myself and writing), e.g. a mirror showing what is behind me, I don't really feel that it is reversed. It looks quite normal, and unreversed. If it were displayed the other way around I would be inclined to think it strange. The reversal feeling seems particularly strong for myself and writing but not for other things.

So, it seems to me that writing and me body are particularly similar in having a reversal feeling about them.

Going back to Takano Youtarou's book, I was surprised to find that he says that the secret to unravelling the mystery of the mirror is to realise that there are two things going on: one is when viewing oneself, another is when view letters (or rather these are the two examples that he uses). "Eh?" I thought.

I have read a little bit futher, where he goes on to explain the first of the two mysteries, regarding viewing onself, and here I agree...He says that when viewing oneself ones right hand is on ones right in the mirror, and ones left hand is on ones left in the mirror but from the point of view of the "the guy in the mirror" it is reversed. This reversal he calls a bodily frame of reference. If we take the bodily frame of reference of the "guy in the mirror" then things might be assumed to be reversed, but they are not.

Hmm...To be honest I thought that was the important point, and in a sense the only point. So I am not sure how he is going to say that letters are different. On the contrary it seems to me that letters and oneself are very simlar, as mentioned above. Letters and oneself are similar in that it is particularly these things that appear reversed.

He says further, that unlike our bodies, letters are *really* reversed in the mirror. A "[" in a mirror looks like "]" so this is a more real reversal, than the right-left reversal that we feel occurs because we take the frame of reference of "the guy in the mirror."

Okay the above is really as far as I have got in his book.

First of all, with regard to myself in mirrors, It seems to me that I am up down reversed too. Takano makes it clear that the mystery of the mirror is that we are right left reversed but not up down reversed.

This was the first thing that I objected to in his book. The cover of his book shows a picture of someone standing on a mirror. The feet of the person standing on the mirror are toward the top of the book. Especially bearing that in mind, it seems strange to me that he should say that we are not up down reversed.

It seems to me that whether I am standing on a mirror or not, when I look down toward my feet, at my torso and legs, my feet are toward the top of my visual field and my chest is towards the top of my visual field. I see a "Y" shape. When I look at at my torso and legs in a mirror, I see an upside down "Y" shape. This may not at first be obvious. This is the Y shape that I see when I look down at myself.

And this is the reverse Y shape that I see when I look at myself in a mirror. I am not quite this fat. The width at the top is due to perspective (in the previous image)!

When I look down at myself, I see something branching out toward the top of my visual field. When I look in the mirror toward my legs, I see my legs branching out at the bottom of my visual field. Hence it seems to me that my view of myself in the mirror is reversed in the up-down axis as well as the right left axis. Having said that, I do not feel myself to be up-down reversed in a mirror. But then again, I do not feel myself to be right left reversed in a mirror either (perhaps because of my inability to tell left from right). Anyway, it seems to me that mirrors reverse me at least in the updown direction too.

Then when Takno says that letters are really reversed in the mirror I also have a problem. What does Takano mean by a letter? if you think of a letter on a page, then yes, letters in a mirror do seem reversed. But I have a three year old son that plays with plastic letter shapes. It seems to me that if you put plastic letter shapes in front of a mirror then they are not reversed at all. This is because one sees the rear of the plastic letters. An interesting thing about letters is that the usually, apart from the three year old's letter toys, usually only exist on planar surfaces of an opaque page. In order to make normal, written on a page, letters appear in a mirror, one has to turn the opaque surface around to point at the mirror. In turning the opaque surface around, one is reversing the letters. If on the other hand you write the letters on a piece of glass, or on the mirror itself then the letters are not reversed. A mirror is usually a piece of glass in front of a thin film of reflective surface (the "tain" of the mirror). If you write on a mirror, the letters are not reversed. If you write on a page and then turn the page around then the letters are going to appear reversed because you have turned them around.

Perhaps this is what Takano means by the assertion that the mystery of the mirror is different when applied to letters and ourselves. Perhaps he is right.

All the same, it seems to me that the reason why we feel mirror letters are reversed is for the same reason that we feel our bodies are reversed: that we are positing a guy in the mirror.

That is as about as far as I have got in my observations.

Bataille, sex and truth

April 23, 2009

I would like to write about sex and truth, but since I don't think that my ideas would be interesting enough to capture the attention of even an imaginary reader, I will attempt first of all to explain Bataille.

George Bataille was an unsual fellow. He studied ancient literature or something hard-nosed-academic but he wrote books about, among other things, sex. Sex? What does that mean? Before I attempt to explain Bataille's answer, there is a more mundane question as to whether "sex," refers to the act or the nouns: the male sex and the female sex. Alas, while the question appears mundane, and the two meanings of sex very different, in my limited understanding of Bataille, a French man, he does not make it clear which of these two meanings he is referring to. I am English. I like to be plain speaking, unlike those Frenchies. But in the following explanation of sex according to, my understanding of, Bataille these two meanings are not clearly separated.

Bataille says something like this...

An amoeba, or other non-sexual existence, can reproduce by division and has no clear beginning or end. On the other hand, sexual beings die. Our cells reproduce, but as sexed beings, we are individuated; we cannot just keep on going like an amoeba. Death and individuation is a product of sex. If we were not sexed, we would live forever, reproducing our selves, giving birth to ourselves, regenerating our cells and our being, ad infinitum.

The existence of sex is the basis of our individuation. However, Bataille claims, the act of sex allows us to return to our unindividuated state, and experience our 'death' as an individual. As mentioned above, this argument seems to confuse the state with the act of sex. Even if our sexual state is responsible for our individuation, it does not necessarily follow that the sex act should result its dissolution. At the same time it is persuasive. It seems reasonable to admit that "sexual union" is more than a metaphor, and that in humans at least (with all that intertwining, banging, bonking and penetrating) something unifying is going on. Moreover, drawing on the French word for "orgasm" "le petit mort" or little death, Bataille argues that in sex we experience our death, the dissolution of our individuality. Less that we unite with our partner, more that it is not only the desire, but the very existence of both partners which is extinguish at sexual climax.

To sum, sex is a “little," or a little like, death. It is a return to an unindividuated state. I find myself very persuaded by this argument and what little I have to say is only a footnote.

I was reading a book, which is very popular in Japan about evolution and love. The author was trying to persuade readers that humans are attracted to those members of the opposite sex who seem most likely to be able to ensure the continuation of ones genes. There is nothing new in this theory and there is quite a lot of research to support it. I hear of studies purporting to show that men are on average more interested in young fertile women with broad fertile child-bearing hips and big fertile breasts, and women fancy men with strong protective bodies and big baby backing bank balances. So at first glance, those evolutionary psychologists are right: mojo merges with Darwin, our libido jives with our genes.

Perhaps it is because I am in Japan, the land of sleek, slender ladies, or because I am not heterosexual enough to appreciate the buxom, that I am not entirely convinced. Here in Japan, the ladies even go so far as to wrap themselves in layers of stiff fabric, called kimono that accentuates their sexy hipless-ness, and small, or at least non-bovine, bosoms. Japanese sex is sexier precisely because the procreative aspect is hidden. Wherefore Darwin-san?

In the light of the Japanese experience, is it really true that we want what our genes need to win the evolutionary baseball game?

Which brings me to the topic I wanted to write about: truth.

Truth is that which connects volition and action. When a person has the truth, then they are able to act in accordance with their volition. When they are deceived, and when they are in the dark, they are floundering.

One upshot of sex is that people want to be found attractive. This means that we want to behave in accordance with other people’s volition. Furthermore, since it is difficult to know what other people's volition is, it is very difficult to get to the truth. As the bangles song, "If he knew what she wants, he'd be giving it to her" highlights, it is very difficult to know what she/he wants. The existence of sex, the state, leads to a lot of untruth flying around. And that, it seems, may be its evolutionary advantage. The existance of sex brings untruth into the ball park of evolution.

To be continued.

Susan Boyle

April 21, 2009

I cry when I watch Susan Boyle's audition for Briton's Got Talent. It was very well done. Her choice of song was excellent. The story of a woman who dreamed a dream only to find it torn apart seemed to have been written by the lady herself.

The producers too set her up for a surprise. They filmed her stuffing sandwiches into her mouth. They gave her no advice on self presentation. While the two goons backstage acted out our better conscience, the audience and judges laughed derisively, and all but groaned at her self-introduction. They asked her questions designed to make a fool out of her aspiration, including, "Why hasn't it worked out so far, Susan?" as if to say, "Just look at yourself, granny, how do you expect to be a famous singer looking like that?"

And here lies the rub. Susan Boyle does not look at her self. Her friendly eyes look only outwards, at us the viewers. She is about as ego-involved in her body as my dog. She has a body, of course and she knows she has one, but she also knows it does not matter. For one reason or another, she has taken little interest in how it, her body, looks at all. Life she knows, 'is not a beauty contest.'

This is why I think we admire her so much. There are other not so beautiful singers. Mama Cass, of the Mamas and Papas, was big. Ella Fitzgerald was not all that hot to look at. Even that Canadian has a pretty weird nose. With a "workover" would Susan Boyle look all that different from her heroine, Elaine Page(58)? Truth be told, Ms. Boyle does not care.

I think that it is less the shock of "the fat lady sings," but the shock and awe at the disparity between the complete lack of narcissism -- the complete absense of visual self love -- and the depth of love, the longing, the hope that is expressed in Susan Boyle's voice. She sang a dream of being loved, of deserving to be loved, of being lovable. She sang that she still believed, even in the face of knowing that it is impossible.

We forgive this kind of, phono-vocal self love. We even approve of a one sided identification with only the phonological aspect of self -- indeed it only the voice that is deemed capable of being a self. Susan Boyle is not a fat lady singing, she is a song. It is as if her soul has arrived on stage, demanding, claiming her right to be loved and accepted.

A lot of commentators say that the message is "Don't judge the book the its cover!" I think that her message is a little more extreme; there is a book which has no cover. Ms. Boyd is living proof; soul exists. It is there for all to witness, the light and the life, the ressurection, on Youtube.