For a long time I have thought that I should explore the concept of free will because it appeared to me that if there is no free will, as some argue, humanism falls to pieces as an approach to human betterment. I should also add that the concept of a civil society achieved through democratic institutions founders as well without some concept of rational choice. In short, my belief is that we need some capacity to choose differently to realize our potential as moral actors.

Still, these waters appear very murky to me. Research has been done that suggests the choices we make are made at a level that is not conscious, and that to whatever extent we have a rational explanation for these choices, it is an explanation after the fact. Nor is this a new concept. According to an article in The Economist magazine, a Freudian trained psychologist, Ernest Dichter, arrived in the United States in 1938 and subsequently made millions teaching Madison Avenue how to sell to the hidden subconscious desires of the public. He believed that…

…most people have no idea why they buy things. They might answer questions in an effort to be helpful (particularly in the early 20th century, when consumers were chuffed to be asked to share their thoughts). But these were attempts to make sense of decisions retrospectively.

I suspect we have all caught ourselves looking for ways to rationalize what we somehow know we want to do but about which we have some instinctual understanding that it might not be a good thing to do.

I am in the beginning stages of research for my talk but already I have come across a couple of books that have bearing on the subject. The first is Your Dog is Your Mirror, written by Kevin Behan, which explores at length the emotional capacity of humans and dogs. Mr. Behan comes at this from life long experience of training dogs and their owners. His conviction is that emotion is the essence of the connection of dogs to humans, dogs to dogs, and humans to humans. Emotion, he believes is the basis of our ability to empathize as well. It is also, he claims, the vehicle whereby energy is turned into information, that is, how intelligence is manifested. Among his central points is the idea that social animals are connected at an emotional level into a kind of group being, and that each animal has a role to play in that group being. This is most striking when he discusses the relationship between prey and predator, which is clearly not limited to an interspecies relationship, but also exists within the context of a species. We can see this very clearly when we consider our experience of human agression. According to Behan, we have varying degrees of “prey-fulness,” which shift us on the scale of predatory and prey-ful behavior according to the individual actors present.

The second book I am reading is Steven Pinker‘s The Better Angels of Ourselves. I have only just begun this book but already I have been treated to a crash course in the history of human cruelty and violence and the opening arguments for the case that we are getting progressively less violent and more able to get along together. Although it is hard to believe this in light of all the strife, human atrocity and conflict we are treated to in our news, it appears to be statistically true when you look at the trends of humans killing humans. Even with the two major world wars of the last century, the rate of humans killing humans was down over preceding centuries.

Of critical importance to the case Pinker is making is the arrival of our ability to empathize, which Pinker suggests is a relatively recent development brought on by a number of civilizing factors, perhaps one of the most important of which was the invention of the printing press. He argues that the widespread dissemination of the written word accompanied our increasing awareness that torture is cruel. It was, he claimed, the ability of enlightenment thinkers to argue broadly through books that certain common human practices, which are horrific by our present standards but which were widely viewed as good entertainment at the time, were unacceptable. As importantly, he argues, fiction that related stories from a first person perspective over time developed the capacity of the general public to project themselves into the minds of other human beings, that is, empathize.

For the next couple of months I will be using my blog to explore ideas for my talk. My working premise is that choice does exist, but it exists in a social context. That is, the rational discourse that leads to consciously choosing something better over something worse does not reside within the individual so much as it resides within the group being. Individuals are driven by fear and desire and their decisions emerge from these emotions. It is only within the context of social relationship that reaches beyond kin, clan and immediate community, that a rational process that can be thought of as free will takes hold. By talking and arguing with one another in a superstition free environment we create the space to be moral actors. I welcome your thoughts, opinions and arguments to the contrary about what I am thinking.

I went for my usual walk down by the river the other morning. I had it in my mind to be on the lookout for a pair of bald eagels that winter near where I walk and that I have seen several times in the last week. During the initial part of my walk I was very aware that my mind was working overtime. My eyes were trained on the ground in front of me and I was repeatedly lost in thought. I actively tried to lift my eyes and just be in the moment of what I was seeing in front of me. I tried not to have thoughts about it, just see. But each time I brought myself out of preoccupation, it was a few tens of seconds before I sank back down into it.

As I neared the area where I was likely to see them, I redoubled my efforts, and I did see one of them in the distance, flying north, up the river, the same direction I was walking. A good sign, I must have thought. Good chance the bird will be sitting in a tree further up the line when I get there. I resolved to keep my head up and keep seeing.

The next thing I remember was a commotion in the tree right above me. Russeling, branch snapping. I looked up just in time to see an eagle plunging towards the river as he/she flew off into the distance. I had been as close as I have yet to get to one of these magnificent birds. But I was preoccupied and completely lost in thought. I pretty much missed the whole thing. It makes me wonder, how much beauty and wonder have I missed in my life by being preoccupied and failing to look up and just see?

Interestingly, this achievement is the result of an attempt to see around corners, by calculating backwards from light that escapes to an image of where it is coming from. This is looking back in time in a way similar to astronomers who look back in time on a grand scale when they gather data from electromagnetic energy that has been traveling since before an intelligent receptor was in place on earth.

The article ends with a quote from Dr. Raskar:

We’re still trying to get our heads around what this means…because no one has been able to see the world in this way before.

Our conception of the reality of our world is determined by the extent of our ability and need to perceive. Once upon a time, it was widely believed that the earth was flat. At the time it might as well have been, given the distances that any given individual could travel in a day. There was a time when most people didn’t wander more than a few miles from home for an entire life time. Why do you need a concept of a round world if that is all the distance anyone travels?

It was not until we began to navigate the seas in sufficient numbers that we had need for a concept of the world as round and ultimately came to broadly accept it as being so. It’s not that the roundness of the world was unknown to anyone. A few particularly astute individuals had figured it out. The signs were there. The math was not hard. There just wasn’t the need to know it as a people. For the needs of their daily lives it was adequate and, for the limited frame of reference, accurate to think of the world as flat. Life worked just fine with that concept.

Whenever anyone asks me to place unlimited trust in anything we know in the here and now, I remember that once upon a time the world was flat. There is no such thing as ultimate knowledge of the universe. Our ways of looking at it are constantly evolving, and more importantly, our ability and need to expand the horizons of our perception proceeds unabated. What passes for sure knowledge of how things work in the here and now is almost certain to appear naive many centuries from now. Our ways of seeing will constantly grow and we can’t begin to imagine what understandings we may have in a few thousand or even a few hundred years. Everything is open to question. Nothing can be said with absolute certainty until, and unless, our means of knowing and perceiving becomes god like. Until that time, we are left to deal with the world within the context that we know, and if we are wise, we do so with a healthy amount of humility.

We made three dishes with them this year. The first was a tarte tatin. Quinces are ideal for this delicious upside down pie as they are relatively dry and hold their shape well. Then there was the quince jam, a mediteranian delicacy used in a variety of ways both sweet and savory. Finally there were the lamb chops with poached quinces and balsamic pan sauce, which was food for the gods.

Quinces are among the small set of seasonal foods that are not available all year long and only appear in a relatively narrow window of time. I really love that there are foods which are available only at certain times of the year. They help define the character of the season in which they appear and provide sensual experiences that reinforce the arrivals and departures of those seasons.

This year we began our commitment to preserving food. In the northeast, we have four distinct seasons, and a relatively long period of time when we can’t grow much of anything. In the winter, we rely on our supermarkets to bring us food from places like California, Mexico and New Zealand. Our goal is to preserve enough food from spring, summer and fall to get through the winter. It will take us a while to get there, but already we have canned some preserves and frozen stocks and meals made with the growing season bounty. I am excited about the prospect of bringing these foods out during the winter, remembering when and how they were made and reliving the tastes and smells of spring, summer and fall in the midst of deep cold winter.

Our methods of food production and our wealth have created the conditions under which we can have anything we want any time of the year. This includes foods that can’t be grown where we live, sometimes flown from half way around the world to our markets. This is the hallmark of wealthy civilizations, and more recently, civilizations run on “cheap” energy. Goods and foods from exotic places become available increasingly to the general population.

This comes at a price. We have been progressively divorcing ourselves from the flow of time and place that is particular to where we are within it. We have accepted a food production and delivery system that is less healthy both nutritionally and spiritually and that relies heavily on salt, artificial flavor enhancers and artificial coloring to look appetizing and taste like anything. We have allowed science and industry to manage us into complacent livestock raised on these inferior nutrients and we exchange the fruits of our labor as payment for this base system of sustenance. In place of the natural signs of the approach of a new season, we gather around our televisions and anticipate the sporting events that have become national pastimes and distractions from the real thing. Football announces fall, basketball winter, baseball spring and summer.

We, of course, can’t all be farmers or even grow all our own food. And much of the fruits of civilization arise in cities where growing your own is largely out of the question, the urban farming movement not withstanding. But we can have fresh and seasonal food ingredients as the popularity and spread of farmers markets across our cities has demonstrated. And we can question whether our so called conveniences are really convenient or desirable. As I have become a better cook I have begun to realize that many of the convenience foods we buy are quick and easy to make at home with results that are superior and healthier. Mustard, crackers, hummus, and cranberry relish, to name a few.

In his essay, Buddhist Economics, E. F. Schumacher quotes Ananda Coomaraswamy as follows about what is a machine and what is a tool.

“The craftsman himself…can always, if allowed to, draw the delicate distinction between the machine and the tool. The carpet loom is a tool, a contrivance for holding warp threads at a stretch for the pile to be woven round them by the craftsmen’s fingers; but the power loom is a machine, and its significance as a destroyer of culture lies in the fact that it does the essentially human part of the work.”

I think there are similar distinctions to be made when thinking about what we allow to be produced for us and how it is produced. And we need to be mindful of these distinctions because the wrong choices are not only “destroyers of culture,” they are also destroyers of health and well being.

Because of my interest in this topic, I keep track of articles that are published about machine intelligence and the impact of technology on humanity. There have been a bunch lately that have me wanting to revisit the topic. I thought it would be of interest to periodically share links to articles I have found interesting or disturbing. I am going to start with the impact of machine intelligence on the labor force.

Analytics in 40 years: Machines will kick human managers to the curb, Via ZDNet – This article makes the case that the days of middle management, possibly on up to the CEO level, are numbered. It discusses a maverick presentation at a conference by Nigel Rayner of Gartner. Rayner says:

…we stink at rational decisions. In addition, compensation packages, peer pressure and other nonsense simply distort good decision-making. Machines simply do a better job. Humans can’t process information overflow, short product cycles and the pressure to deliver results. “The way we have evolved means that humans don’t make rational decisions,” said Rayner. “We’re not hardwired to be rational. And even if we were, the current environment and the pace of business would make it hard for executives to balance short-term and long-term needs.”

More Jobs Predicted for Machines, Not People, via NYT – The title says it all.

Faster, cheaper computers and increasingly clever software, the authors say, are giving machines capabilities that were once thought to be distinctively human, like understanding speech, translating from one language to another and recognizing patterns. So automation is rapidly moving beyond factories to jobs in call centers, marketing and sales — parts of the services sector, which provides most jobs in the economy.

New Technology and the End of Jobs, Jeremy Rifkin, via Converge.org.nz

Corporate leaders and mainstream economists tell us that the rising unemployment figures represent short-term “adjustments” to powerful market-driven forces that are speeding the global economy in a new direction. They hold out the promise of an exciting new world of high-tech automated production, booming global commerce, and unprecedented material abundance. Millions of working people remain sceptical. In the United States, Fortune magazine found that corporations are eliminating more than 2 million jobs annually. While some new jobs are being created in the US economy, they are in the low-paying sectors and are usually temporary.

There is lots to wonder about here, and worry about. It suggests to me that we need to really rethink the whole thing. At minimum, we need to think way more seriously and collectively about what we are doing here, which is largely making ourselves irrelevant to the socioeconomic system we have believed in for so long. Among the glimmers of hope is the fact that humans are still way better at creative thought processing than machines, though my talk on intelligent life suggests that we shouldn’t rest too comfortably on our laurels there. At the end of the day, humans are just great at being human. We must begin to evolve a socioeconomic model that puts that at its heart.  We really need to think seriously about what constitutes a meaningful life and about making that the focus of our socioeconomic activity. To end on a little bit more of an up note, a thoughtful article from the NYT:

The Meaningfulness of Lives, Todd May, via NYT

A promising and more inclusive approach  is offered by Susan Wolf in her recent and compelling book, “Meaning in Life and Why It Matters.”   A meaningful life, she claims, is distinct from a happy life or a morally good one. In her view, “meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness.” A meaningful life must, in some sense then, feel worthwhile.  The person living the life must be engaged by it.  A life of commitment to causes that are generally defined as worthy — like feeding and clothing the poor or ministering to the ill — but that do not move the person participating in them will lack meaningfulness in this sense. However, for a life to be meaningful, it must also be worthwhile. Engagement in a life of tiddlywinks does not rise to the level of a meaningful life, no matter how gripped one might be by the game.

And a thoughtful essay by E. F. Schumacher, Buddhist Economics.

From the Buddhist point of view, there are therefore two types of mechanisation which must be clearly distinguished: one that enhances a man’s skill and power and one that turns the work of man over to a mechanical slave, leaving man in a position of having to serve the slave. How to tell the one from the other? “The craftsman himself,” says Ananda Coomaraswamy, a man equally competent to talk about the modern West as the ancient East, “can always, if allowed to, draw the delicate distinction between the machine and the tool. The carpet loom is a tool, a contrivance for holding warp threads at a stretch for the pile to be woven round them by the craftsmen’s fingers; but the power loom is a machine, and its significance as a destroyer of culture lies in the fact that it does the essentially human part of the work.”  ⁵ It is clear, therefore, that Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilisation not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character. Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man’s work. And work, properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it and equally their products.

And, finally, one of my favorite quotes from Moby Dick:

I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the country;

I suggest that we need to evolve a socioeconomic system centered on our humanity, that this is where happiness is to be found. Anything else turns the world and our future over to the machines…