My Letter of Resignation (2012-13? Close enough. Pre-David Deutsch. & Pre-Paul Beckwith, et al . . . in an increasingly jitterly collapse-sensing world? Slight revision: 5.7.15.) Well, let’s see . . . Rape and genocide are natural. The smarter the species, the more they engage in deception. The smarter the human child, the more she or he engages in deceit. Within individual genomes, some genes deceive other genes. Bacteria engage in suicide bombing. Welcome. Fellow Engagers. I’ve been reading words of the smart people again. Distilled per my selection filters, I have placed jumbles of their thought-structures together here, with commentary. Please don’t ask me to be consistent. “The very constitution of the human mind makes us massively inconsistent.” Robert Kurzban Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite The brain has various modules, neuronal sets that have evolved to perform specific survival-enhancing functions. Some modular apps are: avoid predators, make friends, manipulate people, secure mate, breed. Most modules are nonconscious, which means they’re working, voting on our behavior all the time but we don’t have access to their voting record, except maybe afterwards when the behavior, the action-outcome is reviewable. And another thing, some of these modules of the nonconscious mind know stuff that they don’t share with the conscious mind, kind of like your lover. Actually, it’s lots of stuff. “. . . the human sensory system sends the brain about eleven million bits of information a second. . . . The actual amount of information we can handle [consciously] has been estimated to be somewhere between sixteen and fifty bits per second.” Leonard Mlodinow Subliminal Please do the math; we’re missing big data. So now you can say this to your friends and enemies: “You know what your problem is Sparky? You’ve never really met yourSelves.” Naturally, Sparky can retort with the same. * * * Fictions of Self? We Be Packing . . . “When people are shown a full array of photos of themselves, from 50 percent more attractive to 50 percent less attractive, they choose the 20 percent better-looking photo as the one they like the most and think they most resemble. This is an important general result: self-deception is bounded—30 percent better looking is implausible, while 10 percent better fails to gain the full advantage.” Robert Trivers The Folly of Fools “Consider a survey of nearly one million high school seniors. When asked to judge their ability to get along with others, 100 percent rated themselves as at least average, 60 percent rated themselves in the top 10 percent, and 25 percent considered themselves in the top 1 percent. And when asked about their leadership skills, only 2 percent assessed themselves as being below average. Teachers aren’t any more realistic: 94 percent of college professors say they do above-average work.” Leonard Mlodinow Subliminal “In fact, we can be very poor witnesses to experience itself. By merely glancing at your face or listening to your tone of voice, others are often more aware of your state of mind and motivations than you are.” Sam Harris Free Will * * * Let Us Manipulate A primary selection pressure driving the evolution of the human brain, the fastest evolving organ in the history of evolution, is likely an intra-species arms race to be the best at manipulating other people. Side note: The ability to self-deceive, according to Robert Trivers, aids us in the ability to deceive others. In this manipulation arms race, morality is used strategically for self-advancement. Morality is often deployed post hoc as a public relations press release. We’ve evolved a brain module, a brain app to generate press releases. The design function of this module: Explain and justify our actions to other people in the best possible light . . . the better to navigate the social matrix, my sweet. Morality is also used to try to control/manipulate the breeding opportunities of self and others. (Kurzban stuff.) Examples: Thomas Jefferson. Women denigrate other women more often when they’re ovulating. Eliot Spitzer. Religion. Anti-abortion. Pro-abortion. Me. You. And this: I’ve heard of jealousy; and felt it too, the burden of its chemical loading blood-banging the systems, yielding: passion, that usurps reason. * * * Religion and Parasites Are Evolutionary Friends “ . . . more than half of all species on earth are parasitic on the other half . . .” Trivers “Regarding the evidence, there can be little doubt. Across the entire globe, religious and linguistic diversity map directly on parasite load, as does ethnic diversity—the higher the parasite pressure, the more religions, languages, and ethnic groups per unit area.” Trivers Ex. Brazil, being in the tropics, has a greater parasite load than Canada. “Canada and Brazil are roughly the same size, yet Canada has 15 religions and Brazil, 159.” Trivers --- citing the work of Randy Thornhill and C. L. Fincher. Nonconscious Mind Modules Perform Neighborhood Parasite Watch: Religious diversity is partly generated as a technique to avoid parasites. Runs something like this: Gee whiz, now I believe this, not that. Why Ralphie?! Because it lowers my parasite exposure, biootch! Native Americans took severe parasite hits when European “bugs” chewed freely, facing defenseless immune systems. Millions died. Part of the Complexity: Parasite driven cultural separation systems called religion, language, ethnicity . . . at least back then when . . . * * * Totally Special, Totally Superior, Totally Chosen “After all, any organism created by natural selection is, by default, under the illusion that it is special.” “We all base our lives on this premise—that our welfare is more important than the welfare of pretty much anyone else, with the possible exception of close kin. Indeed, the premise is that our welfare is much more important than the welfare of others.” Robert Wright -- Evolution of God “And every creation myth, without exception, affirmed the superiority of the tribe that invented it over all other tribes. That much assumed, every religious believer saw himself as a chosen person.” “Commitment to a particular faith is by definition religious bigotry.” E. O. Wilson -- The Social Conquest of Earth * * * Male Sexulality In human male sexuality, there’s been selection for a quality that scientists call: “indiscriminate eagerness.” Expert Witness: Maria Shriver. Power Loving Chairman Mao believed in communism, and the young virgins brought to his quarters. President Jack Kennedy believed in capitalism, and the young interns he bedded. Father of the Nation, Great Soul Ghandi believed in nonviolence, and the young girls he slept with (but did not have sex with?). As you know, bedding young women is a biological tradition for powerful males, regardless of their beliefs. Culture Soup: Slang Expression Ratchet: “a person or activity that is out of hand, out of control, or generally whack in some way.” Urban Dictionary “Monica Lewinsky is a proof of ratchetfet. Bill Clinton had her on her knees slobing on them sacks. Doctors be getting ratchet, nurses be getting ratchet, lawyers, D.A. and judges, the whole jury getting ratchet.” Lil Boosie -- Do the Ratchet * * * Multilevel Selection Within a group, the better strategy is to cheat. Between groups, the more cooperative, altruistic group generally wins. Hence Americans create and bestow: The Medal of Honor. Hence Muslims create and bestow: Virgins in Heaven. Multilevel Selection Action: (note: Some prominent scientists whose work I love, refute multilevel selection. E. O. Wilson & David Sloan Wilson (not related), support the idea. TBD.) Individual Selection vs. Group Selection (example ripped from E. O. Wilson) The bacteria psuedomonas flourescens need oxygen to survive. When a colony is cultured in an unstirred broth, members readily consume most of the oxygen. To secure oxygen access from the air the bacteria need to float together at the surface. To accomplish mutual floatation a spontaneous mutation occurs. Individuals secrete a polymer called the wrinkly spreader. The wrinkly spreader helps the colony of bacteria stick together, forming a gooey floating mat at the surface of the broth, thereby retaining oxygen access for the colony. The generation of the wrinkly spreader polymer is metabolically expensive for each individual bacterium. Some individuals in the bacteria colony cheat. They don’t generate the wrinkly spreader, saving their bodies the expensive production costs, securing a resource advantage, while still floating in the mat. Individuals seek advantages for themselves. But group selection edits individual selection? Group selection: Selection for a functional colony mix between givers and cheaters? If the colony has too many cheaters, the wrinkly spreader mat disintegrates and the whole colony sinks into the abyss and dies. Colonies with a heavy mix of cheaters? That mix ain’t passed on. * * * Year after Year: The Daily Killings The estimated background rate of species extinction is roughly 10 to 20 species a year. The current rate of species extinction is estimated to be, roughly, 150 to 200 a day. Going all specicidal and shit. But you knew that . . . And this? “The Tragedy of the Commons” gone exponential. Individual selection: Chainsaw the gray elephant face for the white ivory advantage. Elephant blood is red. RED. Too many chainsaws cutting faces and the ecological mat were floating on breaks up. The chains are hot from cutting. Blood flows. Sure is: Red, and thick, and sticky. And stinks. Stinks. Up to: 200 SPECIES A DAY. RED BLOOD IS EVERYWHERE, and yet, just a preview of the whole earth anarchy soon to be playing right outside our doors, and in our homes too? Update: 5.7.15 Per new perspective written by Stewart Brand. Vast majority of extinctions have occurred on islands; and additional knowledge. K, important, so probably need to back off on my bloody take? Maybe. I don’t know . . . given abrupt climate change, ramp the numbers back up? More to know . . . always. * * * Climate, Genocide, Bacteria Suicide Bombing Data suggests that the rate of acidification of the oceans from climate change is faster than at any time in the previous 60 millions years. Former NASA scientist James Lovelock has predicted that billions of humans will die due to climate change. “We have to understand fully that we are still aggressive tribal animals that will fight for land and food. Under pressure, any group of us can be as brutal as any of those we deplore: genocide by tribal animals is as natural as breathing, however good and kind the individual members of the mob may be.” Lovelock A species of bacteria lives in colonies where all members are clones. When the environment makes survival perilous, some colony members internally manufacture chemical weapons of mass destruction in their little bacterium bodies. Later, if necessary, they engage in suicide bombing. At some tipping point these individual bacterium bodies explode, releasing chemicals deadly to rivals, but not to their fellow clones. Nature has a plan: Trot out the time-tested selected apps, per the situation. “The ethics of a lifeboat world where the imperative is survival are wholly different from those of the cozy self-indulgence of the latter part of the twentieth century.” James Lovelock “When a part of the environment is unpredictable, on the other hand, the person is wise to use a mixed strategy achieved by plasticity. If one trait or response does not work, switch to another within the genetic repertory.” E. O. Wilson -- The Social Conquest of Earth The Genetic Repertory: Cultural Reviews of Starvation “The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died.” Historian Timothy Snyder -- Bloodlands (writing about Stalin’s starving of Ukraine, circa 1930s.) Genocide “Gas vans roved the streets of Minsk, the drivers seeking stray Jewish children . . . The girls and boys knew what would happen to them if they were caught. They would ask for a tattered bit of dignity as they walked up the ramp to their death. ‘Please sirs,’ they would say to the Germans, ‘do not hit us. We can get to the trucks on our own.’” Timothy Snyder -- Bloodlands War “Two fellows die of tetanus. Their skin turns pale, their limbs stiffen, at last only their eyes live—stubbornly. Many of the wounded have their shattered limbs hanging free in the air from a gallows; underneath the wound a basin is placed into which the pus drips. Every two or three hours the vessel is emptied. Other men lie in stretching bandages with heavy weights hanging from the end of the bed. I see intestine wounds that are constantly full of excreta. The surgeon’s clerk shows me X-ray photographs of completely smashed hip-bones, knees and shoulders. A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life does its daily round. And this is only one hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must all be lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this steam of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.” Erichque Remarque -- All Quiet on the Western Front How we doing? Ladies and Gentlemen, the grand kicker to the above realities? THERE MAY BE NO FREE WILL. “Seeming acts of volition merely arise spontaneously (whether caused, uncaused, or probabilistically inclined, it makes no difference) and cannot be traced to a point of origin in our conscious minds.” Sam Harris Free Will In an experiment on conscious decision making: “The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which buttons subjects would press a full 7 to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made.” Harris Makes sense that the human form of consciousness would be a new function on the evolutionary continuum per a series of cranial add-ons. “We do not know what we intend to do until the intention itself arises. To understand this is to realize that we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions in the way that people generally suppose.” Harris Harris describes people as “neuronal weather patterns.” We’re “neuronal weather patterns” blowing around the biosphere for a few blinks. We don’t accuse hurricanes and tornadoes of bad intentions. They just blow away . . . “ . . . the idea that we, as conscious beings, are deeply responsible for the character of our mental lives and subsequent behavior is simply impossible to map onto reality.” “You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.” Sam Harris Storm Report: 98.1% of the inmates on death row have a particular constellation of DNA. Neuroscientist David Eagleman “The Brain on Trial” -- Atlantic Magazine. As Harris and Eagleman say, we can and should protect ourselves from bad weather. So . . . Says yous sees me as “weird neuronal weather,” or maybe as “sad cog neuronal weather,” or as “just another asshole,” you didn’t freely choose to think/feel that way. Your reaction arose in you, based on previous conditions. I guess I’ll try to not be mad at, or hate your “neuronal weather patterns,” if you do the same guess for me. Of course, neither of us may be really in control. Impedimentary Irritant, High Def, By Def: I’ve been selected to feel, think and believe that I’m “more special than thou.” And this bummer too: So have you. So, my little proffered guess to not be mad at thee, or not hate thee, well, it’s likely an unfree, survival-derived-and-initiated ploy, yet another self-deception rolled out to better deceive me and thee, yet another social media press release to self and world from this brain’s press secretary module. Verily, multiple micro and aggregated environments can turn brain modules on and off, generating varying neuronal weather patterns in resonate response to the oscillations of micro and aggregated neuronal social-political weather, and/or micro and aggregated ecological weather . . . working the genetic repertory . . . nonconscious dance-stepping, processing, selecting from the veritable plethora of information. So it is: We’re all turned on, dancing all the time, even when we’re turned “off” in sleep. Yes, I intended to write this piece, but the intention arose. I got turned on and generated these words. I am a bio-culture particle emitting a spontaneous cultural mutation based on motivations, and in integrated, systems, physical, chemical, electrical, etc., that I’m largely unaware of. This weather pattern typed this code. May or may not have been a choice, a product of free will, or not. Truly, writing this, attempting this anciently imbued, slavishly hued social manip trip has been an integrated cranial pleasure, and has provided a lightening, a modular release from burdenous bundles of thought. Translated: throwing down some nah-nana-boo-boo swag on thee. . . (really, the swag tank is increasingly depleted, partly a function of age and the knowledge that I’m full of shit, pretty much by definition, by structure and being, more so than some, less so than others . . . but don’t get me wrong, the swag-superior app is still functional and accessible, some times, most times.) Closing Press Release: Please don’t be mad at this particular blinking traffic light, red then green, for writing this letter of resignation cause . . . “ . . . what can it possibly mean to say that his will is ‘free’? No one has ever described a way in which mental and physical processes could arise that would attest to the existence of such freedom.” Harris Free Will Addendum: We may not have free will, though mind-studs like David Deutsch think we do. And in general, I’m drafting Deutsch way ahead of Harris for my fantasy knowledge team. Regardless: We Can LEARN. And learning generates new output, new modes of being and reacting, new neuronal weather. And per Carl Popper and David Deutsch, we have a duty to be optimistic. Trying that meme on, though not a natural for this multi-polar aggregate information structure. My apologies. Please forgive my darkness. Part of the genetic repertory, and this: half the day is dark, brah. This was written prior to ingesting the “optimism duty” information. And in that experiment predicting our behavior 7 to 10 seconds prior to our being conscious of it, Robert Trivers reports in The Folly of Fools that the same experiment showed we have a half a second to abort an action. And props to Sam Harris, he’s not arguing that we should give up, not at all. Love his toughness, and the way he processes . . . and really all these scientists chasing down knowledge. Love ‘em, at least from a distance. (Sorta like fucking or love in that those engagements do not equate with full intellectual congruency.) So, as is usually the case, I don’t know, still processing. TBD, like tomorrow. Surfing . . . and I don’t control the waves, just riding, adjusting to the dynamics, best I can.

My Letter of Resignation

(2012-13? Close enough. Pre-David Deutsch. & Pre-Paul Beckwith, et al . . .

in an increasingly jitterly collapse-sensing world? Slight revision: 5.7.15.)

Well, let’s see . . .

Rape and genocide are natural.

The smarter the species, the more they engage in deception.

The smarter the human child, the more she or he engages in deceit.

Within individual genomes, some genes deceive other genes.

Bacteria engage in suicide bombing.

Welcome.

Fellow Engagers.

I’ve been reading words of the smart people again. Distilled per my selection filters, I have placed jumbles of their thought-structures together here, with commentary.

Please don’t ask me to be consistent.

“The very constitution of the human mind makes us massively inconsistent.”

Robert Kurzban Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite

The brain has various modules, neuronal sets that have evolved to perform specific survival-enhancing functions. Some modular apps are: avoid predators, make friends, manipulate people, secure mate, breed. Most modules are nonconscious, which means they’re working, voting on our behavior all the time but we don’t have access to their voting record, except maybe afterwards when the behavior, the action-outcome is reviewable.

And another thing, some of these modules of the nonconscious mind know stuff that they don’t share with the conscious mind, kind of like your lover. Actually, it’s lots of stuff. “. . . the human sensory system sends the brain about eleven million bits of information a second. . . . The actual amount of information we can handle [consciously] has been estimated to be somewhere between sixteen and fifty bits per second.” Leonard Mlodinow Subliminal

Please do the math; we’re missing big data.

So now you can say this to your friends and enemies: “You know what your problem is Sparky? You’ve never really met yourSelves.” Naturally, Sparky can retort with the same.

* * *

Fictions of Self? We Be Packing . . .

“When people are shown a full array of photos of themselves, from 50 percent more attractive to 50 percent less attractive, they choose the 20 percent better-looking photo as the one they like the most and think they most resemble. This is an important general result: self-deception is bounded—30 percent better looking is implausible, while 10 percent better fails to gain the full advantage.” Robert Trivers The Folly of Fools

“Consider a survey of nearly one million high school seniors. When asked to judge their ability to get along with others, 100 percent rated themselves as at least average, 60 percent rated themselves in the top 10 percent, and 25 percent considered themselves in the top 1 percent. And when asked about their leadership skills, only 2 percent assessed themselves as being below average. Teachers aren’t any more realistic: 94 percent of college professors say they do above-average work.” Leonard Mlodinow Subliminal

“In fact, we can be very poor witnesses to experience itself. By merely glancing at your face or listening to your tone of voice, others are often more aware of your state of mind and motivations than you are.” Sam Harris Free Will

* * *

Let Us Manipulate

A primary selection pressure driving the evolution of the human brain, the fastest evolving organ in the history of evolution, is likely an intra-species arms race to be the best at manipulating other people.

Side note: The ability to self-deceive, according to Robert Trivers, aids us in the ability to deceive others.

In this manipulation arms race, morality is used strategically for self-advancement. Morality is often deployed post hoc as a public relations press release. We’ve evolved a brain module, a brain app to generate press releases. The design function of this module: Explain and justify our actions to other people in the best possible light . . . the better to navigate the social matrix, my sweet.

Morality is also used to try to control/manipulate the breeding opportunities of self and others. (Kurzban stuff.)

Examples:

Thomas Jefferson.

Women denigrate other women more often when they’re ovulating.

Eliot Spitzer.

Religion.

Anti-abortion.

Pro-abortion.

Me.

You.

And this: I’ve heard of jealousy; and felt it too, the burden of its chemical loading blood-banging the systems, yielding: passion, that usurps reason.

* * *

Religion and Parasites Are Evolutionary Friends

“ . . . more than half of all species on earth are parasitic on the other half . . .” Trivers

“Regarding the evidence, there can be little doubt. Across the entire globe, religious and linguistic diversity map directly on parasite load, as does ethnic diversity—the higher the parasite pressure, the more religions, languages, and ethnic groups per unit area.” Trivers

Ex. Brazil, being in the tropics, has a greater parasite load than Canada.

“Canada and Brazil are roughly the same size, yet Canada has 15 religions and Brazil, 159.” Trivers --- citing the work of Randy Thornhill and C. L. Fincher.

Nonconscious Mind Modules Perform Neighborhood Parasite Watch:

Religious diversity is partly generated as a technique to avoid parasites.

Runs something like this:

Gee whiz, now I believe this, not that.

Why Ralphie?!

Because it lowers my parasite exposure, biootch!

Native Americans took severe parasite hits when European “bugs” chewed freely, facing defenseless immune systems. Millions died.

Part of the Complexity:

Parasite driven cultural separation systems called religion, language, ethnicity . . . at least back then when . . .

* * *

Totally Special, Totally Superior, Totally Chosen

“After all, any organism created by natural selection is, by default, under the illusion that it is special.”

“We all base our lives on this premise—that our welfare is more important than the welfare of pretty much anyone else, with the possible exception of close kin. Indeed, the premise is that our welfare is much more important than the welfare of others.”

Robert Wright -- Evolution of God

“And every creation myth, without exception, affirmed the superiority of the tribe that invented it over all other tribes. That much assumed, every religious believer saw himself as a chosen person.”

“Commitment to a particular faith is by definition religious bigotry.”

E. O. Wilson -- The Social Conquest of Earth

* * *

Male Sexulality

In human male sexuality, there’s been selection for a quality that scientists call: “indiscriminate eagerness.”

Expert Witness: Maria Shriver.

Power Loving

Chairman Mao believed in communism, and the young virgins brought to his quarters.

President Jack Kennedy believed in capitalism, and the young interns he bedded.

Father of the Nation, Great Soul Ghandi believed in nonviolence, and the young girls he slept with (but did not have sex with?).

As you know, bedding young women is a biological tradition for powerful males, regardless of their beliefs.

Culture Soup: Slang Expression

Ratchet: “a person or activity that is out of hand, out of control, or generally whack in some way.” Urban Dictionary

“Monica Lewinsky is a proof of ratchetfet. Bill Clinton had her on her knees slobing on them sacks. Doctors be getting ratchet, nurses be getting ratchet, lawyers, D.A. and judges, the whole jury getting ratchet.” Lil Boosie -- Do the Ratchet

* * *

Multilevel Selection

Within a group, the better strategy is to cheat.

Between groups, the more cooperative, altruistic group generally wins.

Hence Americans create and bestow: The Medal of Honor.

Hence Muslims create and bestow: Virgins in Heaven.

Multilevel Selection Action: (note: Some prominent scientists whose work I love, refute multilevel selection. E. O. Wilson & David Sloan Wilson (not related), support the idea. TBD.)

Individual Selection vs. Group Selection (example ripped from E. O. Wilson)

The bacteria psuedomonas flourescens need oxygen to survive. When a colony is cultured in an unstirred broth, members readily consume most of the oxygen. To secure oxygen access from the air the bacteria need to float together at the surface. To accomplish mutual floatation a spontaneous mutation occurs. Individuals secrete a polymer called the wrinkly spreader. The wrinkly spreader helps the colony of bacteria stick together, forming a gooey floating mat at the surface of the broth, thereby retaining oxygen access for the colony.

The generation of the wrinkly spreader polymer is metabolically expensive for each individual bacterium. Some individuals in the bacteria colony cheat. They don’t generate the wrinkly spreader, saving their bodies the expensive production costs, securing a resource advantage, while still floating in the mat. Individuals seek advantages for themselves.

But group selection edits individual selection?

Group selection: Selection for a functional colony mix between givers and cheaters? If the colony has too many cheaters, the wrinkly spreader mat disintegrates and the whole colony sinks into the abyss and dies. Colonies with a heavy mix of cheaters? That mix ain’t passed on.

* * *

Year after Year: The Daily Killings

The estimated background rate of species extinction is roughly 10 to 20 species a year. The current rate of species extinction is estimated to be, roughly, 150 to 200 a day.

Going all specicidal and shit.

But you knew that . . .

And this?

“The Tragedy of the Commons” gone exponential.

Individual selection: Chainsaw the gray elephant face for the white ivory advantage.

Elephant blood is red.

RED. Too many chainsaws cutting faces and the ecological mat were floating on breaks up.

The chains are hot from cutting. Blood flows.

Sure is: Red, and thick, and sticky. And stinks. Stinks.

Up to: 200 SPECIES A DAY.

RED BLOOD IS EVERYWHERE, and yet, just a preview of the whole earth anarchy soon to be playing right outside our doors, and in our homes too?

Update: 5.7.15 Per new perspective written by Stewart Brand. Vast majority of extinctions have occurred on islands; and additional knowledge. K, important, so probably need to back off on my bloody take? Maybe. I don’t know . . . given abrupt climate change, ramp the numbers back up?

More to know . . . always.

* * *

Climate, Genocide, Bacteria Suicide Bombing

Data suggests that the rate of acidification of the oceans from climate change is faster than at any time in the previous 60 millions years.

Former NASA scientist James Lovelock has predicted that billions of humans will die due to climate change.

“We have to understand fully that we are still aggressive tribal animals that will fight for land and food. Under pressure, any group of us can be as brutal as any of those we deplore: genocide by tribal animals is as natural as breathing, however good and kind the individual members of the mob may be.” Lovelock

A species of bacteria lives in colonies where all members are clones. When the environment makes survival perilous, some colony members internally manufacture chemical weapons of mass destruction in their little bacterium bodies. Later, if necessary, they engage in suicide bombing. At some tipping point these individual bacterium bodies explode, releasing chemicals deadly to rivals, but not to their fellow clones.

Nature has a plan: Trot out the time-tested selected apps, per the situation.

“The ethics of a lifeboat world where the imperative is survival are wholly different from those of the cozy self-indulgence of the latter part of the twentieth century.” James Lovelock

“When a part of the environment is unpredictable, on the other hand, the person is wise to use a mixed strategy achieved by plasticity. If one trait or response does not work, switch to another within the genetic repertory.” E. O. Wilson -- The Social Conquest of Earth

The Genetic Repertory: Cultural Reviews of

Starvation

“The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died.” Historian Timothy Snyder -- Bloodlands (writing about Stalin’s starving of Ukraine, circa 1930s.)

Genocide

“Gas vans roved the streets of Minsk, the drivers seeking stray Jewish children . . . The girls and boys knew what would happen to them if they were caught. They would ask for a tattered bit of dignity as they walked up the ramp to their death. ‘Please sirs,’ they would say to the Germans, ‘do not hit us. We can get to the trucks on our own.’” Timothy Snyder -- Bloodlands

War

“Two fellows die of tetanus. Their skin turns pale, their limbs stiffen, at last only their eyes live—stubbornly. Many of the wounded have their shattered limbs hanging free in the air from a gallows; underneath the wound a basin is placed into which the pus drips. Every two or three hours the vessel is emptied. Other men lie in stretching bandages with heavy weights hanging from the end of the bed. I see intestine wounds that are constantly full of excreta. The surgeon’s clerk shows me X-ray photographs of completely smashed hip-bones, knees and shoulders.

A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life does its daily round. And this is only one hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must all be lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this steam of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.” Erichque Remarque -- All Quiet on the Western Front

How we doing?

Ladies and Gentlemen, the grand kicker to the above realities?

THERE MAY BE NO FREE WILL.

“Seeming acts of volition merely arise spontaneously (whether caused, uncaused, or probabilistically inclined, it makes no difference) and cannot be traced to a point of origin in our conscious minds.” Sam Harris Free Will

In an experiment on conscious decision making:

“The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which buttons subjects would press a full 7 to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made.” Harris

Makes sense that the human form of consciousness would be a new function on the evolutionary continuum per a series of cranial add-ons.

“We do not know what we intend to do until the intention itself arises. To understand this is to realize that we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions in the way that people generally suppose.” Harris

Harris describes people as “neuronal weather patterns.”

We’re “neuronal weather patterns” blowing around the biosphere for a few blinks.

We don’t accuse hurricanes and tornadoes of bad intentions. They just blow away . . .

“ . . . the idea that we, as conscious beings, are deeply responsible for the character of our mental lives and subsequent behavior is simply impossible to map onto reality.” “You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.” Sam Harris

Storm Report:

98.1% of the inmates on death row have a particular constellation of DNA. Neuroscientist David Eagleman “The Brain on Trial” -- Atlantic Magazine.

As Harris and Eagleman say, we can and should protect ourselves from bad weather.

So . . . Says yous sees me as “weird neuronal weather,” or maybe as “sad cog neuronal weather,” or as “just another asshole,” you didn’t freely choose to think/feel that way. Your reaction arose in you, based on previous conditions.

I guess I’ll try to not be mad at, or hate your “neuronal weather patterns,” if you do the same guess for me. Of course, neither of us may be really in control.

Impedimentary Irritant, High Def, By Def:

I’ve been selected to feel, think and believe that I’m “more special than thou.”

And this bummer too: So have you.

So, my little proffered guess to not be mad at thee, or not hate thee, well, it’s likely an unfree, survival-derived-and-initiated ploy, yet another self-deception rolled out to better deceive me and thee, yet another social media press release to self and world from this brain’s press secretary module.

Verily, multiple micro and aggregated environments can turn brain modules on and off, generating varying neuronal weather patterns in resonate response to the oscillations of micro and aggregated neuronal social-political weather, and/or micro and aggregated ecological weather . . . working the genetic repertory . . . nonconscious dance-stepping, processing, selecting from the veritable plethora of information.

So it is: We’re all turned on, dancing all the time, even when we’re turned “off” in sleep.

Yes, I intended to write this piece, but the intention arose. I got turned on and generated these words. I am a bio-culture particle emitting a spontaneous cultural mutation based on motivations, and in integrated, systems, physical, chemical, electrical, etc., that I’m largely unaware of.

This weather pattern typed this code. May or may not have been a choice, a product of free will, or not.

Truly, writing this, attempting this anciently imbued, slavishly hued social manip trip has been an integrated cranial pleasure, and has provided a lightening, a modular release from burdenous bundles of thought. Translated: throwing down some nah-nana-boo-boo swag on thee. . . (really, the swag tank is increasingly depleted, partly a function of age and the knowledge that I’m full of shit, pretty much by definition, by structure and being, more so than some, less so than others . . . but don’t get me wrong, the swag-superior app is still functional and accessible, some times, most times.)

Closing Press Release:

Please don’t be mad at this particular blinking traffic light, red then green, for writing this letter of resignation cause . . .

“ . . . what can it possibly mean to say that his will is ‘free’? No one has ever described a way in which mental and physical processes could arise that would attest to the existence of such freedom.” Harris Free Will

Addendum: We may not have free will, though mind-studs like David Deutsch think we do. And in general, I’m drafting Deutsch way ahead of Harris for my fantasy knowledge team. Regardless: We Can LEARN. And learning generates new output, new modes of being and reacting, new neuronal weather. And per Carl Popper and David Deutsch, we have a duty to be optimistic. Trying that meme on, though not a natural for this multi-polar aggregate information structure. My apologies. Please forgive my darkness. Part of the genetic repertory, and this: half the day is dark, brah. This was written prior to ingesting the “optimism duty” information. And in that experiment predicting our behavior 7 to 10 seconds prior to our being conscious of it, Robert Trivers reports in The Folly of Fools that the same experiment showed we have a half a second to abort an action. And props to Sam Harris, he’s not arguing that we should give up, not at all. Love his toughness, and the way he processes . . . and really all these scientists chasing down knowledge. Love ‘em, at least from a distance. (Sorta like fucking or love in that those engagements do not equate with full intellectual congruency.)

So, as is usually the case, I don’t know, still processing. TBD, like tomorrow.

Surfing . . . and I don’t control the waves, just riding, adjusting to the dynamics, best I can.