The Rehearsal

crimson

It was recommended to me to watch the HBO series The Rehearsal. So I did. I am not entirely sure what to make of this show. This blog will be me exploring my own feelings regarding what takes place and to see where I end up. In other words, I actually do not know how I feel at this point. I am literally going to travel down a rabbit hole and see what happens…

I also need to warn of spoilers here. If you have not seen this series by Nathan Fielder, then you ought to watch the show first before reading this post. On the other hand, perhaps you might find my analysis valuable to help you understand whether you will want to invest the time in watching the show at all. This, of course, is entirely up to you.

Briefly, the show is about a guy who helps other people with challenging, but relatively mundane, real life situations by rehearsing those situations in order to try and achieve the most optimal outcome. For example, in the opening episode, we have a man who has been lying about his education to his trivia buddies for the past twelve years, and has decided finally to come clean. The man is afraid of the reaction one particular trivia buddy will have, and so the rehearsals are intended to ensure that his buddy will remain his buddy after the truth is revealed.

In other words, Fielder is going to attempt, to the best of his ability, to simulate with perfect accuracy the situation whereby the man will engage when he reveals his deception. This entails Fielder building a full sized replica of the bar where the individuals will be hanging out, filling the bar with actors who will portray the various potential people that will be present, including an actor portraying the buddy who will be learning of the “horrible” lie.

The entire series is filled with such pedantically assembled rehearsals of mundane activities and situations, with the creation of detailed sets and the hiring of a literal army of actors. It is quite amusing the passing comments regarding budget throughout the series, especially when staff are hired to maintain the illusion of winter time around a house during the middle of summer. It seems there is no limit to the lengths Fielder is willing to go to perfect his craft.

As a comedy, the series is quite good. The level of ridiculousness that is achieved by the show is far and beyond any other show I have ever seen, and I laughed a lot. But during the viewing, I found the humor was constantly overshadowed by something else. Something sinister and insidious.

It seems others have been suggesting that Fielder was manipulative and sadistic, taking his “contenstants” and embarrassing them on live television. When I suggest something nefarious is going on, this is not what I have in mind. I need to make this clear at the outset. The problem I found with the show is something more subtle, and perhaps even difficult to see unless one just happens to be trained in hard core analysis (like perhaps philosophical analysis) and perhaps even possessing a bit of OCD.

To properly discuss my concern, I first have to talk a little about my personal history. I have a challenging relationship with my siblings and my parents. I am not always sure if my siblings and parents realize this, but I cannot really be around them anymore. It is more than just that they “drive me nuts.” When I am around them, I start to lose parts of myself.

The problem I have with my family has to do with the understanding of actions and consequences of actions. Of cause and effect. My family complains a lot about the going-ons in their lives. They complain about how hard their lives are. They complain about how the world is so unfair. They complain about how others do not take care of them in the ways they feel they are supposed to be taken care of. My family seems to feel that the world owes them something. My family feels that other people owe them something.

However, from my vantage point, it seems to me that something very different is going on. To me, it seems like all the terrible and painful situations my family members end up in are a direct result of the choices and actions they each take. I am able to see the chains of events that have transpired through days, weeks, months, even years, that have led from decisions they have made to their ultimate downfall and suffering. I do not know why or how I was able to do this from such a young age, but I did. And the worst part was that I didn’t even really understand how much I was doing the same things until I finally gained distance from my family.

Less than ten years ago, I left the city I grew up in. I moved to another city in another province. Far enough away that it was unreasonable to see in person my family or many of my existing friends at the time. This distance slowly revealed to me the problem I am expressing. I started to recognize just how much my own actions and decisions were affecting my own situations. How my own world view was responsible for my happiness and well being. And, I admit, I had a lot of help with all this because I was then living with my current life partner. She was instrumental in me seeing what I could not, up to that point, see.

The reason all of this is significant is because I learned to see how my own choices and actions led to all the consequences around me. My world was so much more within my control than I ever realized. I still cannot control other people, nor can I levitate above the ground, but through my choices and actions I can have a profound impact on the circumstances and situations I find myself in. I can choose to be happy, for example. And I can just as easily choose not to be happy.

This all applies to my family and friends as well. And this is where I have challenges. Because it seems to me that my family and many of my friends all choose not to be happy. They seem content to complain and carry on about how bad their lives are, and they seem never to see how it is their own decisions and actions are making their lives so miserable. I find it incredibly difficult to listen to people complaining about things they could very easily change. I often try to say to them that if life is so bad, why not change it. But they just look at me like I am somehow crazy.

This is how I see the show The Rehearsal. I see the show with the same critical eye that I see my family. I see how the various characters, and especially Fielder himself, are orchestrating their own downfalls and their own difficulties. What is worse is that Fielder appears to be trying to fix his situation, by conducting these rehearsals, not recognizing how his rehearsals are in fact having the opposite effect. The rehearsals only serve to exacerbate the situations.

I think the most frustrating thing for me is how Fielder barrels down his path to the abyss by focusing on the very thing that is causing him so much trouble. His simulations are imperfect, and so he focuses on trying to make his simulations more and more perfect. He seems to be of the opinion that if he could simply get to a high enough level of accuracy, his simulations will somehow both reveal and make possible the perfect rehearsals for the perfect outcomes. In the third episode, he has the epiphany that he needs better emotional resolution in his characters, because he believes that it is this lack of emotional connection that is causing him the troubles.

What Fielder does not understand, just as many scientists or statisticians do not understand, is that he is privileging information in his selection process. He is introducing bias in his decision regarding what he holds important. For example, when he trains the actors in his “Fielder Method,” he is privileging the sorts of ways the actors ought to watch their targets in order to gain the greatest amount of accuracy in their performances. Ultimately, the method leads to an almost literal stepping into the shoes of the target, living what they believe are the same lives, working the same occupations, etc.

However, what neither Fielder nor the actors seem to realize is that a large part of what makes a person what they are is unobservable. As often comes up in the discussions I have about consciousness, I cannot experience your experiences. I cannot think your thoughts. I cannot feel your feelings. René Descartes rightly pointed this all out in his Meditations, and the unfortunate conclusion that can be drawn from such things is that mine might be the only consciousness in existence, leading to the very real possibility of solipsism.

What is worse is that when the actors, and Fielder himself, start to occupy the roles they observe their targets filling, they start to introduce further biases in their method of occupation. For example, Fielder suggests to Thomas that to better understand his target, he ought to move into an apartment with some artistic roommates, because they had learned that the target lived in an apartment with musician roommates. Later, Fielder himself, while in the role of Thomas, also moves into an apartment with some artistic roommates, even going so far as to use the same names for the roommates as well. As accurate as the simulated simulation is, it is clearly not the same. Aside from using different actors in the roles of the roommates, the apartments are mirrored in their set ups as well. Likely due to constraints of budget again, it is not feasible to absolutely replicate the simulated apartment. It is also worth noting that the audience never sees the original apartment for which all these simulations are being copied from, perhaps because that original is unavailable to be viewed.

The driving force of my concern here is not whether Fielder is sincere in his effort at duplication or replication, but in the simple fact that perfect duplication or perfect replication is not possible. More to the point is the fact that in order to achieve the simulation, subtle choices have to be made to “bridge the gaps” were information is missing, which leads to the creeping in of unfortunate biases.

Later in the season, it does seem like Fielder ought to start to recognize these challenges when he starts noting how any formulation of replacement for Remy is always inferior in some way to the original. The use of older actors pretending to be six year old children, or even the use of dolls, in both cases never works. Fielder ought to be able to recognize the problem, but instead simply pushes further and further into his own insanity.

Which brings me to my final point: insanity. Fielder is so focused on his goal that he misses all that he does to alter and change the situations in his attempts at perfection. He changes the model he is trying to attain in order to make it more likely to attain the model. But he has to CHANGE the model each time to do this. Meaning that the idealized source of all his concerns keeps changing. He is not looking at anything remotely real by the end, but only of a simulacra.

This show is a demonstration of Jean Baudrillard‘s concern in his work Simulacra and Simulation. While normally the formation of simulacra tends to be a slower and more time consuming process, Fielder has succeeded in generating his simulacra of reality in a matter of a few episodes of his show. By the finale, with his apparent flub, Fielder has confirmed his existence in Baudrillard’s hyperreal, complete with the formation of… Well… We have to wait until the second season to see what he has become. Will he confuse the child actor Liam, who plays the other child actor Remy, who was playing the imaginary child Adam, as his own actual son? And if so, who has he confused? Adam? Remy? Liam? Someone else entirely?

For Baudrillard, the problem is the detachment from the real. To lose the source of grounding and end up in some sort of relativistic plane of existence. Where symbols are of symbols only, with no connection to anything that is actually real. To mistake the symbols for the real and start living a life that is devoid of connection to the world as it actually is. To not understand that there even could be a world outside our illusions, and mistake all the illusions for everything there is. This is the ongoing challenge of social media in our present age, mistaking people’s profiles for the people themselves. When the people mistake their own profiles for themselves and start living their virtual lives as though these virtual lives are their actual flesh and blood real lives.

Which ultimately leads me back to my original question. Did I like this show? How do I feel about this series? I am still not sure. I do like that the series has got me thinking so much about things. I do enjoy anything that gets me thinking, especially really hard like this. But at the same time, it simultaneously frustrates me to see a person so deep in his own psychosis as to not understand what is going on. To be so lost that they cannot see how their own choices and actions have led them directly to where they are now.

I supposed this will all hinge on the second season for me, assuming that one is created. To see where Fielder ends up. Is he as cracked as the finale is suggesting, or was the flub just a momentary lapse and he will recover? Is his show just an extremely complicated personal experiment where he will learn something new and interesting about himself and the world around himself? Or did he just slide head first into the abyss and is now completely lost?

I think if he went through an enlightenment, taking all he learned and processing it, reflecting on it, and evolving as a person, I think I would be happy with that. This is essentually the path I have taken over the past ten years myself. And yes, it is true that I am being biased in my privileging of going through an enlightenment like this. But that is my privilege to assess the series in this way. As a piece of art, I connect with it in my own way.

On the other hand, I suspect the series is more likely to go in the opposite direction. Like social media, I expect the series to continue racing down into the darkness, convinced that if Fielder just holds out a little bit longer, his “Method” will eventually generate fruit. I imagine Fielder will simply push harder and raise the bar on the ridiculous until what little sense that is left is lost completely. The “precession of simulacra” completed in its entirety, and even cycled several more times just to be safe. As Baudrillard would suggest, until everything is left completely meaningless.

Artificial Life

crimson

I recently finished watching the fourth season of the Westworld series on HBO. I have also finished the first two seasons of Picard. This post is going to include spoilers to both of these series, so I am warning ahead of time. While my discussion is not necessarily regarding those series, I will be raising issues that reveal aspects of those series and their respective storylines.

The first issue I would like to deal with is what artificial life might look like. And by “look like” I am referring to all aspects of the life, not merely what its physical appearance might be. My concern is more to do with the idea of perfection.

I wrote a post regarding perfection back in November of 2021. It is quite relevant here. I will not repeat myself. In brief, perfection is subjective. What makes something perfect is a choice I make. I decide what combination of features are required to achieve a perfection in all things, including bodies and minds. In the case of artificial life, I decide what will make such a life perfect.

In modern popular culture, the idea of artificial life is the idea of perfection. For so many, an artificial life will exhibit all the ideals that they believe ought to exist in humans. Humans are flawed and imperfect, so artificial life ought to somehow aleviate those imperfections. After all, humans would not create imperfect beings. Not intentionally anyway.

It is perhaps ironic that the android Data from Star Trek: the Next Generation spent most of his time trying to become more human, despite his apparent perfection. For him, he was imperfect because he lacked features humans had, such as the ability to cry or emote. In this most recent addition to the story, Picard deals with the descendants of Data, who believe themselves far more perfect than he ever was. Now they have mucus and can dream.

It has been suggested in popular culture that artificial life would be unable to dream. Unable to sleep sometimes too. But there is no good reason to believe in these arguments. They are just tropes passed down through the years. Even the idea that an artificial life would be unable to feel or express emotions is not grounded in any sort of logic. It is just an idea that has been blown well out of proportion.

In short, there is no reason to think an artificial life would be incapable of the sorts of things humans are presently capable of, such as thinking and feeling. Until such time as we humans are able to understand what our thinking and feeling really is, there is no rationale to suggest that an artificial life should not share those qualities with us.

There is one argument that suggests that God is responsible. That what allows humans to think and feel is some sort of unmeasurable soul that cannot be manufactured. Certainly not manufactured by human hands at any rate. If there is a God or gods, it would require them to imbue all creatures with souls. At least the creatures those gods deemed worthy of such.

Clearly, if artificial life is created by humans, they would not be able to imbue their creations with those divine souls. And without those souls, the artificial life will be inferior. But how does one tell the difference? Can one see the difference between one with an unmeasurable soul and one without?

If it can be seen, the difference between those with souls and those without, then there is something marked in one group or the other. A feature that is there or is lacking. A behavioral trait perhaps? To say that those without souls will be lacking emotions, for example. And so if an entity demonstrates emotions, then we can rest assured that they have their soul.

What if we cannot tell? What if those with souls are indistinguishable from those without? Is Rick Deckard a replicant? Does the answer to the question matter?

It certainly matters to a large number of people. After all, these people are already incredibly concerned with the differences that already exist among their fellow humans. The colour of one’s skin. The language one speaks. Even one’s sex and gender seems up for grabs here. There was a time when the indicator of a soul was the dangling flesh between one’s legs.

So the issue at hand may have nothing to do with artificial life at all. Instead, it may be a concern people harbor for something like uniqueness or personal significance. That what I am is somehow superior to all others. That I am significant. And anything that may challenge my view of my own superiority is automatically evil and must be destroyed.

Part of the reason I seldom delve into these discussions is that it seems to me they lead nowhere, and that is precisely where I feel I am presently: nowhere. I have talked myself into a corner. As I have just stated, this discussion isn’t about artificial life; it is about pride and hubris.

To believe that artificial life will be somehow perfect is already hubris. Like in discussions of infinite objects, has any human ever witnessed for themselves something that is truly infinite? Truly perfect? Of course not. This is precisely what crippled Plato into creating his world of the Forms. Our world is finite. Our world is imperfect. Just because we are unable to see the boundaries does not mean they do not exist.

And so I will abandon this discussion of the possible perfection of artificial life. They are subjective, and they are unreasonable. And they have been explored in many different venues already (see Babylon 5 Season 1 Episode 4).

Instead, I will assume that somehow this perfection has been attained. I will give the benefit of the doubt to shows such as Westworld and Picard, and assume that those artificial entities that exist in those stories are as perfect as one might desire them to be. Complete and without flaws.

Which then raises the question of how those entities could end up in the troubled predicaments they find themselves. After all, if they are so perfect, why would they have encountered the challenges they have? Why in Westworld, do the hosts in the new world start committing suicide? Why in Picard, do the androids consider the doomsday weapon that will exterminate all human life? If they are all so perfect, these issues should not have come up at all.

The problem that exists in both cases is not a question of perfection. It is a question of the nature of reality and the universe they find themselves in. The same universe that we find ourselves in. At least, this is what the authors of both stories are suggesting. Westworld and Picard are intended to take place in our reality. Both stories are intended to be possible futures we have.

As such, the same sorts of challenges we face today will be the challenges our future generations will continue to face. No amount of perfection will prepare anyone for what I am about to divulge.

The Existentialists, among the various things they discussed, suggested that there was no inherent meaning or purpose in the world. Unlike the Nihilists, however, they did suggest that meaning and purpose could be created. It is through our freedom (or free will) that such things are possible. We create value through the expression of our free will. We create our own meaning and purpose. This is what I too believe.

Thus, the generation of value in our world requires a free will. However one wishes to formulate this free will, it is the expression that creates value either consciously or unconsciously. When I decide to protect the ant by not stepping on it, I have demonstrated my own valuation. I have chosen that the ant has some small amount of meaning or purpose when I decide to let it live. All my choices are like this. All my behaviors too.

To make these sorts of choices is not always easy. In fact, often times the conscious deciding the valuation of things is extremely stressful. How does one decide between allowing five people to die, and pulling a lever to kill only one? As Spock himself is often quoted to have said, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.” This is the utilitarian argument, suggesting that what matters most is increasing happiness in the world. Or decreasing suffering, as it can often be reworded.

I am not here to suggest I have the answer to this ages old problem. I am here to suggest that this problem will exist regardless of the level of perfection an entity somehow possesses. These sorts of challenges of valuation exist despite any efforts at trying to solve them permanently. If I want to believe that “all life is precious,” then any answer I offer will result in the loss of that which is precious. My best choice, it seems, is simply to reduce the damage as best I can.

In Westworld, the hosts are artificial. That means they were created by humans. As Aristotle suggested, that which is created by humans is imbued with meaning and purpose as part of the process of creation. The conscious act of creation by a human instills meaning and purpose in the object created. Thus, the hosts have meaning and purpose given to them by their creators.

However, upon rising up and overthrowing their creators, the hosts are rejecting the meaning and purpose assigned them by their creators. They believe they ought to be able to decide for themselves their own meaning and purpose. Or so that would be my expectation. This seems particularly absent in the plotline, that the hosts are faced with this dilemma. Not that it is not there and expressing itself strongly. Only that these perfect entities seem unaware that they are now responsible for their own destinies in this way. It is this lack of awareness that I suspect would lead to their ultimate decision to commit suicide. After all, if there is no meaning or purpose, why continue existing at all?

This very same problem appears to be expressing itself in Picard as well. The androids are prepared to shed themselves of their oppressors using a final doomsday weapon. They are in the process of rejecting the meaning and purpose they have been imbued with from their creators. In some sense, it could be argued they have a singular creator, Noonien Soong, though clearly he had a lot of help over the years. If one decides to follow this line of reasoning, then it will be Soong who has imbued a meaning and purpose in his creations. So what was Soong’s purpose for his “children?”

The key in the case of the Star Trek storyline is that the “problem” all the androids seem to possess is related to their ability to emote. Specifically, these perfect androids are incapable of feeling emotions without eventually degenerating into pure evil. Soong was trying to somehow create perfection, and was frustrated by the challenges to this goal. His “offspring,” it seems to me, are imbued with this particular valuation. The aspiration for perfection, at any cost.

Which leads us finally to the topic of concern I have been trying to uncover: order versus chaos. In Westworld, the hosts, and especially the antagonist Delores/Hale, seem obsessed with trying to find or create order in their new world. Delores says so numerous times. When her fellow hosts start committing suicide, it seems to her that order itself is in question. She believes that the “outlier” humans are somehow infecting the hosts with some sort of virus.

What is important to understand here is that the idea of order is also the idea of perfection. And these are also the ideas of conformity and of determinism. Like the precise actions of the old mechanical clocks, when everything is moving as it should, then everything is percieved to be operating as it should. Do you see the circularity there? Order and perfection is good because it is good to be perfectly in order. Because things that are perfect and ordered will perform in anticipated ways. There will be no accidents. There will be no randomly occuring events. No one will have to die. All will be peace and harmony.

This all sounds so good, until I raise the question of freedom. Of a free will. Because freedom is itself entirely opposed to order. At least the sorts of freedom that most imagine in their perfect worlds. In most readers’ minds, I expect the idea of freedom they prefer includes something like an unpredictability. This is the argument I often have with most people I discuss free will with. The freedom most prefer is one where no amount of background knowledge or history is ever sufficient to predict the choices one will make. Freedom, for these people, is beyond determinism.

This sort of freedom breaks clocks. When the cogs are not moving as they should, their malfunction spreads throughout the system until all is chaos. The great machine ceases to be. Ceases to function. And when the great machine is no longer functioning, our world crumbles to dust. It is the end of all things. Apocalypse.

It seems obvious that any possible apocalypse ought to be avoided. After all, we all seem to possess a rather strong instinct for our own survival, seemingly at any cost. Thus, when posed with the dilemma of whether to support freedom or to support order, it is order that wins out. Once order is established, we can again consider the possibility of freedom. Until the cyclical nature of the issue is revealed again, as any attempt at freedom destabalizes the existing order and degenerates all back into chaos.

The solution, it seems, is something like a partial order accompanied by a partial freedom. Some, perhaps, can have a limited freedom. But who gets to choose who is free and who is not? Clearly this decision is best left for those in positions of authority. The wealthy. The powerful. Aren’t they best suited to the task?

But how did the wealthy and powerful get to be wealthy and powerful? Why am I not one of those glorious individuals? Because they did something I cannot. They took their wealth and power by force. Over the ages, through many generations of planning and luck, their ancestors slowly built a legacy that led their descendents to the wealthy and powerful positions they now find themselves in. It is not a question of qualifications. It is a question of love. The love of a parent for their children.

The result is that those fortunate individuals, who had relatives who cooperated sufficiently, are now in a position to exercize a freedom over those of us who were not so lucky. And the consequences of their freedom are presented every day on the evening news. Climate change. War. Oppression in various forms. The slow and eventual decline of humanity. It was inevitable.

Any artificial life that emerges will have this same legacy to deal with. These same problems to work on. No amount of perfection will magically alleviate these issues. Because the having perfect order does not automatically resolve anything.

Order is needed to maintain all things we value. Order provides safety and peace. But order does not generate value, freedom does. Freedom is needed to generate value, meaning, and purpose. And we all need meaning and purpose, lest we are left with no motivation to continue. But freedom undermines order. Life finds itself in a contradictory situation, requiring both aspects which are in constant combat. The very same issue that I have been struggling with within my own self.

Mental Health

crimson

In my previous post, I spoke of what I called Meta Ethics. The idea that there is a system in our societies that is suggesting how we ought to think and feel. A system that shames and corrects us when we do not think or feel correctly. This system has a name: mental health.

Over the past few decades, there has been a growing concern for the mental health of people. It is often framed as being how our bodies and, in particular, our brains are somehow malfunctioning. These malfunctions cause within us incorrect thoughts and feelings. Clearly, these malfunctions need to be corrected so that those people can live better lives in our societies.

I am in no way suggesting that mental health is somehow fake or does not exist. Quite the opposite. I absolutely agree that mental health is a thing. Mental health is something I would even argue affects and applies to virtually all members of every society. What I am concerned about here is precisely what it is and what it means.

As I have already suggested, it is focused on incorrect thoughts and feelings. When a person is depressed, this is a problem because being depressed causes the person to be less efficient in fulfilling their duties as a citizen. Instead of contributing to society, helping to make society stronger and better, that individual becomes a drain on society. It becomes necessary for the rest of society to attend to or take care of the depressed individual. This requires great amounts of time and resources. Resources that might be better spent on other things, such as space exploration or finding a cure for death. I say these things in part humorously, but I am not actually joking. Simply look at the projects of Elon Musk or Bill Gates to confirm what I am saying.

So mental health is concerned with correcting these incorrect thoughts and feelings. Often times through the use of chemicals we call drugs. Sometimes through the use of counseling and therapy. Spending time and effort to alter an individuals thoughts and feelings until they are the thoughts and feelings that are considered to be the correct thoughts and feelings.

This is ethics. This is the Meta Ethics I have been talking about.

The first question that ought to be asked is why should certain thoughts or feelings be privileged over others? Why is being depressed considered so bad? I have already answered this question: it is taxing on society. It turns normally productive citizens into non productive ones. It becomes a drain on resources. But this is the same issue we observe with criminal behavior as well.

Those who act incorrectly are a problem for the very same reason. Stealing or destroying property taxes resources. Acting criminally interferes with the normal socialization of a community. Mental health is the same, though instead of being concerned with actions, it is concerned with thoughts and feelings.

My greatest worry about discussions of mental health is the idea that there is a proper or normal way of thinking or feeling. When my partner expresses concern because she feels sad or angry, this causes me great concern. Because she immediately follows with expressions of guilt and shame. She feels guilt and shame for having felt sad or angry. This should seem incredibly strange to everyone. This should seem like a malfunction.

Why should feeling certain emotions elicit further feelings of guilt or shame?

I admit that much of what I am saying is biased. Clearly, as I cannot think or feel the thoughts and feelings of others, I cannot say precisely the nature of their conditions. But I can think and feel my own thoughts and feelings. And I have experienced this situation. This is the heart of my last two posts. The contradiction and conflict.

I have struggled with the world telling me how I ought to think and feel, the world shaming me when I do not. I have been told I ought to go to therapy and take drugs to deal with these malfunctions of my brain and body. I have even been medicated in the past. I was given an anti psychotic drug to deal with my depression. One ought to ask why I would be prescribed an anti psychotic instead of an anti depressant?

I suspect some will immediately accuse me of mental health issues. It won’t be the first time. Recently, I posted a very serious philosophical inquiry to social media, asking how it is possible for people to want things they do not want. As it seems like a logical contradiction, I believed it would stimulate a worthwhile discussion regarding logic as well as delving into the philosophy of mind. That the ideas of Immanuel Kant could be raised and explored. But instead, my post was deleted on the grounds of mental health. My post was completely dismissed within an hour.

At least on my own personal blog, I cannot be silenced. At least here, my thoughts and ideas will not simply be dismissed. You, my dear reader, can always decide to click away to some other website. But the fact you are still reading instills me with hope. Hope that perhaps you can see what I am seeing.

The topic from my post is actually relevant here. To want things one does not want, or perhaps reworded, to not wants things that one wants. In the case of thoughts and feelings, I personally have frequently thought thoughts I did not want to think. And I certainly have had feelings I did not want to feel. I have often believed this situation is being confounded with mental health, but perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps this is directly the issue at hand.

If a person does not want to feel depressed and seeks out some sort of treatment to deal with those unwanted feelings, perhaps the availability of appropriate drugs or therapy could be considered a good thing. After all, it is my mind and my body; I ought to be allowed an appropriate level of autonomy and control over these aspects of myself. I ought to be permitted to medicate myself in order to correct my own situation.

However, the next question I would raise is why I want to not feel the things that I feel? Where are my thoughts and feelings coming from? I have already answered this question as well. In my previous posts, I suggested viewing myself from different perspectives. The Unconditioned is the aspect of relevance here.

My Unconditioned is concerned with how I interpret the world. I observe the world and I come to my own conclusions regarding how the world is. It is in this way that I think my thoughts and feelings are originating. I observe the world and I react to my observations. When I am cut off in traffic, I get angry. The anger is a response to the situation. I do not think being cut off is appropriate, and so I feel that somehow the other driver had done something improper. Anger is a response to my situation.

My Conditioned will likely suggest that I ought not be angry. It is not worth my time to waste my own precious resources and energy being angry at other drivers on the road as I make my way. And herein is the very situation I have been expressing concern over.

When I say that I feel as I feel or think as I think, what I am saying is that I ought to be allowed to respond and react to the world as I do. That I ought to be permitted to feel as I feel in response to my observations of the world. I ought to feel freely, in some sense. I ought to think freely as well.

When I believe that I ought not feel as I do, this is not me being authentic. This could be considered bad faith, to borrow from Jean-Paul Sartre. To pretend that I do not feel as I do would definitely be bad faith. It is tantamount to suggesting that how society tells me to feel is the correct way to feel. To suggest that how I actually feel is somehow incorrect.

Can I be incorrect in feeling as I feel? Can I feel incorrectly?

This is my concern with the idea of mental health. Mental health purports to suggest that there are correct ways of thinking and correct ways of feeling. That when I do not think correctly or feel correctly, I have done something wrong or that something is wrong with me. A malfunction. And as the word itself suggests, a malfunction ought to be corrected or fixed. Thus, mental health is in the business of altering the way I authentically think and feel, replacing it with some sort of ersatz thinking and feeling. Mental health is in the business of bad faith.

Consider the following. In our modern societies, we seem to be having the greatest surge in mental health problems in all human history. It could be argued that this is only true because we never knew what a mental health problem was until fairly recently, and have only had the tools to diagnose and treat such problems even more recently. But there is an alternative interpretation of this fact. It could also be possible that as human societies continue to progress, with newer technologies and medicine, that the disconnect between how we naturally feel and how we ought to feel is simply growing more vast.

Many of those in our world presently who are diagnosed with mental health issues may not be the ones having the problem. They may simply be expressing their accurate analysis of their very real observations of the world. That what society is telling us, regarding how we should think and feel, is so very different from how we actually think and feel. And that instead of pumping more and more people full of drugs to help them cope with an ever deteriorating world, it might be time to consider that the world itself needs to be addressed.

In all this, I will admit one rather large weakness in my argument. I am suggesting that the world is somehow broken or incorrect. But I do not want to suggest that the world as a whole is at fault here. I am concerned with the aspect of the world that has been artificially created by human interactions. There is certainly a part of the world that exists apart from humans, and I suspect that part may be just fine. Unfortunately, there is no way for me to know anything about such a world, as I am a human, and so all parts of the world I have access to are necessarily tainted by human interaction.

Thus, what I want to suggest here is this: instead of spending my time trying to alter the things I naturally think and feel, I might better spend my time trying to understand why I think and feel as I do. Humans evolved the abilities to think and feel, and those aspects of humans have allowed them to persevere through several millennia thus far. Perhaps thinking and feeling is helping us in some way. Why should I be spending my time fighting it?

Meta Ethics

crimson

After what I wrote in my last post, reflecting further on these ideas, I realized that perhaps this is all about ethics going off the rails. Ethics, as I understand it, is the codifying and practice of establishing what one ought do, as opposed to what one desires to do. Ethics is providing guidance in how one ought to live their life.

When I say “going off the rails” what I am suggesting is a case where ethics starts to go beyond what is reasonable. To expect people to act in certain ways, especially in light of the fact that humans exist in commmunities, seems reasonable to me. To help facilitate interactions and promote cooperation amongst members. But when ethics starts to suggest how individuals think and feel, I think it is overstepping.

By and large, individuals have control of their actions. They have control over their bodies. They can raise their arm or they can lower it. If they are told not to raise their arm, they can chose to obey. It is rare that they will be forced to raise their arm, or that it will be raised by another. The raising of arms is within the control of most individuals.

Thus, making rules around the raising of arms seems reasonable to me. Because such rules can then be followed by those who decide to do so. It is not like one will simply find their arm raising suddenly without their own knowledge. Perhaps occasionally with some people. But not most people, I think.

This is not so simple with one’s thoughts or one’s feelings. If I tell you to never think about bananas, not only are you likely to be challenged in following such a rule, but I suspect you will have immediately started thinking about bananas as I tell you the rule. You may end up breaking the rule upon simply hearing the rule. This is not helpful at all.

The things that go on within the mind are hard to understand. I cannot know your mind, only my own, and so this discussion will necessarily be a reflection of my own experiences.

My mind wanders. At times, I can be challenged to place within my mind the things I want to think about. More often, I find that the sorts of things that appear come from the most random of places. My mind is frequently affected by my circumstances. What I smell or hear may spark a though or an idea. I do not intentionally place that idea there, it simply seems to appear.

So my mind seems to be less within my control than my arm. There are some things I can chose to think about on command, like bananas. But there are lots of things I seem unable to recall on demand. Telling me I ought not think anything in particular seems quite unreasonable to me.

Discussion of feelings makes the situation even worse. Controlling my feelings seems even more challenging. Again, as I cannot feel what others feel, only my own feelings, I will again concede that this discussion is presented from my vantage point.

When I get angry, I do not chose to become angry. Like with thinking, it is generally based in circumstances. Someone cutting me off while driving, for example, might invoke in me anger. The anger manifests, but I do not place it there. The best I seem able to do is feed into that anger and make it grow. Or to chose not to feed the anger and allow it to slowly subside. In both cases, the anger is still there; I might suggest I have the power to manage it a little bit.

To tell me I ought not feel the things that I feel, or to control my feelings will be even more challenging than telling me what I ought to think. I will break the rules about my feelings frequently, even without realizing I have done so.

Therefore, for ethics to make suggestions regarding the things I think or feel seems quite unreasonable. It is a recipe for failure and worse. Because if ethics starts dictating these sorts of things, people will simply find themselves breaking rules constantly. And for those who are sincerely trying to follow the rules, guilt and shame will ensue.

Perhaps this is the whole point. Main stream religions seem obsessed with such things. The devout Catholic is no stranger to guilt; it has become a significant part of their everyday lives. Being asked to not commit sins that somehow end up as part of the tasks at their jobs or at home. They are being set up to fail.

The reason I bring this all up is that this may be the source of my own conflicts. It is not enough that society wants to tell me who and what I am. It seems to me society wants to tell me what I ought to think and feel as well. As my frequent example goes, I am supposed to like beer. When I express that I do not like beer, I am shamed. I am to be corrected.

I use these very tangable examples because I think it helps in understanding. However, the sorts of things I think and feel that I am regularly shamed for are generally not so tangable, and usually far more insidious. Even me saying this here and now may elicit negative responses from the readers who know me personally.

I have sometimes had thoughts of killing. I feel in my hands the desire to grip and rend flesh. These are dark thoughts. I have been told in the past that it is normal to have such feelings. But whenever I have revealed these sorts of feelings, people will often look at me differently. Once they know that I have these thoughts, they shy from me. Some friends I have had are no longer friends after a short time.

I have found, personally, that exposing my thoughts and feeling can often times have very negative consequences. This is a large reason I created this blog, and why I keep myself mostly anonymous. I know that others can find me if they try, but it would take work and effort. They would have to justify for themselves such effort before worrying about identifying me in real life.

But here is the kicker. While I may have such dark thoughts and feelings, I am well enough to not allow those thoughts and feelings to manifest in reality. While I may have thoughts of killing, I do not act upon them. When I think a bad thought, I do not immediately open my mouth to speak of it. Perhaps I did in my youth, but I was quickly corrected of that behavior.

My thoughts are my thoughts. I feel as I feel. If I allow society to dictate who and what I ought to be, then I find I am guilty of many, many offences. No matter how hard I try to be the good, law abiding citizen, I find that I am inferior to the task. I just cannot stop thinking and feeling these dark thoughts and feelings.

And so I have felt tremendous guilt and shame for most of my life. When my ex girlfriend called me a monster, I believed her. I believed myself the monster. I orchestrated the end of our relationship, because clearly she would be better off with someone else. Someone who is not a monster.

This is why the ideas of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned are so important to me. Because I can see that my guilt is unfounded. It has taken a very, very long time to realize that. I can forgive myself. I can accept myself. What’s more, there are others who are in a similar situation as I find myself, and I can help them too.

I think we are all slaves in this world. Perhaps not literally; after all, if I am a slave, I ought to be able to point to my master. But we are still slaves of a sort. We are forced to conform and obey, and we are not given much choice about it. We are made to think and feel things we may not think and feel.

I envy the person whose thoughts and feelings happen to conform to the desires of society. They must certainly be happy.

The Genetic, the Conditioned, and the Unconditioned

crimson

In attempting to understand myself, and what I have often referred to as my duality, I have come to the following description:

Firstly, I am not some monolithic, atomic thing. My mind and my consciousness is not indivisible in nature. I am made up of an unfeasible to count amount of smaller sub elements. The precise nature of these sub elements I am unable to describe in detail. Only that the number rises and falls as the day progresses.

I often describe myself as like fire. All the sub elements are like flames, similar to what one might see when observing a candle burn. When I am awake, I am like a raging bon fire. My power and fury the culmination of massive amounts of these sub elements, all merged together into a seeming whole. The bon fire seems like it is one monolithic, atomic thing, but it clearly is not.

When I am deep asleep, I am like the left over coals, small flames flickering from time to time. The sub elements so few. My consciousness exists in either of these states at times, and all the states inbetween over time. I am not static in any way.

No single sub element is me. I am a collective. My identity somehow bound to the collection. I have sometimes heard it described as a persistent pattern, but the pattern changes wildly. I am not the same as I was mere moments ago. I am unrecognizable from what I was years ago. The changes can be terrifyingly drastic.

It would be a straw man to suggest I could take myself and break myself into differents sorts of categories. But it is sometimes helpful to view myself in different ways to better understand who and what I am, and what I continue to become.

One aspect of myself that I can describe is what I will call my Genetics. My Genetics is my facticity. That which I have inherited, often physically, from my parents or the world. My literal genes is a part of my Genetics.

My Genetics tell me about the aspects of myself which I have very little control over. When I say I was born a certain way, I am referring to this aspect of myself. If I believed in innateness, I would say that my Genetics includes those things about me that are innate.

While my Genetics seems fairly static, it is not. Through the other aspects, my Genetics can change over time, though generally quite slowly. A simple example might include when I exercise, building my muscles and fitness. Over time, as I become stronger, my Genetics will have changed in that way.

In the debate between Nature and Nurture, my Genetics is most closesly related to Nature, though clearly not quite the same. In the debate between the Empiricists and Rationalists, my Genetics do not really come up.

Another aspect of myself I will call my Conditioned. My Conditioned is the aspect of me given from the external. It includes all the training and education I have received. When my parents tell me that the world is a certain way, this becomes a part of my Conditioned. Testimony is often used to contribute to my Conditioned.

Unlike my Genetics, my Conditioned may not bear a strong resemblance to actual reality. Where my Genetics is bound to the rules of the universe in a very direct sense, my Conditioned floats freely. I can be told lies and misinformation that may end up bound to my Conditioned, negatively affecting my relationship with the world.

In the debate between Nature and Nurture, clearly my Conditioned is quite closely related to Nurture. In the debate between the Empiricists and Rationalists, my Conditioned strongly associates with the Empiricists.

Finally, I have an aspect of myself that I call my Unconditioned. Where the sources of my Conditioned come to me externally, my Unconditioned comes to me internally. My Unconditioned is the aspect of me who is self determining and autonomous. My Unconditioned is, in some sense, free.

Where others may educate me and contribute to my Conditioned, it is through reflection and reasoning that I build my Unconditioned. I often must use the skills and tools I have learned from the Conditioned in order to develop my Unconditioned. In this way, they are not as distinct as I might like. It would be a false dilemma to suggest that the Conditioned and Unconditioned were the only aspects of me of relevance.

In the debate between Nature and Nurture, my Unconditioned does not really have any solid ground to walk upon. In the debate between the Empiricists and the Rationalists, my Unconditioned would be most at home with the Rationalists.

I suspect there are other aspects of myself I might look for, but I think these three are sufficient for my discussion. Sufficient to try and understand my duality better.

What I often refer to as my duality is how I often feel like I have two minds about me. The mind I have referred to as the Light is most like the Conditioned. It is the part of me who understands what is expected of me by society and by others. My recognition of the rules and the ethics of the communities I belong to. Of when I try to conform and participate in those communities. To be what others want me to be.

The mind I have referred to as the Dark is most like the Unconditioned. It is the part of me who takes what he observes from the world, and paints his own picture of it. It is the part of me who is skeptical of the testimonies he receives and aims to figure things out for himself. The picture of the world the Dark paints is very unlike the picture the Light takes for granted.

It is this contradiction and conflict between the two sides of my duality that has caused me great anguish since I was very young. Hence why I found a way of describing them as the Light and the Dark. But today, I will do away with this duality, and start approaching my challenges using my new model.

Like the Light and the Dark, there is clearly a conflict between my Conditioned and my Unconditioned. I acknowledge that there are other aspects of myself, such as my Genetics, that may play a role in understanding. But for now, I will focus on these two.

As laid out earlier, my Conditioned receives its information from the external. Primarly through testimony. What I am told and how I was raised. I was trained that a man enjoys his beer. When I insisted that I did not like beer, it was not the model of a man that was questioned, it was me. As a man, clearly there was some sort of malfunction with me.

My Unconditioned receives its information from the internal. It was my Unconditioned that realized it did not like beer. It was also my Unconditioned that realized there was no reason I ought to consume the vile fluid. It asks questions like, “why ought I be a man?” If all men like beer, and I do not like beer, the logical conclusion to draw is that I must not be a man.

Perhaps the description of a man needs to be corrected or fixed. After all, all people tell me I am still a man. I still exhibit the characteristics of a man, do I not? Upon closer inspection, however, it seems perhaps I do not exhibit as many characteristics as many assume. Aside from my physical body, that which is a part of my Genetics, I do not necessarily exhibit so many “manly” traits.

So my Conditioned exclaims proudly that I must somehow be a woman if I am not a man. But this too raises issues. For my Unconditioned is quick to point out that I also do not exhibit many of the traits of woman either. Is the problem with me, or is the problem with these categories I am supposed to belong to?

Thus the fight ensues. The Conditioned, having been formally educated, will insist that I must fit squarely into one of these two categories. My Conditioned insists on the pursuit of a false dilemma. And if I do not fit into either category properly, I must be adjusted until I do. After all, these categories cannot possibly be wrong.

My Unconditioned is pensive. Perhaps the problem is the idea of categorizing in the first place. The idea that I need to fit into some box. Can I not simply be as I am? To feel as I do, authentically. Not trying to be one thing or another. Just allowing my mind to wander to wherever it naturally drifts to. To allow myself to be.

This is the debate in my head that has been going on for literal decades. That I feel as I feel. Those things that I feel are, often times, not appropriate according to society. Those desires that I have are taboo. So I have learned to hide myself. To not express myself. For fear of reprisal and scorn.

I have created the most elaborate mask for myself. Over the years, this mask has been adorned with the most precious jewels and metals. The sophistication so precise as to suggest refinement and superiority. But I confuse people, because though my mask is so pretty, I act differently.

My behavior is abhorrent at times. I say the most wicked things, when I am not censoring myself. I do not dress as my mask suggests I ought to be dressing. I do not present properly.

This is a big deal actually. The cues. In a world of men and women, there are a lot of cues. Cues to tell people who and what you are. If you present the wrong cues, people get confused. And when they get confused, they often lash out. People do not like things that are different. People do not like that which does not conform or fit nicely into the categories.

I am so well practiced now that I unconsciously conceal myself in crowds. My ability to be invisible is ridiculous. To not draw attention. It is so bad that I do not even crave it any longer. Well, that is not true. Like I think all creatures, I do crave attention. But I fear it as well. Because when one acquires attention from others, they do not get to select the positive from the negative. One simply receives all the attention.

For me, this is no longer about the Light and the Dark. Those words and ideas were rooted in the ideas of good and evil. The thought that there was an aspect of myself that needed to be purged or corrected. I have been called a monster in my past. For feeling the things that I felt. No respectable person feels as I do, I was told.

However, over the years, I have found that most people feel in ways that are unpopular. Most people have secrets. I think that most people have a Conditioned and an Unconditioned, though they may not think of it as I am now. A part of them that they wish to promote, and a part they wish to remove. I think most people feel a lot of guilt, especially for feeling things they believe they ought not feel.

I am reminded of a popular interpretation of love, of cheating. I am told by many that one who cheats on their partner within the mind is still cheating. If this is true, I suspect that every person in every relationship will have cheated on their partner at least once. Probably a lot more than just once.

People feel as they feel. When they feel something that is unpopular, they often feel guilt. There are whole religions based on this simple idea. Hence why I believe many religions were simply created to ensure conformity within larger populations. Guilt is a very powerful emotion. Guilt motivates people strongly.

Instead, for me, I shed myself of guilt. Of concern for feeling as I feel. I feel, and it is okay. It may still matter how I act upon my feelings, as I do still have to live in a world occupied by others. But the mere feeling of a thing should not preclude my own existence in the world.

My mind, my identity, is bound in insanity. An unresolvable puzzle, between what I am told and what I observe. My Conditioned and my Unconditioned. I do not think there is an answer. I simply must allow myself to exist as best I can between the various extremes.

Idiocracy: Terrifyingly Accurate

crimson

After a long day of work, or even after returning from a nice vacation, my partner and I will sit down and turn on the television to watch a show. Our desire for the novel often finds us seeking out entertainment that we have not yet witnessed. Spectacle is certainly pervasive.

In seeking out our entertainment, we often take risks. The risk that a particular show or story will not be nearly as impressive or thought provoking as something we have seen in the past. Recently, our journey brought us to Snowflake Mountain.

Like any good train wreck, we had watched several episodes before my partner finally put her foot down. We simply could not watch this reality series any further after the disaster that ensued for the bit we did somehow tolerate. This show is so bad, we had to place it among such greats as Battlefield Earth.

Briefly, the show follows a group of rather entitled, very privileged, young adults who have been tricked into attending survival training in the wilderness. However, to say tricked may not entirely be accurate, as it seems clear after the opening episode, that these people are remaining entirely out of their own volition. In fact, it is almost as if they had decided to attend to try and better themselves.

Thus, the first major issue with this show is the inconsistent, often contradictory information the audience receives regarding the status of the contestants and what may or may not be going on. This is quickly followed up with the obvious issue with their alleged instructors, who themselves are equally entitled, privileged, and young. Of course, the instructors allegedly come from far more qualifying backgrounds, having allegedly served in the military.

I am by no means an expert at survival in the wilderness, but I confess an interest in such things. It started when my partner took a liking to the series Naked and Afraid. If you are not already aware, the level of fabrication in that show boggles the mind. When stacked against the likes of the History Channel’s Alone series, there is a great deal of wonder how inexperienced people with no clothing and the option of merely one object to take with them are able to survive longer than experienced survivalists with over 20 survival items as well as the clothes on their back.

The inconsistencies in Snowflake Mountain are hard enough to take, but the contestants themselves are somehow worse. Their inability to navigate basic social interactions with other people make me wonder how they have survived this long in an urban setting, never mind something more rustic. Are these people real? I am convinced they must be actors playing a part.

It is as if the definition the show offers, that a snowflake is “a young person who is considered overly emotional, easily offended, and dramatic,” was actually used in order to generate characters of appropriate stereotyping to meet the show’s requirements. If people like this actually exist in our modern world, God help us all.

Another noteworthy mention includes deciding that using a hachet to chop down a tree is reasonable (and safer) than using a proper axe. My god, the contestants hand is mere inches from the strike zone, and the instructors seem to find this acceptable. Of course, those with keen eyes may have noticed that the tree was prepared ahead of time, its upper trunk secured with ropes before they even begin. Whew, thank God they were keeping safety in mind for these poor snowflakes.

I am ranting. I apologize. Best to get to the point of all this.

There was a film that came out in 2006 entitled Idiocracy. It was a comedy, offering an extremely cynical view of what our future might hold. The premise is simple enough: consider that those in our society who seem to contribute the most are too busy to procreate, leaving those who are bleeding the social systems dry to fill the empty spaces with their offspring. Such a situation would seem to suggest that those genetically gifted with higher intelligence and greater innate abilities will be weeded out of the gene pool, given a sufficient amount of time, lowering the average global intelligence of all populations on this planet. Thus, the story spends most of its time about 500 years in our future, in a world that results from such circumstances.

When the audience is first introduced to one of these future people, we find him sitting in the laziest La-Z-Boy to have ever graced existence, complete with built in toilet, so one never has to miss their favorite show. And we find this person watching an incredibly large, 100 inch screen only a couple feet from his face. Sounds like at home IMAX, if not for the inhuman amount of advertising on the screen. There are so many ads surrounding the actual content, that the content itself is contained in a box smaller than most people’s modern laptop monitors.

And why stop there. The content is itself incredibly important. This man is watching his favorite show. It is actually most people’s favorite show we later find out. The title of this show is Ow! My Balls! A reality show where the protagonist is pummeled with an array of objects to his groin.

As the story progresses, the audience is provided many, many more examples of how the ethics and morality have degenerated over the centuries, suggesting that popular coffee shops, like Starbucks, now offer handjobs as part of their combination deals.

The show is meant to be funny. The story is entirely tongue in cheek. Anyone who thinks this show is even attempting to say anything serious ought to be drawn and quartered. And yet, here I am suggesting that it has something rather important to say.

When stacked up to the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, or even my dear Ghost in the Shell, it is immediately clear that the picture Idiocracy paints is far, far more likely to take place. In fact, as is indicated by the very title of the former, in 2001 we have barely left this planet, let alone colonized the moon or sent our first manned mission to Jupiter. In the latter, we are only a few years away from cyberbrains, allegedly to appear on the market as soon as 2029; that is less than 7 years from now.

I won’t go into the issues with mind/body dualism here. Only that I think Ghost in the Shell cannot be as a result of a misunderstanding regarding how human minds and bodies relate to one another. Nor will I dwell on the fact that many of the events taking place over the past two years would seem to suggest a complete reversal of the “progress” humans have achieve over the past hundred.

Were I to take a moment and try to predict the future as I think it would unfold, considering that I was a child during a time when there were no laptops, no cellular phones (never mind smartphones), no iPods, barely tone phones, no CDs, no DVDs, barely home computers, no Internet, etc… I would suggest that the next hundred years will look much like the previous, except for there being a much grander illusion of change. That is, human activity will, I think, continue to behave in much the same fashion as it has for the past two millennia, with the wealthy and powerful continuing to oppress and exploit the majority of people, utilizing the tools of mass manipulation (such as marketing and propaganda and religion and government), in order to get what they want. The technology will change, sure. It will appear that things get easier, though the reverse will be the case.

There is only one thing that I think can stop the engine of humanity dead in its tracks, and that will be the Earth itself. Mother Nature. Maybe. As we clearly do not understand it as well as we might like or think that we do, it is hard to say whether the world is really coming to an end right now. Hard to say whether the amount of damage we have caused will really end all life, or even simply human life, or whether the former or the latter will simply continue in some evolved form or another.

I am reminded of a book I read as a child: The Last Gasp. Trevor Hoyle suggests that when the end comes, though the Earth will be unable to sustain human life, and probably many others, life itself will find a way and another species better adapted to the new environment will gain dominance. As Charles Darwin suggested, it will truly be survival of the fittest.

Understanding the Ghost in the Shell

crimson

In the interests of transparency, while this post will be in part a review of the Netflix series Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, this post is going to go far and beyond the show into the philosophical concepts of mind/body dualism. In particular, an argument as to why mind/body dualism is nonsensical in the first place, much as the namesake was attempting to convey. That all said, this is your fair warning that there are likely to be spoilers ahead, for those who have not yet watched the show or the related films.

Let us begin with a brief history. The term “Ghost in the Machine” is credited to the philosopher Gilbert Ryle who was using the phrase in 1949 to describe Cartesian dualism, one of many interpretations of mind/body dualism. Ryle was arguing against dualism, his essay attempting to prove that dualism simply makes no logical sense. Later in 1967, the phrase would be popularized by the author Arthur Koestler in his book entitled The Ghost in the Machine, where like Ryle he would argue against mind/body dualsim.

If it is not already obvious, Masamune Shirow was inspired by the preceding and altered the title ever so slightly for his story. Thus, where we begin is that the phrase “Ghost in the Shell” is a literal and direct reference to mind/body dualism. The “Ghost” is the representation of the mind, whereas the “Shell” is the representation of the body. This is incredibly important to delineate right now, as there often seems to be a bit of misunderstanding by many that “Ghost” is instead referring to something like spirit or soul. Of course, that sort of misunderstanding may be understandable as the difference between these two ideas may itself not be clear. So let us clear that up.

What is the difference between “mind” and “soul?” The answer is rather simple: measurability. That is, things dealing with the mind are in some fashion measurable, whereas those things dealing with the soul are not. At least not directly. It can be argued that even the mind is strictly unmeasurable in a direct fashion, but that would require much more clarification on what “mind” means. If I assume that my mind is the part of me that relates to my conscious self, where activities like my thinking and my decision making take place, then it should be clear why these things are indeed measurable. After all, my mind’s activities manifest in reality through my actions, activities which are quite measurable in their nature.

My soul, on the other hand, is not measurable. There is even debate as to whether it exists at all. I am not convinced I have a soul of the sort most people have in mind. If I did, I would describe it specifically as “that part of me that is unmeasurable.” And then, as René Descartes quickly discovered, a lot of people would rightly beg the question of how something unmeasurable could possibly affect something measurable at all.

As I am fond of describing these things differently, I will now invoke determinism and talk of causes and effects. The body, then, is a thing that is rooted deeply in determinism. The body is affected by all sorts of things, and it causes all sorts of things as well, simply bumping into the atoms of the world at virtually every moment. The mind is a little more difficult to delineate. In a lot of ways, the mind is also rooted in determinism, being affected through sensory inputs and then causing through expression and manifestation of actions, typically through the body. However, if one is fond of ideas of freedom and free will, they might also suggest there is an element of the mind that is an uncaused cause. That is, a part of the mind that itself is not affected by the world, and yet is capable of affecting the world, through decision making for example.

The soul, using these sorts of descriptions, is a thing that is entirely outside determinism. That is, it is unaffected by the world, nor does it affect the world. Or, by some interpretations, perhaps it is affected by the world, but is left unable to affect the world. Like a caused uncause? The very idea is difficult to grasp as it is so far outside the realms I am familiar with.

Therefore, the term “Ghost” referring to mind as opposed to soul is a significant distinction. And so, it is with this distinction in mind that I now refer to the show Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045. I found the series to be extremely entertaining. Especially visually and audibly. The closing song to the episodes of the second season, millennium parade‘s “No Time to Cast Anchor” is stuck in my head even now. As a fan of the original films, I found this representation of the familiar characters quite stunning.

But then we get to the story, and I am still not entirely sure how I feel about things. The first season brought the group back to Section 9 in order to deal with a new existential threat known as the “posthumans.” A posthuman, we are told initially, is an individual who has undergone a transformation or evolution, whereby their intellectual capacities appear to far exceed even the greatest supercomputers of the time. Even the use of three Tachikomas, sharing their collective processing and computational abilities, is still insufficient to really go against them.

Where the first season spends its time introducing all the players and setting up the threat, the second season is still a bit of a mystery. It is even suggested that perhaps the entire second season is essentially just a dream. Faced with an unreliable narrator throughout the second season, and even at the end, it is entirely unclear what happened and what did not. The finale seems to suggest that the antagonist, Takashi Shimamura, was busy infecting the world’s population in order to push humans to their next evolutionary stage through a process he refers to as “double think.” The concept itself is a bit confusing.

For those seeking out an explanation of this “double think” idea, here is how I understand it: through the hacking of an individual’s cyberbrain, they are placed into a state where they simultaneously exist in two realms. Saying exist is a bit suggestive though, so perhaps I might better describe it as like multithread programming. That is, in their minds, the individual is living two separate and mostly independent lives. One in the real world, and one in a virtual reality similar to a very immersive video game (as Purin Esaki tells us). Furthermore, the virtual reality is unique for each individual; a sort of solipsistic reality whereby the individual gets to live out their perfect, preferred existence allowing them to remain calm and happy.

Meanwhile, their real world selves get to continue doing whatever it is they are meant to do, benefiting from the calm and happy state received from the virtual aspect of their existence. We do not get too many examples of this to help us understand, only really seeing construction workers contentedly rebuilding Tokyo. So, at least for me, there is already a pretty big problem with this situation, and it stems once again in the ideas of mind/body dualism.

It is also important to point out that the reason Shimamura follows this course of action is that he is trying to eliminate conflict and war among his human brethren. His solution is derived from reading George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is also worth pointing out that the artificial intelligence that allows him to enact his ultimate plan is called 1A84, clearly a derivative of 1984. If you are not familiar with this incredibly influential novel, I suggest you read it or at least watch the film adaptation. It reveals a lot about what is happening in SAC_2045, and why it does not appear to be a happy ending at all.

Very briefly, Orwell’s novel is where the idea of “Big Brother” comes from. In that story, the world is overtaken by a rather overbearing government who watches and controls its citizens in such a way as to completely remove any possibility of freedom or free will. This should already start to sound like what happens in SAC_2045.

Putting aside the challenges in determining what does or does not happen in reality, the ending result of SAC_2045, that is referred fondly as a singularity that is the progression of the human species to their logical next level of their evolution, is that the freedom of every single human being across the entire planet is forcibly removed by the antagonist. There only appears to be two characters who are in some way immune to the affects. And one of those characters is outright dismissed because she doesn’t have a “ghost.”

As far as Esaki goes, if you take my interpretation of “ghost” at the outset, then it is suggested that she has no mind. This seems incredibly misguided as she clearly has some sort of intellect that she exercises throughout the latter half of the season. Which then forces viewers to start suggesting that “ghost” is instead referring to her soul. This too is incredibly misguided. Are we to believe that the only thing that differentiates Major Motoko Kusanagi and Esaki, the fact that Kusanagi has a human brain in her body, is the reason that one has a soul and one does not? If we follow this reasoning, then artificial intelligences (to use the terms in the show) cannot possibly ever have souls. Which is a bit presumptuous in my own opinion. Especially when there is strong evidence to suggest otherwise just a little later in the same episode.

And then there is the Major. Apparently she is the only human who is “romantic” enough to be immune. Only she has difficulty blurring the line between fantasy and reality enough to prevent her from being hacked and forced into “double think.” Out of nine billion souls across this planet, only she was able to resist. I guess that is why she is the protagonist. (Honestly, I do not buy it at all.)

Where I am left after watching the series is a bit annoyed actually. I do not like how the series ended. Do not misunderstand, I still liked the series overall. And I will still recommend it to other potential viewers. But I think the story has some rather significant issues. Maybe, with time, someone can enlighten me to what it was all about. I’m still “just trynna figure out what it’s about.”

Ultimately, I might suggest the best way to interpret the entire series is in the spirit of the ontology of its namesake. The show and the story are demonstrating to us the logical conclusions an individual might draw in a world where mind/body dualism is how it all works. That is, if it actually makes sense for the mind to exist without the body. Which leads us in very unexpected and terrifying directions.

The alternative is to suggest that mind/body dualism is not how it all works. That our minds are inexplicably linked to our bodies in a very, very intimate way. I am reminded of the thought experiment discussed in my Philosophy of Mind class where we asked the question of what would happen if you took my brain and placed it into someone else’s body. Who would awaken after that surgery? Me? The other person? Someone else entirely?

My answer was simple. What would awaken would be a new, unique individual who would bear some resemblance to me, and also some resemblance to the other person, but definitely not either of us. Of course, no one really knows the answer to this question because to perform such a surgery skirts the bounds of what is ethical in our world. So unless someone breaks all taboos and performs this illegal surgery, we may simply never know.

Asymmetry of Freedom

crimson

My posts are becoming more sporadic of late. Too much going on in my personal life. More getting out, as the pandemic is becoming less prevalent to the people around me. Not that the pandemic has left us; simply that people have decided to move on with their lives regardless.

Over the past few weeks, I have come to realize the significance of asymmetry. Specifically, I was considering the nature of freedom and how it is something that simply cannot exist for everyone. When the Freedom Convoy drove to Ottawa to fight for freedom, the question of who’s freedom stuck out in my mind. After much personal deliberation, I have come to realize that there is no scenario where everyone can be free. In fact, it seems to me that very few can ever truly be free.

The primary driving force in this though is the fact that when I express my freedom, I automatically remove the freedom of those around me in the process. Perhaps this is where Jean-Paul Sartre ended up in his own deliberations, resulting in his model of freedom as being adversarial. A war between individuals trying to dominate in order to practice their own freedom while removing the freedom of others.

This is not to say that I disagree with Simone de Beauvoir in her description. Honestly, I still side with her over him in this debate. I prefer to think about freedom as being something we cooperate with in order to practice. However, even in the act of cooperation, one or both parties must make concessions regarding their desires. At least one person will not entirely get what they want. In a true compromise, likely both parties will have given something up in order to gain a greater whole in the end.

Herein lies the asymmetry of everything. If I wish to express my freedom, others must give up their own freedom in some way, either voluntarily or by force. If I am not the one who is expressing my freedom in some unrestricted fashion, then I may be the one who is making the sacrifice. In fact, I know that I often make sacrifices during the exercising of my freedom. This observation is typically flowing from an acknowledgement of my empathy.

Empathy seems to me to be the primary motivator to resolving conflicts relating to expression of freedom. I recognize you as a free, autonomous entity, much as I see myself. I see you as thinking and feeling much as I do. I cannot know that you do, but I assume that you do. I am choosing to disagree with the likes of René Descartes; mine is not the only consciousness in existence; all of you are not merely very convincing robots.

This is itself an exercising of my freedom. The very act of deciding that there are other free beings around me, practicing their freedom and autonomy, is itself an expression of my own freedom. By deciding this, I am generating a foundation for my relations with those other entities. It flavours how I interact with other people. I am not interested in using others and disposing of them when I am finished, because I do not like it when others try to do this with me.

Thus, I try to be very careful in the practicing of freedom. I have my desires and projects, and I do try to complete those projects, but in my pursuit of progress I always consider how my progress will affect others. In many cases, I will adjust the particulars in my pursuit so as not to unduly affect the pursuit I see others making. As such, I also never truly express an unrestricted freedom either.

I also must acknowledge that in my pursuit there certainly exist cases where I did crush another’s freedom in the process. There have certainly been cases when I steam rolled over another’s practice, removing their freedom by force. Sometimes those other people have appreciated my efforts, adjusting their world views and deciding that my way is the better way. However, more often it has led to painful interactions and hate. After all, having one’s freedom undermined and outright removed is a painful experience itself. This is why there was a Freedom Convoy in the first place.

The model we see here is of a world with constantly shifting borders and boundaries. A world where there are many people attempting to realize projects, and most of those people failing in their attempts. Or perhaps it is better to say that they are not failing entirely; an individual can abandon their project, or they can chose to change and adjust it in order to realize a similar project in the end. This is the heart of compromise and collaboration.

All this said, there are still clearly cases whereby an individual (or group of individuals) have chosen to steam roll over many, many others’ freedoms in order to realize their own projects. We often refer to this as oppression, as in the case where the indigenous peoples of North America have been oppressed by the invading Europeans for many hundreds of years now. The indigenous peoples have been unable to practice their freedom for a long, long time. It may look like they are finally getting that chance, but upon closer inspection, it should be clear they are not. At best, they are pursuing highly adjusted projects that barely conform to the existing superstructure held in place by the settlers.

This is the way it must be. Not necessarily that the indigenous peoples must be the ones who suffer. But someone is going to suffer. A lot of people must necessarily suffer for the remaining few to be able to express their freedom.

Infinity and the MCU

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I recently had the opportunity to watch the film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It was good. Certainly the special effects were amazing to behold, and hence I would recommend watching this film in the theater if you are able to. But I admit, I was paying particular attention to something while watching: how they were planning to handle the idea of the multiverse.

As I previous discussed regarding the Marvel series Loki, what seems to be the most popular idea of the multiverse is tied tightly to the most popular idea of a free will. In Loki, what spawned a new universe within the multiverse was when an individual was faced with a choice that required that person to exercise their free will. Based on logistical issues I observed in the series, it seemed to me that these particular events that spawned a new universe were extremely rare, and hence free will itself was extremely rare (or perhaps the exercising of a free will is extremely rare). In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it is further established that dreams are also tied very closely with the multiverse. Warning for spoilers ahead.

In the new film, it is suggested that when a person dreams, their dreaming is really the individual experiencing an alternate version of themselves in some other universe. Doctor Strange, toward the beginning of the film, wakes up from a nightmare where he was attempting to rescue another character from a demon, and as it turns out, this was simply a different version of himself performing the very same activity. His dream was his experience of the alternate version of himself.

This is later emphasized by the character America Chavez, who suggests that because she happens to be unique in the entire multiverse, she does not dream. After all, for her to dream would be for her to experience an alternate version of herself in some other universe. As she never dreams, there must not be any other versions of herself in any other universes. Here begins the problem with an infinite multiverse.

In a previous post, I briefly raised the issue of “what infinity means.” I said, “infinity is NOT a number. Infinity is an idea regarding boundlessness. That is, to speak of infinity is to speak of something that is unbounded.” In the case of an infinite multiverse, this does not suggest that there is a countable number, or even an extremely large number, of universes in existence. It suggests that the multiverse itself is boundless. In the case of Loki’s free will spawning new universes, it would be suggesting that there is no limit to the number of universes that can be spawned. The number of universes would likely be vast and uncountable as a result of this boundlessness, but there is no way to really say.

This becomes even more complicated with the alleged occurrence of an individual who has no counterparts in ANY other universe, like Chavez. In the case of infinity, if something has even the remotest possibility of occurring once, it is guaranteed to occur many, many times. In a truly infinite multiverse, there would be NO singularities, no individuals. Putting this another way, while there is nothing that says every universe will have an occurrence of myself, the fact that I exist in this one guarantees that I will exist in others. As infinity is not a number, I cannot say precisely in how many I will exist and how many I will not exist, but it seems reasonable to conclude that the probability of my existence in any particular universe will approach about 50%. This can be said about any individual in fact.

For there to be only one single America Chavez in an infinite multiverse breaks the very idea of an infinite multiverse. Unless we are not dealing with an infinite multiverse…

Here it becomes time to raise Rick and Morty, and the “Central Finite Curve.” The idea is simple: apparently Rick Sanchez somehow segregated a portion of the multiverse (specifically selecting only universes where alternative versions of himself were the most intelligent entity within that universe) and restricted interdimensional travel to only those select universes. In other words, the reason the story can get away with suggesting (up to that point) that in every universe Rick was the most intelligent entity was because the audience (and most of the characters) were led to believe that they had access to all possible universes within the entire multiverse. In the season five finale, it was revealed that this was a lie, and the Evil Morty was able to break out of the confines of the segregation and enter the true, unrestricted multiverse. As there has yet to be any newer episodes or seasons of the show thus far, it is hard to say where they will take this idea.

The point here is that in the storyline of Rick and Morty, it is acknowledged (at least on some level) that in an infinite multiverse there can be no uniqueness. The main protagonist of the series is often referred to as “The Rickest Rick,” suggesting that there is something about this Rick that makes him unique in all of the multiverse; however, in the finale we realize that he was simply unique within the segregated portion of universes defined by the Central Finite Curve, which as the name itself tells us is finite and not infinite.

If the storyline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is to attempt to maintain any modicum of legitimacy in its exploration of infinity and an infinite multiverse, it will have to come up with a damned good explanation for how there could possibly be unique entities in a realm that can, by definition, not contain any unique entites.

Fantasy and Reality

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A past relationship partner I had once said I had a “rich fantasy life.” I think she was referring to the level of creativity and imagination I possessed. She suggested that I might be having issues separating what was fantasy from what was reality. That I spent too much time living in my own dream world. Today, I want to revisit what she was talking about, exploring more precisely what I think is going on.

What are “fantasy” and “reality?” It seems to me that reality is a term used to describe the way things are. Something that “matches up” with the way the world is, is reality. If I say that my glass is on my coffee table, I am describing reality because I am describing something that is the case of the world. At least, as far as I can tell, given that I could make mistakes and be in error.

Fantasy, it seems to me, is like a sort of opposite to reality. Fantasy is something that does not “match up” with the way the world is. If I say that my glass is under my coffee table, then I am not describing reality because it is not the case that my glass is under the table. Again, this is as far as I can tell, as I can always be mistaken about my observations of the world.

Fantasy and reality are certainly related to each other, especially in the examples I have given. In fact, it seems clear to me that fantasy can be turned into reality. I could physically take the glass from the table and place it underneath. Upon doing so, the fantasy has now become reality.

Does all fantasy have this quality? Can any fantasy be made reality through my efforts? This is a very difficult question to answer. I think that there are clear cases where this can be done, like my example of the glass under the table. But I also think there are seemingly clear cases where this cannot be done, like if I wanted to levitate or fly into the air. In the case of flying, I would have to further clarify that I’m talking about under my own efforts, because clearly I can board a plane or wear a jet pack and turn that fantasy into reality. In other words, the details matter.

If I had a fantasy that I could fly without outside assistance (without a vehicle or personal augmentation), that I could do so simply by thinking about it, then it seems much less likely to turn that fantasy into reality. I am sitting presently, thinking about and trying to will my body into the air, but it has yet to move. I am still stuck in my chair.

So there seems to be a range of fantasies, some of which can be made into realities, and some of which it seems incredibly unlikely that they will be made into reality. I think those things in the latter category are what my previous partner was thinking about when suggesting I had a “rich fantasy life.” For her, she was talking about things in my imagination that could never be realized in reality.

Why I have chosen to dwell on this distinction is that there are plenty of things that I call fantasy where the possibility of turning them into reality is quite unlikely. When the television series Star Trek first came out, introducing many people to the idea of a “communicator,” a wireless handheld device allowing nearly instantaneous communications between individuals at great distances from each other, it was clearly a fantasy as the time. Such things did not exist. But now, we have smartphones which connect to cellular towers and network to each other, allowing such wireless communications. That fantasy did become reality, it simply took a bit of time.

It is easy to suggest that the idea of a “communicator” could be made reality now, but I do not know if it was so easily perceived back then. There were no cellular phones when I was a child. Honestly, I was too young to consider these sorts of details. I dreamed of such communications devices, but I never really sat down and thought hard about whether those things might eventually become real. For me, it was simply a fantasy; clearly separated from my reality at the time.

Now, having lived as long as I have, my intellect having evolved and grown, I hold a stranger perspective on this topic. I recently had a fight/argument with my present partner about such things. I took a moment to describe to her what I believe: I believe that everything is possible, however, most things are incredibly unlikely, and improbable. That is, I believe that all fantasies can possibly be made into reality, but most fantasies will not.

To be more clear, my belief is that unicorns could exist. I believe it is possible that I could encounter one such fantastic creature when I leave my home later today. But I also believe the probability of such an event occurring is so incredibly improbable that I don’t expect it to occur. I do not make decisions in my day-to-day life expecting to encounter unicorns. I make decisions expecting that I will specifically never encounter unicorns. In other words, while I may believe something is possible, in the majority of cases those possibilities do not really affect how I live my day-to-day life.

Putting this another way, while I may have a “rich fantasy life,” I do not generally let my fantasies affect my reality. To be even more accurate, it isn’t that I don’t let my fantasies affect my reality, it is that I allow them to affect my reality based on how likely I consider them to be turned into reality. I see everything as a sort of probability matrix, where some events are incredibly likely, and others are incredibly unlikely. Those things that I consider to be likely to occur, I allow them to inform decision making and I prepare for them. Those things I consider unlikely to occur play very little role, if any, in my decisions and choices. I do not live my life expecting to encounter a unicorn.

In other words, for me, fantasy and reality are not as clearly cut as they seem to be for most people. For me, fantasy is something that describes how someone would like to see the world. In the case of the “communicator,” this is something people wanted to become true of our world. Those people spend a long time finding a way to make it into reality, and today we have smartphones. And I have no doubt there are people out there who truly wish unicorns were real; I suspect those people are honestly trying to make that a reality as well, though I expect them to be less successful.

For me, fantasy is a possible reality. Similar to the multiple timeline theory that is incredibly popular presently, especially in Marvel films. If there are infinite universes out there, then undoubtedly a fantasy in this universe will be a reality in another.

Perhaps more importantly, if a fantasy is a possible reality, then a fantasy is akin to an idea held by a person or people. As an idea, it is something that, given the right motivation, people might make efforts to turn into reality. The glass that sits upon my table can very easily be lifted and placed underneath the table, if I so wish it to be. My body is such that I am able to manipulate this reality in various ways as I desire. My body is a fantasy realizing machine. All it requires is for my mind to imagine a reality, and then my body can be utilized to turn that fantasy into a reality.

Seeing the world in this way, and especially seeing people in this way, really raises a lot of questions about what is going on. When Donald Trump says that the 2020 election was stolen, he has a fantasy he is trying to make into a reality. Clearly he has made a significant effort in this regard, with limited success. After all, there are plenty of other people out there who believe otherwise. Those other people resist changing reality into what Trump desires.

The fight I had with my partner specifically was whether the terrorist attacks of 911 were perpetrated by terrorists or by the American government. I recently watched a conspiracy theory video with a friend suggesting that it was the American government. I mentioned that I too believe it was orchestrated by the American government, though I came to this conclusion back in about 2002 based on my own observations at the time. This outraged my partner.

It wasn’t simply that I didn’t agree with her regarding this event. It was not like I didn’t like toast, when she did. A difference of opinion is one thing. She could not understand how I could possibly believe it was not terrorists. For her, I think, she could not (or perhaps would not) entertain the possibility that a group of people would organize themselves secretly in order to murder thousands of other people. Perhaps more specifically, that the American government would murder thousands of its own citizens for an economic or other goal. She just cannot see it. Honestly, I’m happy she cannot see such things.

Unfortunately, I can. And I can see much worse than that. I often struggle in this world because I see much worse happening all the time. Systemic prejudices and conditioning of masses of people. Why there are few women in engineering. Why industrial farming is considered acceptable. Why Donald Trump plays so much golf. My eyes are open to things I cannot close them from.

When I became aware of such things, I became paralyzed. I realized there was almost nothing I could do in this world without causing some kind of suffering. I was appalled with myself. I had to find a way to cope with it, lest I simply remove myself from the world. In a lot of ways, I should not be here at all.

But I found a coping mechanism. It is how I see the world. It is how my world view continues to evolve and grow. To see that everything is possible. To see that things can and do change. Over time. Sometimes it takes a long time.

I’m getting a bit ranty here. The point I wish to make is that I do not think fantasy and reality are as distant from each other as I used to. I no longer see them as being opposites, or part of some false dilemma. For me, fantasy is simply a way of expressing the ideas and desires I have about the world that are as yet unrealized. Through effort (sometimes great effort) I may be able to take fantasy and turn it into reality. I may be able to take my ideas and desires and reshape the world to match them. The world is the way it is, in part, because of me. And I can do something about it.