Reason's Fermentation of Knowledge

     Montaigne recommended that we live in a conservative state forever adapted to cultural customs.  As a skeptic, he believed the certainty of Sebold's proofs about the validity of Christianity were no less credible than scientific theories at the time.  Because both rely on reason and reason is inherently circular, customs should be valued over scientific progress, revealing a bias for his religious beliefs.
    This reminds me of Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, which showed that a "consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible" (Wiki).  Or a mobius strip, where both sides of a circular ribbon appear to be the same, paradoxically challenging the entire basis for reason.
    Yet the progress of science, I believe, is that knowledge is certainly more tangible than it would seem in times when technology couldn't reveal it.  Depending on the century, people were more certain about natural laws than not.  This dependence presents knowledge as an evolving entity, becoming more substantial as it progresses.  You wouldn't convince a snail about the astounding implications of counting any more than an ancient nomad that the Earth revolves around the sun.  It seems the mobius strip and Godel's theorems can increasingly unravel upon greater intelligence, even if they are true.

Opiate Wand

    Once, in a land called Chelci, there lived a community of deaf people.  As they could not hear, they used a type of sign language that utilized the art of dance.  But their written language was what interested scholars the most, for they wrote in the language of music: a staff of five lines with all the notes in between, meant to complement the meaning of their dance.  The only people who could understand their literature were musicians, and even they had trouble translating without the help of a choreographer.  The musicians who tried to "play" their literature were utterly baffled by how a people that couldn't even hear produced the most beautiful music in the world.

    Until one day an able-eared outsider made love to one of their women, and the woman had a baby.  Though the man left without knowing he'd become a father, the woman liked to think he would have stayed had he known.  The child grew up hearing everything, learning their invisible language with a natural perception unbefitting to outsiders.  As such, he grew to interpret the "words" choreographed in perfect harmony like no one else; when everyone around him could only imagine their spiritual significance, he heard it in full force.  The child never spoke, since there was nobody to talk with, but he did learn to make the sounds of his language with a fife that a traveler had given him.

    One day a learned woman heard him playing it, on a hill outside the village.  The sound reached far and wide, encompassing the land, diluting it with an eternal presence that exists just beyond the veil.  He was dancing like the notes possessed him, hallucinogenic magic exuded from a junior wizard, while the land painted scenes that matched his melodies.  The awestruck woman revered the specimen, surely a demigod of some sort, nothing short of a miracle, until she learned of the villagers, their communication system, and put it all together.  She fell in love that day, convincing him to travel back to the city with her, where he could showcase his talents.

    When he got there he found many pushy people trying to take advantage of him.  They all wanted to hear his astounding music, so he was pursued relentlessly for the profits he might bring.  Yet he never signed a contract, never played in front of a large audience.  The woman tried to teach him her language, but he could not quite grasp the art of talking, just as the musicians had failed to grasp his.  He left her for the mountains beyond the city, wanting to return home but going in the wrong direction.  Which was all the same, since he found much pleasure being a recluse at the roof of the world, where he came to appreciate wind as the only music to be imitated, as it was the most delicate sound on earth, those stray wispy arias frisking the trees reminding him of catatonic youth, a sound he would probably meditate on again as he neared death when he became old.  That music is the language of ghosts, traveling far and wide over the earth, a most familiar sound often ignored as background fodder.

    And that's how he spent many days, lying on a mountain with that primordial sound, until a hiker came upon him and asked the best way to get back down.  The hiker looked strangely familiar, like he'd always known him, perhaps from a previous life or the one that was coming.  Receiving no response, the hiker asked who his father was, since he looked so familiar, but all that came out were the guttural sounds of a barbarian.  Halfway back down the mountain, it dawned on the hiker just who he might have been.  And that's when he heard the music, nostalgic sounds from a different life, a life when he'd traveled to the village of deafness, sheets of symphonic jottings tearing through his mind, a rosy smile from the woman he'd laid with.  It was the same music that had seduced him into laying with her.  My son, he whispered, my beautiful son.

    He went back up the mountain to be with his son, if not forever then at least for a day.  Settling into the soil, he buried him with his eyes, eyes that seemed to know who he was.  And his son started writing in a notebook he kept, an exquisite cursive delicacy he found utterly alien.  The son was composing a story, in his language, of how he'd come so far and how it might end.  But the father could not understand it, not explicitly, though he at least divined it with his eyes, a strong intuition that only fathers know.  That's when he decided to lead his son back to his people, to find his mother and spend the rest of his days with the family he never knew he had.

    When they arrived, they found the woman who'd taken him to the city studying his people and their language.  She'd become the first person to successfully translate their sheet music into words.  As she read the son's story, it moved her to tears, for the resilience he'd shown being alone and the mistake she'd made.  She translated the story to his father and together they formed a plan.  They would stay in the village with his son, only leaving to bring their stories to the rest of the world, along with the music and dance they transcribed, so that the art-form of the village became an entirely new one for the rest of the world to indulge.  Its mind-enhancing abilities were so revolutionary that people started finding less interest in capital gains and more interest in the seeds of culture: serenity, enchantment, and understanding.

Averroes and the Fractured Soul

     Averroes seems to be misunderstood by many philosophers.  His idea of a universal intellect that pervades human thought reminds me of the mental plane in Eastern and occult beliefs.  It is but one of many planes of existence that the spirit may access on its journey through the afterlife.  Averroes didn't believe in an afterlife without the body; he believed only in an impersonal immortality, wherein the collective thoughts of humanity are passed down to new bodies, suggestive of the collective unconscious or Jungian archetypes that wire us as we are born.

    I am more in tune with the traditional projection through the afterlife; that it starts on the astral plane, where our emotional memories can always be accessed, making a part of our souls personally immortal.  Another part, the intellect, transcends the astral and imprints itself on the collective unconscious, as Averroes describes.  He may be correct that this part of the soul is not personally immortal, rather impersonally immortal.  My thoughts are not my mine, he would say, but they derived from a universal intellect, and are passed on to others through the medium of thought in the after-world. 

    For this to work, it's as if to say a new body is composed of a personal astral soul and a disconnected mental soul.  Such complexity may not seem elegant, though it could explain why some people feel their heart is always at odds with their mind.  I'm leaning on the fence with this.  Often I have felt like my heart and mind were two different "people" jostling for position; the heart being young and irrational, the mind being old and rational.  I have found it difficult to reconcile the two, not necessarily because I feel they are two souls inhabiting one body, but because their chakra development may be out of sync.

Russia's Geopolitical Strategy: Cold War in the Arctic

    There is at least one country that probably doesn't mind the acceleration of global warming: that is Russia.  In fact, they might be actively trying to speed it up.  As one of the world's top oil producers, drilling in the Arctic not only extracts more oil for CO2 emitting vehicles, but exacerbates methane emissions, where it is notoriously abundant.  Russian drilling in the Arctic seems to be the greatest single threat of any country to solving the warming crisis.

    You might think they they are only doing it for money, and you may be right.  Many countries have exploited regions only to improve their economy.  But as geopolitical strategy, warming the Arctic poses a highly convenient opportunity for Russia.  They have already claimed much of it via exploration and deep-sea submersion, but for what reason?

    The Russians correctly predicted the warming of the Arctic would open pathways of transportation that would benefit the country who "ruled" it.  It's already happening, as major cargo ships have been traveling through since 2014*.  The Arctic gives Russia a new front from which to expand and find economic advantages.  Full control of the Arctic also gives them more leverage when dealing with Europe and North America in war or policy issues.

 

     

 Source: American Geophysical Union

 

    From this perspective, the war in Ukraine makes more sense.  They needed better access to the Mediterranean due to the limitations of their geography.  There is not a major sea route from which they can deploy a navy, much less control shipping lanes like any powerful economy needs.  The invasion of Ukraine was a geopolitical maneuver that was meant to give them breathing room in the south, which would complement their expansion in the north by being able to "wrap around" Europe.  If Russia controlled half of Europe's perimeter- terrestrially and aquatically- NATO would be significantly weaker.

    Such a realist approach to international affairs is nauseating in our time.  By international law, nobody can claim underwater territory outside 300km from their shore, but the Russians want to do it anyway.  The justification is that as more ice melts, there will be more access to land, underwater or not.  It is yet another facet of this eternal "cold" war with NATO, this time in the most geographically appropriate place.

*Marshall Tim. 2016. Prisoners of Geography : Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World. First Scribner paperback ed. New York NY: Scribner.

Proof of the Soul

    Avicenna's proof of the soul is fairly strong.  Imagine you are suspended in a vacuum, flying in midair.  You can't sense or perceive anything, only your own consciousness.  (For a more harrowing example, think of Johnny Got His Gun).  Avicenna says that despite the absence of any sensation in such a situation, being remains, bearing proof of the soul.

    To me the stronger proof is found in altered states like comas and dreams.  We all perceive things in dreams that don't come from our physical senses, unless a loud noise is heard or someone moves us while we're sleeping.  When dreaming, we are simply being.  Thus dreams are the window to the soul and not the eyes.

    Let's not overlook the most important altered state of all: the mystical trance.  This is when many people in close contact with God feel the rhythm of everything around them- not necessarily physical sensations, but spiritual ones.  For there is an inner music that binds us all, an entanglement of strings that only the trance can open.

Symptoms of Bureaucracy

    One of the reasons bureaucracy keeps snowballing through modern history is the amount of new laws required to regulate technology.  Think of the automobile and all the new laws that were needed to make sure people were safe from this threatening innovation.  That is why law and capitalism seemingly have a love affair: that as technology and law increase proportionality, so do the profits for investors.  Expansion gets easier, trade gets faster, people find themselves more at risk, needing to trust the engineers that design our great machines.  Law is what holds it all together, the cement binding innovation to prosperity.

    Another symptom is that as bureaucracy expands, the newest generation is less likely to listen to or follow the old one.  Technology has a way of separating us from tradition, as do the laws it serves.  Gradually, the older generation gets more oblivious to these advancements, and less likely to pass down beloved traditions, so that what we have are 15-20 year marketing cycles, appealing to each new generation, flowing through a barrage of innovations that only the upper class in the older generation profits from.

Geographical Barriers in Africa

    A key question for the human geographer is: why has Africa always been underdeveloped compared with other civilizations, notably the West, Middle East, India, China, and even Egypt?  Africa was never able to consolidate into a civilization despite there being ample populations and sporadic cities.  It never even formed a collection of successful city-states, even after it was colonized by Europeans.  The answer is geography; Africa was destined to be poor because of all the disadvantages the continent possesses.  This is not a theory of race as much as it is a fact of our physical world.

    First, the Sahara Desert poses a huge obstacle when it comes to trade and the distribution of ideas.  All of Sub-Saharan Africa was isolated from the rest of the world due to this largely impassable barrier.  Any civilization would not have been able to interact with others beyond this vast sea of sand.  It is like an ocean of certain death, made worse by a lack of water and merciless sun.

    Second, Africa has very few natural harbors.  The colonizers could not protect themselves because the continent offered few naturally defensive positions.  If there were harbors, like those in Europe or North America, it would have been easier for their people to defend against the encroaching Europeans.  Add this to a rigid system of rivers, none of which are safely navigable due to high elevations, and you have a recipe for scattered tribalism that could not overcome aquatic barriers in addition to the northern desert.

    Third, most of the worst diseases come from Africa.  The mosquito population is the highest in the world, making the threat of malaria unattractive to travelers and investors.  Other diseases include AIDS and Ebola.  Africa was likely spared from big game extinction because disease kept human populations low enough to limit agricultural development- also a symptom of rough rivers.  In other parts of the world, where agriculture flourished, big game extinction was prolific due to the sustainability needed for larger populations.

    Finally, ocean currents do not favor safe and easy maritime travel to Africa.  It is wedged between three oceans, all having currents that do not originate in a heavily populated area that is beyond the continent.  The Agulhas current, which arises from the Indian Ocean to South Africa's east coast, is too far removed from major civilizations to bring trade and investment to the area.  Only recently has China capitalized on these currents from advancements in maritime transportation.  Africa is now one of China's heaviest trade partners.

 

A physical map of Africa.  Notice the high elevations and lack of natural harbors in southern Africa.  Image courtesy of Burning Compass.

 

    What sets the rough environment of Africa apart from others is also what made us human.  We needed a tough environment to evolve our most distinct features, like bipedalism, large brains, and dexterous hands.  That is why it is strange to think of Africa as the least beneficial to modern human interactions.  Mother Africa may have been our biggest challenge, but once we "escaped", there seemed to be no stopping the advancement of civilization; only the dire wilderness of our origins could do that.

The Innocence of Children

     I reject St. Augustine's opinion that children are not born innocent, that they are born with "original sin" and are thus unable to control their desires.  What he has failed to consider is the evolutionary advantage of infants and children screaming and scratching for what they need and want.  Without such base communication tactics, the species would struggle to survive.  Extra attention is needed for them, so one would expect them to act out, particularly when they can't communicate on the same level we can.  Their brains also struggle to reason when they are young, through no fault of their own but the requirement of anatomy.  Therefore, by his own logic, they have not fully developed souls and cannot be expected to act with a purely moral intent.

    In fairness, he couldn't have known about evolution or anatomical development, as it was not generally taught in the 5th century, nor was the Christian faith particularly engaged with natural philosophy.  The cultural zeitgeist that brought in the Middle Ages rejected it for pure creationism, something that manipulated the innocence of youth into a mythological corruption, generated by the tasting of a forbidden fruit in a utopian garden: the Biblical story of creation in the Garden of Eden, when Eve tasted the apple, inadvertently cursing all the children of mankind.  Because it is based on pure belief, this line of reasoning hardly makes sense philosophically.