Life is Symbiotic

Economists, politicians and some philosophers believe that human beings (and or genes) are selfish. That self-interest and competition are the ultimate driving forces of evolution and human behaviour. This idea is sometimes called "enlightened self-interest". The theory really comes into it's own in Victorian Britain where the dog eat dog view of the world fitted well with Britain's global imperialism. When you are bent on world domination it is as well to believe that it is ordained by God; that it is the natural order that some individuals naturally dominate others to the point of enslavement. I think it originates with the Christian idea of the Great Chain of Being, but clearly gets subverted. However this theory of self interest and competition is still at the centre of Western society and morals. 

This view of the world and of humanity tends to be portrayed as the only viable alternative. It is built into the fabric of nature itself; nature red in tooth and claw. But it is not the only view. In this essay I'm going to outline an alternative view of humanity. One that accepts that competition plays a role in our evolution and our lives, but sees it as secondary. What is primary to life itself is cooperation, symbiosis, community. 

We human beings exist in communities. But we are all individually communities as well. Our bodies are a community with two types of members: complex, tightly bound cells, and a mixture of simple, loosely bound cells. Complex or eukaryote cells have existed for some 2 billion years. The complexity of eukaryote cells has only recently been explained as a symbiotic conglomeration of simpler, prokaryote, cells. This idea was first proposed in the 19th century but was given scientific credence by Lynn Margulis. Her 1967 paper The Origin of Mitosing Eukaryotic Cells (under the name Lynn Sagan) is a landmark in the theory of evolution. Margulis's paper was repeated rejected by academic journals and dismissed by the establishment once published, but the theory, also known as endosymbiosis, is now found in every introductory text on biology. Margulis showed that mitochondria were once free living bacteria and that the eukaryote cell is a complex symbiotic entity with mitochondria and the body of the cell retaining part of their identity, but also merging to become a single self-replicating unit. Indeed mitochondria look like bacteria in many ways, have their own (bacteria like) DNA, and have different metabolic pathways to the rest of the cell. It is mitochondria that give our cells the ability to metabolise oxygen. Before mitochondria oxygen was a powerful poison to cells. This ability of bacteria to develop new metabolic pathways is one of their most important features. Margulis later proposed that some other features of eukaryote cells, such as flagella and possible the spindles that control mitosis, came from symbiotic bacteria. The Eukaryote cells that make up all plants and animals resulted from a series of symbiotic relationships that became permanent. Later Margulis worked with James Lovelock to help him with the biological side of his Gaia Theory. 

Part of the complexity of our body is the way that the cells divide functions. Despite all having the same DNA all mature human cells are specialists, forming organs and sub-organs that make our organism. Everything from brain, muscle and liver to skin, bone and blood. This comes about because of the way genes in our cells interact. Each gene works together with other genes to create an environment in which they go forward together. This image of communities working together is found at every level in nature, whether overtly as in our cells and the organs they make up, or more covertly in the checks and balances of an ecosystem. We can view predation, for example, in terms of a war with ever changing strategies by species bent on domination; or we can see it as part of an elaborate network of feedback loops (the cybernetic view); or we could see it as a dance in in which all the participants work together to perpetuate life. The thing about metaphors is that they are not set in concrete, but which metaphors we chose to use to conceptualise a complex idea does affect the associations and entailments we perceive in it.

The other member of our collective are the loosely bound bacteria and protozoa that inhabit our bodies. Recent estimates suggest that for every human cell there are 10 bacterial cells in our bodies (Scientific American June 2012). These mainly live in our gut, and many of them are now known to be more or less essential to well-being. Without intestinal bacteria for example it is thought we would have to ingest 30% more food to get the same number of usable calories. But other bacteria have been linked to the proper functioning of our immune systems; to vitamin B12 synthesis; to blood pressure maintenance and so on.

Bacteria are not entirely simple. Their individual structure is much more simple than a eukaryote cell, but bacteria live in colonies which work together to make survival more certain. And each colony always has several different strains of bacteria which exploit different metabolic pathways and are able to "cooperate" in  order to thrive. And important point about the bacteria in our bodies is that where we have about 25,000 genes, they collectively have about 3 million. The protozoa in our gut are typically single-celled  eukaryote organisms which do not form colonies. Of course we have some organisms which are parasitic or pathogenic, but the majority are benign or positively helpful. 

Thus when we view our bodies as "individual" we are distorting the truth. Our bodies are colonies of cells cooperating in a variety of ways to sustain life. The interactions are incredibly complex and details of them could fill whole books. And it's not just us. All life is like this. And very often it is the communal nature of life that gives it adaptability. Not only are bacteria quick to adapt because they reproduce quickly, but any bacteria can share genetic material with any other (at least in theory) so they all have a much greater pool of genes on which to draw. Almost as soon as we develop a means of poisoning them, bacteria find a way of neutralising and/or metabolising that poison. Where new species emerge it is very likely that some symbiont has provided a way of exploiting a new ecological niche by providing a new metabolic pathway. The mutation of genes by contract really only produces variations on a theme, not innovation on a large scale. Thus the idea that evolution is driven by "selfish genes" is a joke. Indeed for any gene to be expressed requires a protein made by another gene to "read" and transcribe it into RNA that can be used by the cell to make more protein. If we are going to anthropomorphise genes then we ought to be saying that genes are selfless, cooperative and generous.

That said the individual is not the smallest viable unit of humanity. We are sexually dimorphic and thus require male and female in order to reproduce. But even two is not the smallest number, because inbreeding would most likely lead to genetic problems. No one is quite sure what the smallest viable gene pool is, but hunter-gather humans tend to form troops of about 50-150. And even then they often select mates from neighbouring tribes. The migration out of Africa that populated the rest of the world was said to be about 10,000 individuals. And we don't live in groups simply because it improves our gene pool, we are a social species. Our social groups have structure and dynamics. The individual cannot survive without help from the community. We are adapted to do child rearing, food gathering, hunting, and all the basic survival behaviours together. It is also true that some are leaders and some are followers, i.e. we are hierarchical like other social primates. And as our societies have grown ever larger we have imposed structures to make governance manageable. The point here is not to evaluate this, but just to note it. Clearly the modern intellectual trend is to reject hierarchy, though I see biology continually asserting itself.

The individual is not vitally important in humanity. As a species we do best in groups, and we are evolved to facilitate this. Thus we are equipped with empathy to better understand the emotional states of our fellows and respond appropriately (especially to avoid destructive conflict). One of the benefits of a large brain is that it allows us to keep track of a fairly large number of relationships: knowing where people are in our hierarchy, our relationship to them, and their relationships to the others in the group. Keeping track of 50 people and the nuances of who is obligated to whom, who is in what kind of relationship with whom, and what role each person plays in the community is quite a complex task. Social rules are often unwritten and  extremely complex (as any immigrant can tell you). 

As fine as it is to feel free, to assert out individuality and our rights, in general we cannot survive alone and isolated. So the idea that everyone is acting on their own self-interest is more Victorian nonsense. We are evolved for community and for working together to achieve common goals.  A few rogue humans do not act like this and it is not sensible that they form the basis of the model of humanity. Empathy allows us to have complex interactions based on a shared sense of values and purpose. Selfishness only subverts the values of the community, both the explicit values of most human communities and the implicit values of a social primate. Most societies tolerate a little individualism (since innovation can be useful) but actually punish overt selfishness. I think this is implicit also in what I've written about morality and surveillance. The whole point of surveillance is to gain access to people's private thoughts and actions to make sure they are conforming to group norms. Since this is more or less ubiquitous we can say that selfishness is universally seen as a vice.  That some people find ways to be selfish and acquisitive does not change the general description of human beings. 

The reasons that modern societies are increasingly focussed on the individual at the expense of society are rather complex. But it's clearly a recent phenomenon and a rather aberrant one. Individualism still does not make sense in many traditional societies. In any case the point of this essay has been to argue against the prevalent idea that selfishness is the driver of evolution and human behaviour. If anything this idea is pernicious and divisive, and needs to be re-examined at every level. At every level cooperation, symbiosis, and community are the most important factors in sustaining life. And at every level individualism is like cancer - rogue units multiplying at the expense of the whole. We certainly need to look again at how we treat selfish people who have enriched themselves to the detriment of whole nations and even the globe. The causes of the present economic crisis for example can be found in individual and collective greed. As a society we removed sanctions against overtly greedy and selfish behaviour, and adopted a policy of tolerance and even reward for those who managed to exploit the system to enrich themselves. We enshrined selfishness in our laws because we were momentarily bewildered by the arguments of smooth talking bastards. If ever there was an argument against selfishness and individualism it is the present economic situation in the UK, Europe and America.

More than ever what we need is a little enlightened other-interest. 

~~oOo~~

Surveillance Society

From Spero News

One of the few philosophers I have any time for is Michel Foucault (probably because he's mainly an historian). He is more relevant than ever in the light of revelations by whistle blower, Edward Snowden. Snowden has revealed that, surprise, surprise, the powers that be are using that supposed tool of freedom, the Internet, to spy on citizens not only abroad, but at home too. One of Foucault's main contributions to the study of history was to show how hegemonic powers use surveillance to exert control and have done throughout history. He has also highlighted the methods and dynamics of this process of keeping tabs and showed how the power to over-see has shifted around to different parts of Western society over time.

I've already written quite a lot about how I see karma in this light. My thesis is that surveillance is a preoccupation for social primates, especially humans. Surveillance involves keeping tabs on who is contributing to the group and who is not. In human society it also keeps tabs on who is obeying the norms of the group and who is not. The actual content of the norms is largely irrelevant to my thesis - the medium is the message. The reasons behind this dynamic are not rocket science - the two main factors contribute to the smooth functioning of the group, and the long term evolutionary fitness and survival of the group. A third factor is the privilege of the alpha male and female (chimps have both). With more complex organisation the alpha human relies on a small cadre of intimates to hold power, and this is the origin of the aristocracy. Alphas have historically used this power to seize control of resources (for the greater good no doubt) and dole out rewards to underlings who are grateful to be alive. Owning resources allows for the creation of standing armies and such like. Such despots and their armies also provide a modicum of security to the group as neighbouring groups are similarly organised and busy trying to grab resources too.

However once societies get beyond a certain size, which is likely to be predicted by the so-called Dunbar Numbers, keeping tabs on who is doing and saying what becomes difficult. Robin Dunbar's breakthrough paper compared neo-cortex size in social animals with group size and found a positive correlation, now widely believed to be causal. Humans have an upper limit to the number of close relationships they can keep in memory. The average ought to be about 150 - known as the Dunbar Number despite the fact that Dunbar proposed a series limits at varying distance from the individual. Beyond the critical number we cannot know who is doing what with whom. Private actions and words become a feature of social life. And with private actions comes the possibility of blatant and large scale breaches of group norms. Testimony as a source of knowledge starts to become valuable, though the collective knowledge of old people was also a form of testimony. I'm thinking here of witness statements in trials.

And so some solution to the privacy problem must be sought. Many societies invented gods who live in the sky and look down on everything the individual does - and they take on the role of the alpha in dishing out rewards and punishments. This helps to give rise to a new kind of cadre who are expert at communicating with the gods, divining and carrying out their wishes. So we have kings, nobles and now priests - all justifying the subjugation of the peasants because it's for the greater good. We know that in India, for example, the overseer function was initially carried out by a pair of gods, Varuṇa and Mitra, but that sometime after about 1000 BCE this gave way to an impersonal arbiter: karma. I've argued that this was a result of interaction with and influence from Zoroastrianism via smalls bands of immigrants amongst which the Śākya tribe subsequently became prominent. But whatever else is true, it is true that there is no functional difference between impersonal karma and anthropomorphisized over-seer gods. Karma does not even quite manage to do away with priests, though their role was drastically attenuated for a short period and then clawed back rather vigorously (which is why the Buddhist world these days "takes" precepts from a bhikṣu/bhikṣuṇī). From an historical point of view bhikṣus are usurpers, having edged lay people and women out of any positive role in Buddhism for almost 2000 years - something which is slowly changing in the last 50 or so years. 

Foucault, for obvious reasons, dwells on the role of the Roman Catholic Church in subjugating the masses. The RCC emphasised the monitoring of private thoughts through confession particular thoughts about sex. They made pronouncements on what constitutes officially sanctioned sexuality. We are still in the process of wresting the control of sex from their cold dead hand, but part of the power has fallen to the state (which is currently wondering what it might do about all the unsanctioned sexuality of pornography). Buddhist's thoughts are also monitored by karma, and confession has been an important Buddhist practice for avoiding the negative effects of karma for many centuries. Indeed the Buddha himself focussed on thought and especially exercises of will in his teaching. Buddhists these days are (or feel) free to interrogate each other and pronounce judgements on each others' intentions or motivations. And many Buddhists believe themselves to be experts at divining the motivations of others from the flimsiest of clues. Buddhism, like the RCC, enjoined a strict abstinence from sexual activity on it's clergy - guaranteeing a powerful control over priests, and constant occasions for punishment, since most people are incapable of sustaining long periods of celibacy without breaches. There is a massive distinction between transcending desire and suppressing it. And in Buddhism such punishments as are meted out, are done in public, something the RCC could learn from. A celibate clergy also allows the institutions of the church/vihāra to become incredibly wealthy because property is not inherited by any family they might have (though Protestants and some Buddhist clergy have circumvented this by marrying).

Foucault spent a whole book, Madness and Civilization, outlining the way attitudes to madness have changed. It is definitely worth reading. For example, the new idea of locking mad people up only occurred to the powers at be after the decline of leprosy in Europe left the lazar houses standing empty. The example of our treatment of the insane also provides a clear example of how control over the minds and bodies of followers slipped from the grasp of the Church following the Reformation and the Enlightenment. But society did not simply stop overseeing it citizens, it allowed that power, in the case of madness, to drift into the hands of the medical profession. Madness, once a moral issue, is now a medical problem; where once it as the domain of priests it is now dealt with by doctors. We now all accept the metaphor that the mind has mental symptoms that respond to drugs just as the body has somatic symptoms. But it was not always so, and there have been notable rebellions against this doctrine (notably by R.D. Laing). 

If not before, then certainly in the days following the end of World War II, the various governments of the world extended their spying activities to include the lives of their own citizens. Governments developed paranoia, and it was true in some cases that people, there own people, were out to get them. Every spying government has had it's share of high profile double agents. Paranoia lead governments to cast their nets ever wider. Corruption meant that powerful individuals and agencies have regularly exceeded the powers allowed them by law. This paranoia was greater in totalitarian Soviet Russia and it's satellite states, but not confined to them. Also, with the war over, the grievances of the colonial period began to boil over again. Terrorist became a household word. Terrorism is a paranoid's wet dream because it proves that people are out to get them. Since terrorism threatens security, freedom must apparently be sacrificed to keep us safe and the government must judiciously spy one everyone. But not content to deal with the legacies of imperialism, the imperial powers of Europe and the USA set out to antagonise the weaker nations of the world by arming rebels and toppling governments. Small countries frequently became proxies for conflicts between totalitarian Soviet Russia (which was in fact not so different from Tsarist Russia and still is not) and China, and democratic Western Powers. 

If we take the case of Iran (outlined in How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World) there were a whole series of interventions through the 19th and 20th centuries, including the installation of an anti-democratic autocratic king (or Shah) who lasted for 25 years before being brought down. Then later the West encouraged Sadam Hussein (then a "good guy") to attack post-revolutionary Iran and sold arms to both sides. As a result Iran now sponsor groups who carry out attacks on those interfering powers and are keenly pursuing the acquisition of the one weapon that will guarantee no further interference by foreign powers in their country: Iran want a nuclear deterrent. It is demonstrably the lesson of history that Iran has more to fear from us, than we do from them. They have been constantly bullied  for a good couple of centuries and thus my sympathies cannot help but be partly with them despite my abhorrence of oppressive religious fundamentalism. The West has promoted conflict and discord throughout the Middle East in order to divide and conquer. I simply do not believe the protests of Western governments that they are only want to bring peace, stability and democracy to the world. I'm more inclined to believe people like Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault. Though it gives me no peace of mind to do so. 

In any case during the late 20th century surveillance of citizens became ubiquitous. From time to time scandal would erupt as corruption was exposed, but on the whole operations to spy on citizens were secret and stayed that way. Whether this meant they were largely legal is something that we cannot know because the information we would need to answer that question is invariably classified. 

What Edward Snowden has done is remind us that this is all going on and that the scale of it has increased as technology has improved. It's long been a banal fact that the UK has more CCTV cameras per population than any other country including the oppressive dictatorships of the world. We are constantly under surveillance. And increasingly we the people are participating in this via phone cameras and YouTube. The more stupid amongst us even film our own criminal activities and get caught because of it. Kind of a benign version of the Darwin Awards. 

A lot of Romantic people still believe that the internet will set people free. I stopped believing this years ago. It certainly had the potential. And I am still actively uploading original content with a view to participating in the information revolution. But most people I know only download and contribute nothing, except a modicum of self commodification for other consumers. And they mainly download entertainment. Rather than setting people free the vast amount of entertainment and distraction on the internet has enslaved more people than ever to the ersatz vicarious thrills to be had on a small screen (see also my essay on pornography). The internet has become the opiate of the people in most cases. Not in all cases. No doubt the potential for internet fuelled revolution still exists - especially where revolution exists in any case - but in the last 15 years couch potatoes have expanded in both number and size. 

And most of these lazy people have little to hide from the government and aren't bothered enough by the intrusion to protest. Many of my friends simply shrug when learning that their emails are being read because the content is so banal that even they are bored by it. I live in the UK and despite obvious corruption amongst our leaders there's no chance of revolution here. Most people are too comfortable to consider risking their lives. They're confused about the issues (a situation promoted by media and politicians alike) and just adopt pre-packaged opinions without thinking very hard about why (something the present Education Secretary seems keen to encourage through his curriculum reforms). We may have the occasional riot, the occasional home-grown terrorist, but we're not looking for change. Oddly our so-called Conservative party are radically reformist liberals these days and people still vote for them. The spectacle presented in the media--the daily diet of vicarious scandal, crime, war, disaster, crisis--has people enthralled in a way that discourages them from really thinking about what is going on. And the internet is just an extension of this entertaining spectacle. 

It's too hard for most people to imagine what the government might do with this information beyond stopping terrorists. Recently I read one pessimistic view on where it might lead in Ken McLeod's Intrusion. In the near future all women of child bearing age will have their health constantly monitored - if they endanger their health, through exposure to drugs or alcohol for instance, the authorities will know. The surveillance is carried out by rings with are worn "voluntarily". Equally health and safety concerns mean that most work places are unsuitable for women of child bearing age because they are exposed to dangerous situations. Women can very easily become unfit mothers and their children can be taken from them. The concern for terrorism means that police routinely grab people off the street and question them under torture. This practice is illegal and is occasionally taken to court, but most people never report it - from shock and fear of the consequences of failure to cooperate. Victims are given leaflets on trauma counselling as they leave - so the police can show that they do care and are only doing what needs to be done. "People with nothing to hide, have nothing to fear", as our present Foreign Secretary said recently (though presumably this does not apply to foreigners). All of these scenarios are relatively easy to extrapolate from the present situation. And there are other ways it might play out as well. 

If you follow the BoingBoing blog you'll know that personal freedom in the USA is under sustained attack from law enforcement agencies at present - be it spraying non-violent protesters in the face with pepper spray from an industrial sprayer, or illegal 'nationality' checks by Homeland Security officers. Indeed the USA seems quite a lot more paranoid that Britain (e.g. see Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.)

We probably should be concerned that the government is spying on us. History suggests that our governments are not to be trusted. Given an inch they will take a mile and retrospectively redefine the inch if necessary. It's apparent in the UK that government ministers routinely lie and manipulate information to their own benefit. They don't get caught very often, but often enough to be alarming. Lying about employment figures for example is de rigueur, though not a major scandal it seems. Professional politicians are concerned with being in power, and staying in power and not much else. They may want to make the world a better place, but only for themselves and their wealthy peers.

The oppression of state scrutiny of our lives, however, is just a continuation of the scrutiny all of our ancestors were under. Since the dawn of civilisation ruling elites have always used surveillance in one form or another to help control their citizens. There is at least one episode of espionage in the Pāli Canon, though it was directed against neighbouring states (I wrote about it in How to Spot and Arahant). We, the people, put up with the seizure of resources and wealth, and the surveillance, for the same reason that lesser members of chimpanzee troops put up with the tyranny of an alpha male. We know there is safety in numbers and that group membership equals survival. And a strong leader helps to organise and focus the group for collective survival. Which is not to say that we do not kick against authority, we do. But usually only because we fancy that we could do a better job. There's an interesting discussion of this with respect to Australian politics in Chimpanzee Politics.

"People with nothing to hide have nothing to fear." This has never been true at any point in the history of civilisation. Because it assumes that the one's doing the looking are benevolent, rational beings with pure motives. And they never are. And in the age of professional politicians, whose only ambition is to rule, it simply cannot be true. Governments themselves never operate on the this principle - they can always justify having secrets: people with something to fear, always have something to hide. It's only people with nothing to fear that have nothing to hide. We'd be foolish not to at least be suspicious of our government.

Our thoughts have been scrutinised for a long time now. Often what holds the alphas and their cadres of aristocrats and priests at bay is the sheer numbers of the masses. They can't fight us all at once. They can't control us if we are united against them. This is lesson one of revolutions (lesson two is that we inevitably replace one tyranny with another). Which is why the present splintered and alienated society is a gift to peeping Toms, snoops and sneaks. I doubt we'll get to the level of surveillance of Stalinist Russia here in the UK. But Big Brother is in fact watching us and in most cases it's only the fact that we are mind boggling boring that saves us, not the benevolence of the powers that be. Unfortunately Al Qaeda and groups like them succeed in making everyone a little more paranoid and this has lead to the erosion of freedom in the West generally. When we compare the goals of the sides in the so-called "War on Terror" it's not at all clear who is doing better. Certainly calling our side "the free world" is starting to sound a little optimistic.

I think it's worthwhile trying to become informed and to reflect on what kind of society you want to live and to make common cause with people who share your values. Us peasants only ever have numbers going for us. United we stand, divided we fall. And we have so much in common. We could probably do with a little more enlightened other-interest right now, rather than this bullshit, but pervasive notion of enlightened self-interest. Enlightenment and self-interest are inversely correlated. We also might want to reflect on who we share our private thoughts with and how. In this age of the commodification of the self someone is monetising those thoughts and you aren't getting any benefit from it. And they are also allowing the government easy access. Log off and hang out with your friends. You'll feel better for it.

~~oOo~~

Cargo Cult Science

image from Suite 101 Cargo Cults

In an essay from 2011, Explanation vs Interpretation, I outlined an argument from a book called Rethinking Religion by Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley. The book is about two different knowledge seeking behaviours, how they clash, and how the authors proposed to reconcile them. The argument is very relevant in academia because of sometimes bitter disputes between the camps to which academics. I hinted at, but did not really have time to explore, the way this dynamic plays out in everyday life. In this essay I want to go back and see if I can draw out some of these threads.

The basic dichotomy is between two forms of knowledge seeking. Those who seek knowledge through explaining observable facts and formulating them into causal laws which interact and combine to form a robust and highly useful, but to date partial, view of the universe. Science is the epitome of this approach. The success of the scientific method has been such that it totally dominated modern life. Even the detractors of science take to the internet to denounce it. 

The other approach is to interpret events by assigning meanings and reasons to them. In this school of thought all inquiry about human life and thought occurs in irreducible frameworks of values and subjectivity, and science is merely another framework. This is the approach of religion and certain varieties of philosophy.  The idea of universal human rights emerges from this approach. It allows a great deal of freedom for speculation but also leads to orthodoxies. However interpretations don't interact and cohere like explanations and thus can conflict with each other. The usual dynamic is cycles of fragmentation and synthesis.

I've since revisited this dichotomy several times, but in particular in my essay Metaphors and Materialism where I suggested that there is a dispute about the existence of the substance broadly called 'spirit'. The scientist finds no evidence of spirit and thus excludes it from explanations, but the religious cannot understand human exist without it and it becomes central to interpreting human existence. That most Buddhists believe in spirit is interesting because a number of early Buddhist doctrines would seem to deny spirit.

Schrödinger's wave equation

If you do not understand this, you
do not understand quantum mechanics

I have also obliquely addressed this issue in my essay Erwin Schrödinger Didn't Have a Cat in which I sought to debunk the idea that quantum physics has anything to do with Buddhism. The way that Buddhists employ quantum mechanics is through an interpretation of the narrative accounts of some of the consequences of the science, ignoring the mathematics which are central to the science of quantum mechanics (the 'mechanics' part is a reference to the mathematical techniques which underpin the science). This is valid from an interpretationist point of view since science is merely one framework amongst many. Ironically such relativity often cites the so-called 'observer effect', outlined by quantum theorists, as justification of their subjectivism, though this is a rather gross misreading of the observer effect. 

This dynamic of the creative re-interpretation and co-opting of science is what interests me in this essay. It is sometimes called cargo cult science (this label was first suggested by physicist Richard Feynman). Decontextualised facts and figures washed up on the beach are thrown together to make an idol which forms the focus of the psychological needs of the spiritual tribe. The 'power' of science is co-opted by adopting the forms of science without the content or the founding assumptions. A new improved spirituality.

In this approach to interpretation there is a tacit acknowledgement of the success of science as a mode of knowledge seeking. Cargo cult interpreters seek ways of incorporating some of the success of science into their interpretation, but on their own terms as though facts can be detached from their context without any effect. I've said that ordinary people often experience science as a pernicious influence that destroys valued aspects of social and religious discourse and practice. There is a general confusion of values as religion has fallen under the steam-roller of science. Whether the link is causal or incidental I don't know, but clearly some people are seeking a more robust world-view that will not be so easy to overturn as when Darwin overturned the notion of all at once Creation. One strategy for this is to co-opt science itself.

Almost everyone will be familiar with presentations of "evidence" for the supernatural in form or another. In another essay, On Credulity, I explored the readiness of people to accept 'proof' of the supernatural. The spiritual suffer more than averagely from confirmation bias. Despite some high profile debunkings over many years, and the failure of all supernatural claims under strict  laboratory conditions, the spiritual folk latch onto any scrap of confirmation. To some extent I understand the belief in spirit. Recall that Thomas Metzinger says that after having an out of body experience (OBE) that "it is almost impossible not to become an ontological dualist afterwards." (See Origin of the Idea of the Soul). The belief is persistent precisely because experience suggests it. However, all Metzinger's attempts to explain his OBE in dualistic terms failed to account for it, and he settled on understanding it as a failure to integrate several streams of input related to the construction of our sense of self. 

The cargo cult is even more evident in the area of health. The popular media have science reporters who write stories on research with an emphasis on the novel and innovative. Unfortunately such journalists often have no respect for the scientific process. They publish attention grabbing stories without bothering to critique them, without waiting for other scientists to corroborate results. One example will suffice. At some point a journalist published a report on the amount of water a person needs to drink. This was taken up by alternative health practitioners and has become a dogma: a person must drink X litres of water every day or suffer ill-health. So now where-ever you go people have bottled water with them and compulsively sip at it. This is not obviously harmful, but it is a bit infantile and the bottles are not particularly environmentally friendly. The story emphasises that it must water and that anything other than pure water is in fact dehydrating. In fact research shows that it doesn't matter what liquid you drink - coffee is just as good at hydrating as water, and the very mild diuretic effect has a negligible effect on levels of fluid in the body. This is not a simple case of bad science. There is good science here as well. Humans do need to drink water and we can die from dehydration (for instance in cases of dysentery). But if we drink when thirsty, and drink to slake our thirst, then we will get the water that we need. And a cup of tea is just as good as water. There is no need to force ourselves to drink litre after litre of water, over-riding our natural thirsts. Of course this over-riding of natural appetites is part of a much broader problem faced by civilisation which has cropped up in my writing from time to time (most notably in my essay on pornography). The water bottle has become like a talisman and the water a sacrament. Although the behaviour draws on science it exists in a magical worldview. 

Part of the problem is that science is complex and difficult to understand. I recently read Stephen Hawking's new book the Grand Design which presents itself as answering "life's ultimate questions". His proposed solution, M-theory, is so complex that its equations cannot currently be solved. As I understand it the theory itself has yet to be fully described mathematically. Even if they are one day solved it's not clear how they will provide any meaningful results on the human level - one of the main criticisms seems to be that the theory does not make any testable predictions. The fiendishly difficult mathematics of M-Theory are, not surprisingly, entirely absent from Hawking's book. And yet like quantum mechanics the theory is mathematical. What is presented, rather ironically, is an interpretation of M-Theory. Hawking is forced to do this because even if the experts did understand it, the average person never will.

Unlike Hawking I don't think philosophy is dead, but I do think that scientists often make poor philosophers. I can't help but wonder what effect Hawking's existential situation has had on his views on free will and determinism, but I don't want to go too far down that road. What really struck me about the book was that the "answer" put forward by Hawking to the "ultimate question" was conspicuous by it's absence. Hawking does not address the question of how we should live, he is not interested in that question, and M-Theory has nothing to tell us about it. Nor does he address such questions as what life is. Far from answering life's ultimate questions, Hawking fails to even ask them. Thus even a hard-core materialist like Stephen Hawking seems to be inadvertently promoting cargo cult science. 

One of the ironies of cargo cult science is that it fixes results and doesn't leave them open to review. The religieux who idolise scientific results are still interested in absolutes rather than development. Once we have proved that the supernatural exists then we can just relax and get on with our seance. This positivist approach to science has largely been abandoned by scientists themselves, who generally set out to disprove something or other. The best result a scientist can hope for is to disprove the present paradigm in their field and become the next Einstein. But not so the cargo cultist. Having assembled their idol the last thing they want to do is probe it or test it, or dismantle it. Thus cargo cult science is not a homage, but a travesty. One sees this to some extent in the Kabat-Zinn style "mindfulness" clique. They are concerned to show that their approach is beneficial, and thus emphasise studies which show their practices in a good light - there certainly are many such studies now, but they seem suspiciously uniform in supporting mindfulness as a pancea.

Apart from the metaphysics why is this dichotomy interesting? Why are people in opposing camps at loggerheads? Part of the answer to this is politics and economics: or in other words influence and control of resources. These are just the basic social primate motivations. Those who control the narratives about what is important get to control access to resources. So the conflict is non-trivial. Those who co-opt science to make their own beliefs seem more attractive are competing for followers and support. In the market place of souls, science sells. But people also care about how resources are put to use in society. Professor Steve Keen is a heterodox economist who is relentlessly scathing in his attacks on the NeoClassical Economics which, through over reliance on interpretation over explanation, has lead the world to the brink of economic disaster. He has said on numerous occasions that the same economists who seem to have almost deliberately wrecked the world's economies are motivated by trying to make the world a better place.

All sorts of well-meaning people believe that their interpretation of the facts is the panacea and set out to implement policies based on their ideology. Buddhists are particularly prone to seeing Buddhism as a panacea - and this is a narrative with centuries of history for us. But without the element of criticism and dialogue which form part of the explanatory approach to knowledge, we always, always run into trouble that we cannot get out of.

~~oOo~~