Hummingbird: How Life Works, Evolution, Language, Counterculture

How life works:


Charles Darwin

Alfred Russel Wallace

Carl Linnaeus

evolution by natural selection

tens of thousands of generations and billions of years of life

1.8 million species with a possible 8-100 million other species

all of which make up a theoretically-grounded

and an evidence-based understanding of life,

and seem to express forms of truth about life -

(but which do not a 'divine' exclude

{logically}).


But some curious divine-centrism might logically here then seem to have to do primarily with replication of DNA {deoxyribonucleic acid}.

To me, however, Richard Dawkins makes sense when he says the divine is not ... (in his book "The God Delusion," and in other writings), for a variety of reasons.

3.5 billion years is a long time for DNA / life to replicate,

and a lot of speciation / mutations (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation) to occur,

giving rise to an amazing number of species,

a few of which are communicative, ~

especially humans with language.


Symbolizing (Deacon) is a far-reaching process,

especially vis-a-vis language

and culture ...

{How does culture work anthropologically in the context of evolution (and vis-a-vis primates)?}


I'm most interested in counterculture

{'peace, love and happiness' ~ 'make love, not war'},

partly because 'it' highlights fascinating aspects of 'culture' ...


Let's celebrate hippie Darwinism :)


With hummingbird, friendly greetings,
Scott



Ah, the Harbin pools soon ...

Artichoke: I Love a Lassie

A nice Scots' tune:


I Love a Lassie

Sir Harry Lauder: youtube.com/watch?v=aC0NN0o5LMU

I love a lassie, a bonnie Hielan' lassie,
If ye saw her ye would fancy her as well.
I met her In September, popp'd the question in November,
So I'll soon be havin' her a' to masel'!
Her faither has consented, so I'm feelin' quite contented
'Cause I've been and sealed the bargain wi' a kiss.
I sit and weary, weary, when I think aboot ma deary,
An' you'll always hear me singing this:

Chorus:
'I love a lassie, a bonnie, bonnie lassie,
She's as pure as the lily in the dell,
She's as sweet as the heather,
The bonnie bloomin' heather,
Mary, ma Scotch Bluebell.'

I love a lassie, a bonnie Hielan' lassie,
She can warble like a blackbird in the dell.
She's an angel ev'ry Sunday, but a jolly lass on Monday;
She's as modest as her namesake the bluebell.
She's nice, she's neat, she's tidy,
And I meet her ev'ry Friday;
That's a special nicht, you bet, I never miss.
I'm enchanted, I'm enraptured,
Since ma heart the darlin' captur'd.
She's intoxicated me with bliss.

Chorus

I love a lassie, a bonnie Hielan' lassie,
I could sit and let her tease me for a week:
For the way she keeps behavin', well, I never pay for shavin
'Cause she rubs ma whiskers clean off with her cheek.
And underneath ma bonnet,
Where the hair was, there's none on it,
For the way she pats ma head has made me bald.
I ken she means no harm,
For she'll keep me nice and warm.
On the frosty nichts sae very cauld.

Chorus

Folk Music of Scotland

http://scottish-music-lyrics.blogspot.com/2008/01/i-love-lassie.html

Domes: Hippie Quaker Kids' Names, Consciousness, Watsu

Hippie Quaker kids' names I found recently (2009): QUAKER HIPPIE QUEEN, Definitely Does Not Play Dungeons & Dragons, Moon Flower Fairy Child, Communist Whore No. 2, Extreme Egghead Feminist..., Friend, The Krishna Kid, Bomb the Bourgeoisie, Hippy Hippy Shake, Timothy Leary, Sunshine Friend, Sunbeam, Quaker Flower, Barefoot Cannabis, Peace Bringer, Quaker Dove of Light, Crazy Treehugger, Natural Womyn, The Treehugger, Child of Light, Treehugging DirtWorshipper, Sends a Good Vibe, Eyes of the World, Bohemian Babe

{http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=824130561&ref=profile#/group.php?sid=a859f3df3524afd8625f84ebe43cb9a4&gid=2423821013}

Hippies continue to create and explore . . . :)


***

Conversation about Consciousness

How do billions of cells firing together in the brain give rise to subjective experience?


Consciousness


brains and subjective experience
Share
Thursday, November 1, 2007 at 6:21am | Edit Note | Delete

How do billions of cells firing together in the brain give rise to subjective experience?

How can they?

How dare they?

Why was this selected for, evolutionarily?

David Chalmers and consciousness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX8xtUORDh4

Questions about consciousness are wild and amazing. :)

What do you think?

Written over a year ago - Add Comment - 8 Comments

Bos at 8:41am November 1
I think experience existed before neurons evolved. Neurons may be be needed to make the experience "subjective." Without feedback, there's no subject.

Scott MacLeod at 12:04pm November 1
How to characterize the experience of a nematode or sea slugs, which have neurons, and, perhaps, non-subjective experience, although presumable they respond to feedback? So, for you, experience (amoebae), then neurons (nematodes), then subjective experience (bats?). How far down the phylogenetic tree does subjective experience extend, do you think?

Bos at 2:23pm November 1
Good question(s). In my opinion, experience is a characteristic of matter, not just of life. I think one could use information theory to measure the computations of an amoeba or a nematode. I don't think there's a qualitative difference between lower forms of life and higher, except that computational complexity facilitates more interesting computation, and thus the ability to solve complex problems. I would suggest that one becomes a "subject," by acting, receiving feedback from the environment and acting again on that feedback. At some level, one develops an awareness of self as distinct from the world (yes, bats probably), and at some higher level one develops a computational model that facilitates recognition of that self. Humans, dolphins, and (I think) many primates recognize themselves in a mirror.

Scott MacLeod at 12:26pm November 2
I wonder if you think that Thomas Nagel in "What is it like to be a bat?" - http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/Nagel_Bat.html - doesn't engage the question of experience fully enough, and that therefore a computational model will eventually help us understand how consciousness works. His point seems to be that consciousness, and subjectivity - the taste of chocolate to someone else, the first person singular - is irreducible, and that other organisms' (and species') consciousnesses are fundamentally other; to understand a bat's consciousness subjectively is and always will be impossible. As one of the "new mysterions," (along with Colin McGinn, another interesting philosopher of mind), perhaps Nagel is putting forth a straw man.

(Part 1 of reply)
Scott MacLeod at 12:27pm November 2
Here's a TED Talk by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh on Bonobos - Apes that write, start fires and play Pac-Man -

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/76 -

which suggests that pygmy chimps are not very different from us. Perhaps we/they are only significantly different in the degree of ability to symbolize, and the amount of sexual behavior (although that seems to be culturally constructed in humans:), which, by implication, might suggest similarities in consciousness.

(Part 2 of reply)
Scott MacLeod at 3:19pm November 2
Curiously fascinating:)

Here Colin McGinn works toward a definition of consciousness,
the 1st chapter from his book "The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World" -
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mcginn-flame.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Scott MacLeod at 4:47pm November 3
In reading "Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion," many of the folks in the 60s who were also thinking about consciousness - writers like Huxley and psychologists like Perls - shaped a nondualistic view of consciousness, where brain and 'what it's like to be a bat' are expressions of the same thing, but which doesn't explain how consciousness works, in the sense of Chalmers' 'hard problem.' Maybe questions concerning consciousness which unite the first and third person singular viewpoints - how meat/gray matter gives rise to the taste of mango - are best re-framed as temporary limitations in conceptuaization/language.

Scott MacLeod at 12:27pm November 5
Here's the link to David Chalmers' far-reaching resource on consciousness, including links to multiple papers -

http://consc.net/chalmers/

and including his philosophical humor web page:)

http://consc.net/phil-humor.html


(http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1108760881#/notes.php?id=824130561)

***

Watsu at the Domes

The buildings above {click on title} were built as a Watsu School at Harbin. Back to Harbin soon for Watsu {Water Shiatsu - a harmonizing practice} ...

Vale: Communitas Doctor, Ethnography as Thank You Letter, Harbin

How does communitas work? How to live in a state of communitas much of the time, as it's partly neurophysiological, and partly relates to social processes {especially vis-a-vis place ~ the warm water just flows out of the ground in Harbin's very beautiful vale, for example}.


{And in what way can we give rise to qualities (neurophysiological) of loving bliss {viz. MDMA, naturally}, when and as we want them, especially with the World Wide Web. "This is how loving bliss works, naturally, and this is how you can get 'there,' and with friends":}.



A Harbin ethnography in the form of a thank you letter, - a new genre for Ethnography and a 'thank you' to an interesting place?

mi: Harbin, do re mi fa so la ti do, music

Harbin has its ways, - what is the code here? It's pretty hippie, and has been so for a long time now. No one is in charge, and it just kind of meanders along. No one is in charge? Oh my, ~ it's kind of like nature or ecology :). But it has attracted an interesting group of people, who run it behind the scenes.


***

Music - Why do we like sequences of tones? What could have selected for this appreciation, evolutionarily?


***

And from these notes, for example, do re mi fa so la ti do, and octaves around them, we can shape infinite numbers of lines of music. Wonderful!

Cloudy Fjord

Cloudy Fjord?


I wonder if the relaxation response together with your best friend, might ease, at least temporally, and then transform, pressures in life which we experience. It's salutary to explore the relaxation response on one's own, especially. {And flax seed oil for omega-3 fatty acids ~ 1000 mg / 3 times per day, can be beneficial, too}.

The relaxation response is a lovely neurophysiological response.

It can be fascinating to explore creatively, too, for example, in the sense of MDMA, but naturally, - so, without the side effects. :)

But how about, also, more time to be together, by making use of resources? {Ah, modernity:}.

Find freedom . . . and a lot can happen by 'growing' our already existing great chemistry . . .

Blue Waterlilies: Love Bliss, Talking, Eliciting

I'm curious how to make the five letters I've written about loving bliss, more interactive, - especially via the Web, so that people access this neurophysiology readily and with friends.


Loving Bliss Letters

Friends' Dalton Letter :)
scottmacleod.com/daltonletter.htm

Loving Bliss and Practices to Elicit This
scottmacleod.com/LovingBlissPractices.htm

Loving Bliss as Friends
scottmacleod.com/LovingBlissFriends.htm

Eudaimonia is Flow and Bliss
scottmacleod.com/EudaimoniaFlow.htm

Guidelines for Practicing Loving Bliss vis-à-vis
Practicing a Musical Instrument
scottmacleod.com/GuidelinesPracticingLovingBlissvavMusicalInstrument.htm


How to love bliss, and to learn and teach loving bliss?


Talking is one way ...


Harbin Hot Springs, MMmmm...

Dusk: Paradigm Shift, Teach in, Harbin, Loving Bliss

Information technology already represents a far-reaching paradigm shift affecting every aspect of socioeconomic processes.

World University and School may also come to complement this. Teach or take a course. Focus on what you'd like to teach or learn, like MIT Open Course Ware courses, or loving bliss {these qualities of neurophysiology}, or how to improve your material circumstances with ease, or how to shape more free time in your life, ~ all for free. Let's teach this. Let's make ideas sing, in all languages and subjects. World University and School makes teach-ins possible anywhere {teach-in-cyberspace}, to complement what teachers already do.

And this can all be done * virtually * too. What an amazing word and phenomenon, which has been around at least since symbolizing began in communicative species, but now uniquely so with the Information Technology revolution.


Harbin, in some ways, represents a paradigm shift, and as idea, too, where people live life alternatively. At Harbin people can explore loving bliss, too, ~ richly. {And some do;}.




To the Harbin pools soon ...

Blue Heron: Writing, Representing, Creating, Loving Bliss

How can we explicitly cultivate idea-generation as 'flow: the psychology of optimal experience' experiences, that are blissful? To cultivate bliss explicitly, when and as we want, bodymind-wise ... {relaxation response, for me, to begin} ...

How to do this in richly logical ways? In bringing logical thinking to this question, can we do this in ways that are cultivatable, that give rise to vigor of ideas {what is this neurochemistry?} vis-a-vis loving bliss? Here both countercultural thinking, for a time, and the Schlegel brothers and Tieck's remarkable, poetic translations of Shakespeare's works into German verse are fascinating examples.

So, how to get from ideas + logic = flow: the psychology of optimal experience > bliss > loving bliss, which is cultivatable?

Writing facilitates acts of representation and creation - forms of logical idea generation - but loving bliss is unique, wonderful qualities of neurochemistry.


Harbin pools soon . . . :)

Cypress: Point Lobos, Life, Confluence of Beauty and Abundance, Hippie Storytelling

Some places around the globe are fascinating confluences of beauty and abundance. Point Lobos State Reserve on the California coast, south of Carmel, is one. Upwelling of warm ocean water brings much life of all kinds to the shore here, so food is abundant. There are marine mammals, terrestrial animals, birds, monarch butterflies, plant communities, kelp forests, mushrooms, ~ seals, herons, egrets, cougars, coyotes, foxes, pelicans, cormorants, cypress trees and so many more species. What an abundance of species! {Pt. Lobos State Reserve web site ~ Natural History}. In addition, the crystalline waters are beautiful, and the coast line here is very varied. Pt. Lobos looks to me a little like alive Tang-era Taoist painting, actualized as real-life multimedia.


***

In the reclaiming of all kinds of human traditions in the 1960s, and in resistance to modernity, counterculture re-claimed storytelling ...

Hippies have long engaged tall-tale telling, but more, hippies created an amazing number of adventures and fascinating situations.

Woody Guthrie {This Land Is Your Land and The House of the Rising Sun},
U. Utah Phillips (1935-2008) {at the 2007 Strawberry Creek Music Festival - 7 parts} and
Pete Seeger {This Land Is Your Land at the Lincoln Memorial at age 90 on Sunday, January 18, 2009}
were and are 3 hobo ~ beatnik folk singers, who were story teller-musicians par excellence ....