Paul Mawdsley

Theodore, I'm struggling with this statement. Taken literally, it makes no sense to me. However, there is a way the spirit of the statement resonates with my own sense of there being something missing in the neo-Darwinist view. I don't think anyone denies thought. What is denied is that individual thought plays a direct role in shaping our evolutionary development as a species. Indirectly, thought is recognized as contributing to our individual fitness, which increases the chances for individuals, who have randomly mutated better thinking genes, to survive and pass on their genes to the next generation. Our actual thoughts can also influence the survival of our genes by contributing to our family's culture and the culture of the larger groups that support our survival. I have no argument with this if random mutation and natural selection are accepted as the only possible mechanism driving evolution. I have a deep sense, however, that this is not the only mechanism for driving evolution. Evolution feels incomplete to me because it is built on too simplistic a view of causation that can account for how the parts of a system can contribute to the whole but can't account for how the whole system contributes to shaping the nature and behaviour of the parts. We stand here in the 21st century trying to make sense of the complexities of our universe with a 19th century model of causality shaping the lens through which we view our world. Quantum mechanics grew, in the early 20th century, from the reality that whole physical systems influence the behaviour of the parts from which they are composed. It clearly demonstrated that 19th century notions of causality were insufficient to account for quantum systems. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle told us there is a point beyond which we cannot observe or measure reality. The conclusion drawn by physicists, lead by Bohr in the Copenhagen interpretation, was that the uncertainty principle defines a physical limit to what we can know about the universe and that causality is an illusion. This essentially crippled any further thought in this area. So, instead of developing a more evolved view of causality that can shape our models of possible underlying realities of complex systems in our universe (in quantum physics and in other domains), we are stuck with worldviews built on a 19th century model of causality that physics has shown to be incomplete at best or completely inadequate at worst. It is this incomplete model of causality that evolution theory, based on random mutation and natural selection, is built from. It sees only how parts interact to form whole systems but is inherently blind to any mechanism where the whole system influences the nature and behaviour of the parts. Thus, it is inherently blind to any mechanism where the state of the whole organism feeds back to shape the nature and behaviour of the genetic parts...the very principle discovered in quantum mechanics but not applied elsewhere because we did not use it to develop our causal lens. In evolution theory we find ideas held to dogmatically along neo-Darwinian lines allowing nothing but random mutation and natural selection as the driving principles. In quantum mechanics we find theory held to equally dogmatically along neo-Copenhagen interpretation lines. Step outside of either interpretation and be prepared to be attacked. This is politics, not science. The irony of all this is that natural selection and quantum mechanics are both prime examples of how the whole system influences the nature and behaviour of the parts but we are crippled to generalize these principles into a more evolved view of the nature of causality. I suspect that the dogmatism that developed around these theories arose from the battle grounds which emerged as natural selection and quantum mechanics were presented. Natural selection grew in a context of creationist dogma. Quantum mechanics grew in a context of linear and local causation dogma. The early dogmatism had survival value at one time. Now it is simply impeding growth.

Bob, For most, evolution and individual development have provided us with the capacity for empathy-- ie: automated perspective taking built into our nature on the levels of emotion, perception, intuition and conceptualization. I recall you saying you have Asperger's at some point. A lack of a capacity for empathy is one of the most striking features of Asperger's. I also think I recall you saying you cannot introspect the way others report looking into themselves. It strikes me that you are built to be the ultimate empiricist. You have neither the weaknesses nor the strengths that come with the need to include, integrate and balance an empathic lens. You experience the world from the facts-up, without other people's concepts competing with your own conceptual development inside you. As you point out, you are a person who "deals with facts first and concepts second." Because empathy works by taking in another's perspective and experiencing it as though it were your own, one of the unhealthy ways it can be used is to replace one's own conceptual development-- starting with the facts and working from the inside-out-- with someone else's ready-made concepts that come from the outside-in. It seems you bypass this issue by not taking in another's perspective and experiencing as your own. I have no doubt you have the ability to evaluate the objectivity of a perspective by looking at the same facts it is pointing to and judging its relationship to the facts but you would not have the ability to see the world from within another's conceptual framework. Am I right about this? Paul

Xray, I have struggled between these two terms myself, so I empathize and sympathize with where you are coming from. With respect to the 'caring about’ issue, I think we need to consider the difference between "empathy" and “sympathy” here. These definitions from Dictionary.com illustrate: Contrast this with: If we read into these definitions a little, we can see that empathy is the taking in of another's perspective while holding onto the possibility that our own self-centric perspective may be quite different. Sympathy is the taking in of another's emotional perspective, that is in harmony with one’s own, and reacting from a place of shared feeling or compassion. Sympathy is simple and reactive. Empathy opens the door to much greater complexity in processing and responding. It even opens up the door to not caring about the particular perspective a person is projecting, or behaviour they are engaging in (beyond what it says about their insides), while still caring about the person underneath who is more than any particular perspective or behaviour. I went through a difficult period with my daughter when she was 7 and 8 years old. Her mother and I were both quite blind to emotional deceptions as our daughter was growing up to this point and she developed considerable skills at manipulating our reactions through projecting unauthentic feelings. She was very good at it. She reached a point where she could not only cry as required to get what she wanted, she could escalate this state to the point of throwing up, all to trigger sympathetic responses. I could feel something wasn't true but I couldn't put my finger on it. I had to learn to dig deeper into my empathic experience with her, and to break my genetic/environmental programming that triggered my reactions, so I could open to see what was happening deeper inside her and inside me. What I saw was a hurt little girl who felt largely invisible in her life, who had a keen ability to feel inside people by watching non-verbal clues and who had discovered how to get her needs met by triggering certain motivating feelings in those around her. From here I learned to take my triggers away and to see her behaviour for what it really was: codependent, controlling and manipulative. It was unhealthy. I never stopped caring for her but I stopped caring for her behaviour-- meaning I stopped seeing it as being a reflection of what she truly felt. I came to recognize the difference between real crying and unauthentic crying; between real hurt and unauthentic hurt. In so doing, I gave her visibility, I validated her true self and I started to break down this unauthentic other self that acted as a shield and a mask, built to unconsciously manipulate her environment. The caring was constant. In fact, it went deeper...and continues to deepen every day. This caring is separate to my empathy for her perspective and the behaviour that comes from her perspective. I learned that you can care about, esteem and connect to someone's core self without agreeing with their perspective or behaviour in a given context, but it is empathy that still tells me what a person’s perspective is that gives rise to their behaviour. Separating her from her perspective and her behaviour, and separating caring for her from liking her perspective and behaviour, was a powerful step forward in my development and in our relationship. It allowed me to create a level of unconditional love while challenging her unhealthy perspective and behaviours so she could reassess and make different choices. Using intuition to represent what “empathic perspective” means to me doesn’t work. Intuition is a larger category that contains the empathic perspective. Most broadly, there are three types of intuition from which to view the universe: there is self-centric intuition, objective intuition and there is empathic intuition. Self-centric intuition is our ability to sense what makes things tick, as an inside observer of ourselves and an outside observer of everything else, standing at the centre of our universe. Objective intuition is our ability to sense what makes things tick as an outside observer from any and all points in the universe. Our empathic intuition is our ability to sense what makes people (and things) tick as an inside observer from any and all points in the universe. The first sees things from the perspective of a central part (ourselves) that contributes, with other parts (other people and things), to make up a whole. The second is the “god’s eye” perspective, seeing things from outside of the system. The third sees things as a whole made up of parts, of which we are just one. There is one universe with three unique orientations to view it. No view of the universe can be complete without including all three. Would this mean that matter can intelligently organize itself without a conscious mind (or any other kind of 'programmer') being needed to perform the act? I’m struggling with “intelligently organize itself.” As I think you are trying to make clear, there is no intelligent designer. There is no God (God is best seen as a metaphor). There is matter/energy and the forms it can take when it organizes according to the principles we discover through science, and through our personal explorations from an inside perspective as an organism that is part of this universe. From this starting point, I find it hard to consider random mutation to be an engine fit to drive evolution in a way that fits observation and the fossil record, and in a way that fits my sense of causation. There is the missing element of whole to part reciprocal causation missing in many of our theories because it has been excluded by an underdeveloped intuitive causal lens that was proven completely inadequate by QM. A drive to integration and to maximize integration, arising naturally from the principles of plasma physics combining with stable matter structures and a whole to part reciprocal causation, simply injects a non-random element into mutation and evolution. It means that genetic mutations would be generated and attracted to certain phenotypic possibilities that increase integration, so that the successful striving of the organism can be recorded in the genetic code for future generations. There is this possibility of a feedback loop, between the whole organism and the parts of the organism, involved in shaping the development of the organism within its lifetime and involved in carrying genetic information to the next generation. This can be seen as contributing, along with random mutation and natural selection, to the shaping of evolution. Can this be considered a means of matter intelligently organizing itself? I suppose from an outside perspective of an intelligent observer. What it does, though, is provide the basic principle for need motivated behaviour, or life, emerging from inanimate matter/energy. Need motivated behaviour with a feedback loop for the success of a given action, combined with a way to record the relative success of new structures and behaviors within the organism, provides the basis of learning, growth and development. Deeply established successful new structures and habits in the organism, themselves being recorded and embedded in the genetic code, would make giant leaps forward in just a few generations possible. From the outside these might appear “intelligent.” In reality it is just a strange attractor in a dynamic system with no intelligent goal directedness. Now that I’ve gone this far outside of the box, here’s something else I’ve wondered about. If we consider the possibility that selection could be taking place at the level of individuals, and some individuals in a given culture could make advances within their own lifetimes, wouldn’t it make sense that natural selection would provide a mechanism to share our advancements with others around us? This thought strikes me every time I get hit with the flu. Paul

I like "impulse toward rectitude" as a generic description. This points in a valuable direction. I sense the "impulse toward rectitude" has a deeper dynamic. It comes from the same base as our need for self-esteem. More specifically, it's an impulse that comes from our need for self-value in the context of our commitment to accepting personal, physical and social realities. Notice that people who do not have commitment to these realities and who settle for an illusion of self-value tend not to have such an impulse toward rectitude. Instead, these people have an impulse towards deception and manipulation of these realities. They are Rand's "Attila's" and "witch doctors." Furthermore, in patching together his "hodge-podge of neo-Darwinism and pragmatism," Dawkins commits what Rand called "the fallacy of the frozen abstraction" in that he equates the subject of ethics as such with the issue of how one treats other people. The possibility of an ethics of rational self-interest or more widely the possibility of a eudaimonic ethics doesn't seem to occur to him. At least I'm unaware of his having discussed the idea of an ethics the goal of which is the well-being of the moral agent. Plus he's a determinist. Not, as he's sometimes said to be, a genetic determinist. A determinist nonetheless. Again, this opens a valuable insight. If Dawkins is not considering the possibility of "a eudaimonic ethics," he is trying to form a global vision of evolution with a lens that is blind to and excludes important information and possible integrations. It's like trying to bake a cake while ignoring the existence of eggs. I tend to see a eudaimonic ethics as being based on a deeper principle in the organism and in the moral agent: the drive to maximize the integration of the organism. This drive applies equally to physical and neuro-psychological contexts. It subsumes the physical development of the organism, the rational self-interested development of the moral agent and the the development of a eudaimonic ethics. Stepping outside of the box for a moment: while this drive to maximize the integration of the organism has clear survival advantage, my sense is that it is a principle that preceded natural selection in evolutionary history and operates within the context of natural selection today. Also, if we consider the existence of a drive to integration and to maximize integration as emerging from the physical universe (studies in plasma physics with force free filaments seem very suggestive here), then a potentially non-random element is introduced to random mutation. If we see a force free plasma structure as being a quantum system, around which not only ions but amino acids can come together, then we have a potential mechanism for the feedback of information between the whole system (organism) and the central parts of the system (the genes). This might work by the same principle as the whole system informs the behaviour of an electron in the double slit experiment. It's just a more complex system with more complex parts. In principle, the genes could receive information about the whole organism, via a quantum feedback between the whole and the parts of a system, allowing the phenotype to influence the genotype and individual development to effect evolution. (This way of seeing things, incidentally, could point the way to a solution of the "mind/body" problem where, as NB suggested, mind and body both come from a common underlying reality, just as the solid structures and plasma structures can come together from an underlying common physical universe.) I tend to agree. My own breaking free of my randroid phase emerged from a battle inside me to not let go of my empathic self. Taking in Rand's perspective and her philosophy required that I shut down empathy to those I cared about who didn't live by her values. Judgement and exclusion, not understanding and inclusion, became the context in which I came to see all my relationships in that time. I've been working on finding balance between my egoism and my empathic perspective ever since. Tony, The starting point is definitely the self. It is reconnecting with all those parts within us that we have disowned, ironically and mistakenly, in our struggle for integration. this starting point is in seeking integration and balance between the part of us that is more of an unconscious, holistic, organic flow and the part that we see as conscious, focused, objective and chosen. It is also also in seeking integration and balance between our self-centric perspective and our empathic perspective. Within the empathic perspective is the need to establish our boundaries so our ego can be self-assured and occupy independent and autonomous space in the empathic realm. Twenty years ago I got onto the subject of empathy with a woman. She told me the story of her four year old son sitting in McDonald's. He kept watching this old man who was sitting in the restaurant. She asked the boy not to stare and told him to eat his meal. He listened to neither instruction. When they were done and preparing to leave, his mother told him to put his waste in the garbage. Again, he ignored the instruction. He walked over to the man and gave him his meal. The man simply said, "Thank you." The boy walked over to his mom and said, "That man was hungry." Empathy is very powerful in us at a young age. It has the power to motivate us as intensely as direct personal experience. Empathic feelings and images are experienced as being as real as direct perceptions. We take other people's feelings and visions inside us and, yes, this can be overwhelming. We can feel powerless in the face of other people's suffering. There is another side to empathy though that can be even more traumatic. We take in other people's feelings and visions of ourselves. Given the unhealthy, self-serving nature of how so many people feel about and envision others, this can be an excruciatingly painful experience, especially as a child. This is what so many of our psychological defense mechanisms are designed to keep out. Unfortunately, this is exactly what our parenting cultures, and our cultures in general, are design to use and control, manipulate and exploit, creating a vast unhealthy, codependent matrix. As adults it is definitely a good idea to "restrict empathy to those known and valued." However, by this I don't mean turning empathy on and off. Empathy is a means of perception, of acquiring information about another person's feelings, way of seeing things and their motives. It is wise to know and be confident in your own perspective so it doesn't get swallowed up by someone else's and so you can distinguish between yours and someone else's inside of you. This is the ego occupying space and having well established boundaries in the empathic realm. This is not turning off empathy. What you turn off is the reactive flow from the empathic perspective. Instead, you turn on judgement of the empathic information and turn on chosen responses instead of reactions. Think of this: how wise would it be to allow an ex-lover, who has come to see you with hatred and to spit venom, to have free access to your open, empathic flow? Basically it would be an open invitation saying, "Please, please fuck me up!" Because they are hurt, and they believe you are the cause of this hurt, they seriously do want to fuck you up. In every interaction you need all the information you can get about how their feelings, their way of seeing things and their motives are going to effect you and those you care about. You seriously need the information your empathy provides, even with the person who hates you most in this world. You just don't have to give their perspective the status of reality inside you. Btw- Yes, I believe we have known the same lady...LMFAO! Paul

Tony, I think you've hit on an important insight. Empathy is an important and powerful tool for knowing and understanding oneself, as well as for understanding others, in creating positive relationships with others. NB touched on this with his concept of "psychological visibility." It is said that 80% of communication is non-verbal. This non-verbal communication comes almost entirely from an unconscious, holistic, flow state within us. Verbal communication is based in conscious, volitional, proactive processes. We have a direct inner way of knowing the roots of our verbal communications but not our non-verbal. We need a means of raising awareness to, and conceptually framing the nature of, what flows undifferentiated inside and through us, and is being expressed in the complexities of our behaviour. We get to know ourselves through empathy because it is the only way we get to see and feel and understand ourselves from the outside as complex, flowing, intuitive beings. Cut yourself off from empathy and you cut yourself off from knowing the greatest part of yourself. You split yourself into two: the conscious, linear, objective, verbal self; and the unconscious, complex, flowing, intuitive, non-verbal self. Each part will produce conflicting conclusions and impulses. Unable to find integration as we are growing through this, we find an inescapable pressure to choose one and disown the other to maintain the integrity of our being. This creates a conflict and a hierarchically structured psyche within a world divided between thinkers and feelers; one as the dominant self and the other the shadow. This is so true. It adds feeling and colour to the black and white of the objective lens. We see not only the veneer of people’s outsides, we have a sense of who they are, understanding their outward behaviour using our empathically informed intuitive sense of their inner worlds. This can be contrasted with the empathy excluded, more defensive and narcissistic version: our sense of who people are is based on a judgement of their outward behaviour, projecting the ghosts of past others and past relationships onto the present person and situation. This creates a categorical divide in personality types between understanding (or perceiving) and judging. Again, so true. Clearly, maintaining integration of the organism by cutting out huge amounts of it, such as one’s capacity to know the self via empathy, is not ideal. Understanding our environment by cutting out huge amounts of information about our environment, such as one’s capacity to know others via empathy, is not ideal either. Also, approaching others creating a mutually shared space with empathy and understanding tends to have a very different effect on others, and our relationships with them, when compared to approaching them with disconnection, suspicion and judgement. That’s the thing about empathy…it’s either mutual, each meeting halfway, or it’s broken and the basis of an unbalanced power relationship. He who cares the least has the most power. I agree there is ambiguity about the definition of empathy. I have learned in my own life to bypass the level of definitional molasses and dive past definitions, and even past language altogether, into the intuitive realm where thinking and understanding happens at the level of images and feelings, and into an intuitive sense of causal and geometric flow in life. Definitions take care of themselves when our intuitive sense of existence becomes more precise. The same is true between people as it is within a person. The dialogue we are now engaged in could have become bogged down, and even lost, in a battle of definitions. It wasn’t because we bypassed talking about definitions until we engaged in a discussion about the deeper framework from which definitions arise. On this level of discussion we were readily able to find a common ground to work from in order to create the basis of shared definitions for discussion. Moreover, we are not trapped by the limitations of existing understanding and definitions in our explorations and discussions. We can openly explore ideas that go beyond the existing box created by contemporary thought and language. Quite frankly, I have a sense of existing views and definitions of empathy but my own thinking comes more from the inside-out-- more from my own explorations of personal and empathic experience, rather than from the outside-in—more from the landscape of established academic norms. Both approaches have great value. Neither, at least in my life, is more right. I see the two not as potentially conflicting perspectives needing a hierarchy to establish dominance but as potentially paradoxical perspectives of one reality needing a dialectical resolution, a meta-perspective containing both, to create integration. I put my perspective out there as a means of sharing my view to ask for peer review, reality test my intuitive view with other people’s experience, and to generate honest feedback of other people’s own personal perspectives that I can appreciate as having value in understanding them and to include as a means to drive the growth of my own thinking. And yes, I am also interested in where these explorations stand relative to more academic norms. I know there are people here much more knowledgeable than me in this area. I just don’t necessarily see academic norms, whether definitions, theories or paradigms, as the standard by which we need to always judge the value of our personal perspectives. However, I do see an understanding of academic norms as needing to be included in an inclusive personal view of existence. I’m struggling with “projecting one’s personality.” It doesn’t feel right to my experience of it. To be more precise with my own experience I would have to say: empathy is the power of mirroring the object of experience by recreating the inner dynamics and nature of the object inside oneself. We can recreate the inner dynamics of another person through the principle of reversing causation: we recreate the inner dynamics that causes behaviour (using the entity-to-action model of causation, as it doesn’t work with action-reaction model). We see tears and we experience the hurt that gives rise to tears. We see a boy’s behaviour being out of sync with the context of a situation (in the way described in my earlier post) and we experience his behaviour as being a manipulation for attention and self-elevation. We see the vision an author paints of reality and we experience the principles and inner dynamics of psyche that give rise to this vision. Great insight! I know, when I used to play soccer, it was like I could feel inside the ball. I was so familiar with it, I could sense how it would react in any situation. I didn’t have to think about velocity, angle and the spin of the ball as it was coming down. I just knew where it was going. I was already thinking about what I was going to do with the ball before it landed. Add rain and my read changed but it was just as intuitive. My ability to read the ball in a way that I could sense its inner nature gave me a definite advantage at reading the bounce, gaining control of the ball and creating a chance on goal. Empathy in the physical realm is intuition inside things. It has definite survival advantage on the soccer field…or for the tribal hunter. We live in a world that discourages the mature development of empathy. If empathy does not grow past the level of mirroring another’s feelings and/or vision, and our response to what we feel and see does not develop past the level of reaction, then empathy will be experienced simply as compassion in someone who has a relatively healthy sense of self. This is where understanding the inside dynamics of narcissistic behaviour is interesting. A narcissist is very empathic. In fact, he feeds off others’ positive vision of him reflected back to him. This is what makes the narcissist so powerful. His empathy of others’ insides gives him a fountain of information to use to control and manipulate in order to feed his needs. The key fact in a narcissist is he doesn’t care about others beyond their value to feed his needs. He has empathy without compassion. Paul

Hello whYNOT, Your welcoming tone is appreciated. Empathy is as involuntary and unconscious a process as seeing or hearing or perceiving through any of the senses. We are not conscious of any of these processes. We are conscious of the content of our perceptions. Do we say visual perception is immeasurable, unpredictable and non-objective because we are not conscious of the processes? No. Empathy is better understood as a holistic mode of perception rather than an unconscious response. We respond to the perception created through empathic processes and, when we learn to undo the programming from our childhood and our culture, we can generate multiple possibilities from which to choose our responses. This makes our responses to empathy very conscious and very voluntary. Or we can just choose to flow with it. An example: two young boys in rough and tumble play while I stand with their grandparents talking. One of the boys yells out in pain as the other looks on with panic in his face. Grandpa reacts and runs over to tend to the wound and the tears. Grandma looks on trying to decide if what she is seeing and what her empathic triggers are telling her is real. She's not convinced but she's not certain. She is conflicted and stuck. I'm watching. I turn to Grandma and say, "It's not real." Just like Grandma has learned, I've learned that words and empathic cues cannot be taken on face value. I've learned to watch the eyes, the facial expressions, the body language, the behaviour across time and to refer to the historical reputation of a person. I connect all these dots, not linearly and consciously, but holistically in the moment and respond in real time to what is happening with all this information feeding my perception of what is going on. I sense the boy's eyes are looking around to see who is watching and how they are reacting. When he is really in pain he focuses on the pain, not on those around him. I can feel the cries and grimaces are exaggerated. They are intended to get a response. He gets up and walks with a profound limp that does not feel like an attempt to walk against the pull of pain but more like an attempt to exaggerate the signs of pain. I know the boy to be capable of exaggerating injury and illness to escape what he doesn't want or to get what he does want. All this information feeds through my empathic lens, giving me my sense of what is taking place in his inner world, in a split second, so I perceive a boy who is playing a game to get his brother in trouble and get attention for himself. I had a very different response to Grandpa and Grandma. I tested the objectivity of my view. I confronted the boy in question, pointing to the long term value of trust, which he has learned increases freedom and choices. He has come to trust my fairness and to believe I can see right through him by reading his body language (a powerful tool as a parent) and he admitted to what he was doing and said sorry. This all suggests the effects of empathy are objective and measurable, and the responses can be conscious and voluntary. This is no different to other types of perception. Their are different levels of development in empathic processing which produce different outcomes. They produce different behaviours, different kids over time and, in the end, different adults. Think what a difference it makes in development if a girl thinks she can consistently get away with manipulating to get what she wants because adults can't trust their sense of her insides versus a girl who feels like she can't get away with manipulating because her parents see inside her. I fully agree with the value of more linear processes that give us what we typically consider our objective perspective. It is the difference between seeing the world as made up of veneers (to borrow from the Dawkins' video), and seeing the world made up of things from within their dynamic insides. The first sees the universe as a vast model from the outside of everything. The second sees the universe as a hologram made up of all the images from all the different inside perspectives it contains. In my mind these are two perspectives of one universe so each can inform and be integrated with the other. No argument here. I am a strong proponent of egoism. My life is about integrating and balancing my separateness and my connectedness. It is part of my self-interest to embrace my capacity for empathy, with all the information it offers and the sense of connectedness and benevolence to those I care about that it makes possible. A strong ego is possibly more important in a world perceived through a lens of empathy than it is in a world perceived through a lens of objectivity. In an objective space we might forget others have value in themselves. In empathic space we might forget we do. This is why healthy boundaries defining where self ends and others begin are needed. Without healthy boundaries, a person can fear losing themselves in others and a rigid embracing of objectivity and a suppressing of empathy can be the result.

Michael, I will definitely give it a watch. I've been fortunate enough to fall in love with a couple of women on my journey who have some pretty extreme defense mechanisms and control systems lurking in the shadows. Borderline and Narcissistic personalities make for pretty intense learning opportunities on the dark side of life. It was a journey through my own insides. Two things I've learned: I am strong enough to let anything and anyone all the way inside and still hold onto me; and nothing inside can scare me now. I sense the 12 steps has some similar lessons. Paul

Thanks Bob. After reading Robbie Burns, reading William flows a lot better...a little out of practice, eh?

Bob, I agree. Evolution has given us the capacity to view the world from both a self-centric perspective with ourselves at the centre of things-- separate to those around us, and from an empathic perspective with ourselves as one amongst many perspectives-- connected to those around us. The intuitive visions each perspective creates stands at the foundation of morality, and at the foundation of moral conflict and debate. My own view is that conflicts between the two need to be resolved through more of a dialectical process than just taking sides. A not so random mutation can shape a new integrated morality. Btw- holding onto our empathic perspective and all the information it provides is in our self-interest. It is an important lens necessary for healthy social dynamics. It seems to be largely missing in Objectivist culture and in Rand's work.

Hmmmm...dialogue stalled...apparently over battle lines between ghosts of battles past. So is anyone interested in talking about the content of the video? Or is a discussion of the definition of "altruism" all that is of value here?

Thanks Michael...more of a "life is what you make of it" kinda guy myself.

Forgot all about this discussion. It's a fun read, even if I can't remember writing what I wrote here. I find the comment on mirror neurons quite interesting because I use something I have come to call "radical empathy" as an important lens of perception to inform my intuition, both social and physical. Everyone has an idea what empathy is. What makes it radical is when we can break it free from internal reactive chains that trigger programmed actions and turn it, instead, into information about the insides of people and things for generating a more complex and detailed intuitive sense of one's context when making choices in any given moment. It has vastly expanded my insight into people and into social dynamics.

Life is good. It's nothing like I planned but exactly what I need. I joined the divorce club, decided to excavate my inner and outer world down to its roots and am rebuilding in a new, more insightful and healthier way. My eyes have been opened to see the insides of both the dark side and the good side of people and relationships. And, as I tend to do, I questioned and mapped everything I witnessed. I now am using these insights in my life and I'm curious to see how they take shape in my writing. I can't promise anything "tantalizing"..lol...but I do hope to contribute some substance to discussions and the occasional article worthy of provoking thought. I have developed a definite interest in studying the narcissistic side of each of us, its inner dynamics, how it grows and how we seem to be living in a culture that is fertile for the psyche to either skew toward narcissism in some or skew towards blindness and acceptance of its shadowy operations in others. I am figuring out how to understand and deal with narcissism and its roots in everyday life as I am discovering how prevalent and how destructive it is. Narcissists seem to operate and grow in the dark of blind spots in our culture. It strikes me as epidemic today. I sense its roots are connected to what Barbara called "Objectivist Rage". This is one of the subjects I would like to discuss as I put my "oar back in the water".

Hello to those who remember me being here before and to those who don't. It's been awhile. It's good to see some familiar names. Looking forward to hanging out here every once in a while again.

We don't. Ba'al Chatzaf Bob, you give up so easily!

I like to say we each have a relative perspective of an absolute reality. We generate an objective lens-- aview from nowhere in particular-- in an attempt to gain a perspective of that absolute reality from our existentially relative position. Existentially we occupy a unique and singular psychological, philosophical and physical point in the universe which makes our experience of that universe inescapably relative to our particular position in it. We use various means of filtering information, and controlling for the tendency of our relative lenses to skew our perspective of the universe, in order to increase objectivity and bring us closer to the absolutes of existence. Although we can never escape our existential relativism, striving for objectivity does bring us closer to the absoluteness of reality. The methods of science and philosophy allow us to filter and control information so we can reduce the skewing influences of such aspects of our relative position as our feelings and motives, and creates a more objective picture. Ironically, no picture of the universe is complete, or completely objective, that does not account for the existence and influence of these feelings and motives. How do we gain objectivity in the emotional realm and in the psyche in general? Paul

Now that's service. Thanks for the rapid feedback. Paul

Amen, brother, amen! It's amazing how similar the Obama candidacy is to the McGovern candidacy in 1972. Despite all the superficial differences, it all seems to boil down to a doubt as to whether they would protect us from our foreign enemies, and a fear that they will redistribute us into poverty and economic disaster. When you have a chance, re-read Ayn Rand's monthly letters from 1971 and 1972 (not the book of her private correspondence, but her newsletter). Amazing stuff. Still vital and true today. reb Roger, I've never read these letters. There is lot I want to make time for. Life seems to keep getting more, not less, complicated all the time. How do I get my hands on these monthly letters? Do I have to go through ARI? Paul

Interesting and horribly tragic. The human carnage will be beyond belief. And so unnecessary, even so near at hand. --Brant The suffering is always tragic. I hate to see it. It is also what provides the impulse for change when people don't have a capacity for a clear vision of life based on projecting realities and positive potentials. The "human carnage" is unfortunately necessary. Most of the world is not able to find the truth via abstract reasonong or creative, systematic visualization. They need to be hit over the head with the truth. We are in the process of being hit over the head. Our world is in the process of learning some spiritual/philosophical lessons..."Take what you want...and pay for it!" Reality will unfold, the truth of bad ideas will be exposed, and there will emerge a space for new ideas to occupy. The bad ideas have to finish running their course for everyone to see them for what they are. You cannot skip a step in personal or cultural development. Our culture is evolving. Old structures, old ideas, old ways of being have to struggle and die before the space opens up for new species to take their place and evolve. This is the process we are witnessing, and have been witnessing for decades. Paul

I think things are just starting to get interesting. As things start to reach points of crisis realities become clear. The truth about people's position come into focus. As the truth comes into focus we get to see beneath the covers and get a chance to make sense of the world anew. This is not a time to disappear. This is a time to point to the truth while it is exposed for all to see. The truth about how mistaken the vision of human nature, ethics and politics, that has shaped our political landscapes, is being exposed. We are seeing the ugly mess that has resulted from a distorted vision of reality. This mess will continue to grow to the point where it will break down. As it breaks down the causes will need to be identified clearly and marketed to the public at large. And a new vision will need to emerge. Yes...It's just starting to get interesting... Paul

I don't think so. It is a process of creation. It goes beyond just copying reality. Paul Edit: I would agree that these processes include what Mindy describes.

Michael, The first time I saw you write this, some time ago, I struggled to wrap my head around it in my own images but could only get a faint glimpse of what you meant. Recent discussions and experiences have truly brought this home to me. I get it vividly now. I enjoyed the context created by this post. It fits my understanding. I especially liked: Paul

Thank you Barbara. I'm thankful I can count on you to find some value in my idiosyncratic language. Such statements also attract readers who already tend to red-hot fury. We are attracted by interpersonal contexts (subjective contexts shared between people) that give us the freedom to express our intellectual and emotional identity. The idea of visibility applies again. What people respond to when one expresses one's ideas or emotions generates a sense of visibility. This visibility creates a context of freedom in which one can express such ideas and emotions further. The contexts that are created shape the ways in which communication does or doesn't unfold. A context of creative interpretation generates a very different dynamic from a context of rigid interpretive norms. It creates very different freedoms in the direction of dialogue. Sometimes just operating under the assumption of "intellectual opponents" is enough for barricades to form. Intellectual explorers would have a different dynamic. Paul

I'm always up to fight the forces of evil. You must not think I've got it in for you personally. I thought we got off to a nice start. But I'll defend man's mind wherever and whenever the bat-light shines in the sky! = Mindy Neither I nor my ideas represent the forces of evil. Your rigid adversarial approach that allows for no creativity in interpretating perspectives different from your own, on the other hand...well, I think that might be one of those forces you're looking for. :super: (Sorry, I couldn't find Batman.) Paul

I do. Paul