Randomness And Meaning

                                                                                                written 28 April, 2018

                                                                                                published  5 May 18

            The belief in meaning is a personal decision, perhaps the core expression of free will.  Meaning is a subjective experience, even if rooted in the objective world, and will differ for each one of us.  It is a personal construct of our relationship with a larger context, and how we define who we are in this life.  If we view the world as whole and wise, then every part and event has meaning arising from that larger context, waiting to be perceived.  

            Shamans and seers of all cultures use many techniques for guidance and inspiration throughout the ages.  The I Ching has been used for over 2500 years, to interpret the casting of yarrow stalks or coins.  In the west, the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck has been used in a similar manner for over 500 years. 

            Dreams have long been interpreted for meaning.  Carl Jung introduced the concept of synchronicity (meaningful coincidence) to western psychology in the 1920s.  The idea came to him when a patient related a dream of a scarab beetle and at that very moment, a scarab beetle began beating at the window.  The conjunction of the inner dream and the outer waking reality helped the patient make a breakthrough.  Subsequent research in synchronicity shows that the more we interpret these as meaningful events, the more they occur, as we train ourselves to notice them.

            In a meaningful world, every person we meet has information for us, as we have for them.  We don't always successfully exchange those messages, but as we hold the possibility, the likelihood of communication increases.  Apparently unconnected events, such as songs on the radio, bumper stickers, or overheard conversations, can lead to sudden clarity of purpose, and therefore be meaningful.

            The alternative is a meaningless world.  Western materialist science dismisses meaning in the world, citing the random nature of material processes as proof.  However, the dictionary defines random as "having no pattern or objective", implying meaninglessness and unpredictability, so randomness is not proof of meaninglessness, just a restatement of the concept.

            Can we really determine a random process?  If you are red/green color blind, and someone picks all the red M&M's out of the red and green Christmas mix, it looks like a random selection.  However, it is an error to say that selection "is" random; an accurate statement is the selection "appears to be" random.  Similarly, anyone reading this is viewing marks, that, for a person who does not read, could be described as random scribbles.  That assessment is true for them, but not true for you the reader.

            By ascribing a quality to an objective experience, rather than acknowledging a limited perception, we commit what Buddhists call reification, a fallacy of misplaced concreteness.  If I accept that "I see" no pattern, there is opportunity for me to learn and possibly perceive anew.  But if I assert there "is" no pattern, I am unlikely to search further, and will remain ignorant.  As finite beings contemplating the infinite unknown, we have to acknowledge that everything we know is either wrong, or at best, incomplete.  

            The idea of a larger context, which includes us all, is the root of meaning.  Some people do not experience such a context, nor any kind of meaning, and therefore believe there isn't one.  That belief makes the proposition true for that individual, but that doesn't mean it is true for everyone else.  

            This is open for consideration, and each of us gets to choose what kind of life we live.  There appears to be a deep human desire to matter in some way, if only to ourselves, and choosing to see life as meaningless seems to foster despair.  Many people choose this path, which might account for the skyrocketing numbers of people battling anxiety and depression.  But I believe it is possible to consciously choose to live a meaningful life, even if the exact meaning is not clear.  Life then becomes a journey of exploration, and with that orientation, we continue to learn more about life the longer we live it.

           

Wells Fargo And Corporate Ethics

                                                                                                written 21 April, 2018

                                                                                                published  28 April 18

            Ethics are rules we live by which regulate our impact on others.  The Harvard Business School (HBS) has been instrumental in shaping the standards of business, more than any other school.  When it opened in 1908, it was accepted that business had an ethical obligation to society, customers, suppliers, and employees.  But teaching ethics was problematic, and ethical considerations were subordinated over time to more quantifiable factors.  These days, HBS teaches that the only responsibility of business is to maximize shareholder value, disregarding any other consideration.  Wells Fargo Bank is a wonderful example of this limited ethics at work.

            Wells Fargo funds a number of businesses with controversial social benefit.  They support the gun industry by extending credit to the NRA and major gun outlets, making weapons easy to purchase.  They finance the private prison industry.  The US, with 5% of the global population, has 25% of global prisoners, the highest per capita rate.  Annual incarceration costs more than a Harvard education.  Wells Fargo invests heavily in fossil fuels, including tar sands, the least energy efficient fuel, and are funding the construction of the border wall.  While some people may applaud these investments, the bank's treatment of their own customers and employees might give pause to reconsider.

            Wells Fargo contributed to the housing crash in 2007, by certifying over 100,000 loans for FHA insurance between 2001 and 2005, without verify the borrower’s ability to repay these loans.  In 2002, more than 40 percent of the bank’s FHA loans failed to qualify for insurance, but Wells kept the defective loans secret, not reporting a single bad loan.

            After the crash, their mortgage unit made unauthorized changes to loans held by customers already in bankruptcy.  These changes require approval by a bankruptcy court judge, which Wells Fargo did not obtain, putting their customers in danger of defaulting on other commitments they had made to the courts. 

            An investigation in 2013 revealed that, as a result of aggressive quotas by bank managers to increase sales of bank services, bank employees issued credit cards for customers without their consent.  Approximately 85,000 of the accounts incurred $2 million in fees, adversely affecting customers' credit scores.  Employees also create fraudulent checking and savings accounts, and issued unwanted insurance policies. By Aug 2017, the number of unauthorized accounts had reached 3.5 million.

            By law, a bank is supposed to investigate potential criminal activity when a customer complains of fraud.  Instead, the bank closed the accounts and got rid of the customer, who were prevented from pursuing legal action by mandated private arbitration clauses.

            When employees reported unreachable goals, or inappropriate conduct, no changes resulted.  Instead, employees who made such reports were issued performance reviews which indicated that they had been complicit, which created difficulty gaining employment at other banks.

            Last week, Wells Fargo was fined $1 billion for selling un-needed auto loan insurance, and charging home loan borrowers extra fees when applications were delayed by the bank's own procedures.  This is on top of almost $200 million fines for previous frauds. 

            With annual profit of over $5 billion, these fines are manageable, and the recent Republican tax cut covers about half of the recent fine.  Bank executives are confident that fraud will not hurt the company, and no banker has ever gone to jail for their criminal actions.  In the last decade, Wells Fargo lost value from defrauding customers, but is worth over $250 billion, and increased value after the latest fine, suggesting the entire investment community is ethically challenged. 

            Wells Fargo is just one example of corporate ethics and dualistic economics, which maximizes profits for a few, without regard for the impact on anyone else.  Big banks feel customers have very little choice, as it is complicated to shift to another bank, and other big banks may have the same limited ethics.  But instead of feeling disempowered, we can vote with our money.  We don't have to do business with criminal enterprises, but can shift our funds to a local bank or credit union.  California is considering establishing a state charter bank to address the needs of the marijuana industry, which will give another viable financial alternative.

Science Moving From Materialism To Panpsychism

                                                                                                written 14 April, 2018

                                                                                                published 21 April 18

            

             Modern science began four centuries ago, in response to the dogma of the church, which defined the world by faith and tradition.  Scientific investigation focused on measurable, objective, physical conditions, which could be examined with less controversy than the spiritual or philosophic subjects.  The success of scientific materialism led to technological advances, and transformed the planet with the industrial revolution. 

            The basic assumptions of materialism are: objectivism (only what is external to the mind is real), positivism (only what can be measured is real), and reductionism (the whole can be completely determined by examining the parts).  Consciousness is not considered relevant, and if described at all, is considered an "emergent phenomenon", arising from complex material form.  This view of mindless matter, has led to debasement of the planet and oppression and extinction of other species.

            Continued investigation of the deep nature of matter, however, resulted in quantum physics a little over a century ago.  Experimental results challenged the assumptions of materialism, and showed that consciousness, while subjective, could not be ignored, because observation affects matter.  The mind/matter issue has raged for millennia, as different eras valued one over the other. 

            Panpsychism, proposes that every speck of matter has an element of consciousness associated with it.  First suggested over 2500 years ago, it reflects eastern Vedic science, and is currently experiencing a revival in western science.

            Physics describes how matter works in the four-dimensional world of space/time, but can't say why it is. As dimensionality is increased, different qualities will arise.  One-dimensional lines have extent, two-dimensional planes have area, three-dimensional volumes have density, and the fourth dimension of time adds duration.  

            In materialism, consciousness is assumed to be bounded by four dimensions, but it may be a quality of a higher dimensionality.  Research has shown that consciousness is non-local, a scientific way of describing a connection within a higher dimensional order.  Matter has also been shown to be non-local, which follows if matter is an expression of consciousness. 

            Quantum physics tells us the energy of each speck of mass is a relative peak in an ocean of energy.  Just as patterns within the three-dimensional atmosphere and ocean, create shapes in the two-dimensional ocean surface, perhaps patterns in the volume of consciousness shape the energy waves we experience as matter.  That would mean matter is the expression of conscious patterns, but may not embody consciousness itself.

            Consciousness can be defined as a combination of awareness and volition.  All life, even as simple as bacteria and viruses, exhibit awareness of the environment and volition in response.  Experiments done in the '90s, showed that bacteria can modify their DNA in response to environmental change.  Placebo studies show physical healing can be affected by state of mind, and we know stress can be a killer.

            It seems a stretch to say that rocks are aware, but if living systems are simply complicated collections of the same elements as rocks, when does awareness arise?  This is a fundamental question for materialists: how does awareness arise from non-awareness?  By assuming that awareness is always associated with matter, there is no question about how it arises as things get more complicated.  Instead we can start to examine how awareness, and self-awareness, manifest with increasing material complexity and relationship. 

            The founders of Findhorn, in Scotland, described making connection in meditation with the "over-soul" of vegetables, self-aware entities associated with each crop.  By working with these entities, Findhorn grew quantities of large vegetables on barren soil, which brought world renown to this spiritual community.  A carrot is too simple an organism to embody awareness, but is nevertheless the material expression of such awareness in a higher dimension. 

            As complexity increases, particularly neural networks, organisms have the ability to materially embody awareness, even to the point where we have personal self-awareness as humans.  We also have access to patterns of higher order awareness in the form of reincarnation, intuition, and psychic capacities.

            The unity of reality lies in these higher dimensions, which encompass the material world.  We are spiritual beings having a material experience.