Auxiliary Memory

Can Humanity Move to an Eco-Paradigm?

by James Wallace Harris, Sunday, February 9, 2020

Humanity has gone through a number of major paradigm shifts. Probably the most famous is the Copernican revolution when we realized Earth wasn’t the center of the universe. I’m guessing the biggest recent shift was in the 20th century when we realized women were not inferior to men. But as you can see from this map of when women became eligible to vote that a paradigm shift is slow and doesn’t hit all at once. (Source.)

We need to shift to a new economic paradigm where capitalism protects the environment. Many environmentalists feel we need to jettison capitalism to save the Earth, but I don’t believe that’s possible. Capitalism is how humans survive, how they feed, clothe, and shelter themselves. Current capitalism is killing the Earth, and will eventually make the planet uninhabitable for ourselves and other species.

The present paradigm assumes the Earth is a storehouse of consumable resources for the taking. Our basic drive, which comes from our reptilian and mammalian portions of our brain pushes us to take and not give. We struggle for resources, mates, and raising our offspring. It’s quite natural. The greed we’re seeing in conservative political movements around the world is a natural survival mechanism. Everyone is programmed to grab all they can before its gone.

It really is survival of the fittest on a vast scale. Under the existing paradigm, the strong will survive with abundance while they take everything from the weak who won’t. Like I said, it’s the way of nature, it is natural — if you consider humans are animals. But can we transcend our animal nature? Can we use our neo-cortex to become something different? Moving to an Eco-paradigm means transcending our animal nature.

For our species to survive will require moving to this new paradigm. Some have called it Lifeboat Earth. That’s an apt metaphor, but most people don’t like its grim connotations. Probably a better term to promote would be Eco-Capitalism. That’s why we’re hearing so much about the Green New Deal.

My liberal friends and I are becoming philosophically depressed over current trends in American politics. Conservative American politics means many things, but to me, it represents a rejection of the new paradigm. Conservative philosophy has always been backward-facing, stay-the-course, return to the good old days thinking. To protect its beliefs, conservative philosophy has become anti-science, and anti-environmentalism.

I see the U.S. 2020 presidential election as a referendum, with two choices on the ballot. Keep the old paradigm, or move to the new paradigm. I’m sure most voters will see it in terms of their own special interests.

The reason why I wrote my last essay about cognitive tools we used to work with reality is to understand how people think about this referendum. The Republicans have clearly defined what they want, but the Democrats haven’t. Most liberals just want to replace Trump, but obviously, Republicans will do anything to get what they want, including following such a repugnant leader. Democrats are arguing over who should be their leader, and not what they want. They are under the illusion they are fighting Trump, but what they are fighting is what the Republicans want. And what the Republicans want is not to change.

The world seemed to be moving to the new Eco-paradigm but then conservative movements around the globe emerged. My philosophical question of the day: Can humanity move to the new Eco-paradigm? I’m not asking will we, but can we.

When we look at the map of women’s suffrage and see that it took a hundred years to change (and it’s far from finished), that I have to wonder if it will take any less time to move to the new eco-paradigm. (And do we have the time?)

The Atlantic is running “Why Men Vote for Republicans, and Women Vote for Democrats” that provides some additional data for my conundrum. It appears that women are a driving force in liberal politics. We are changing, but are we changing fast enough? And like the backlash against the Equal Rights Amendment by conservative women, many women have chosen to maintain a conservative path.

I’ve been reading more and more articles about political burn-out. That old adage about not letting the bastards wear you down has new relevance. I know that I and some of my liberal friends are being worn down. This makes me feel we won’t make it to the new paradigm.

The 2020 election will give me exact numbers on how my fellow citizens feel. We still have ten months of political turmoil. Who knows, lots could happen. Liberals want it to be a vote about Trump, but I’m starting to see that’s an illusion. The Republicans have clearly defined what they want. The majority of the conservatives want a world where they can grab all the can, keep all they can, have no regulations on the grabbing, and spend the least on fixing up the nation or helping the needy. A minority of conservatives want to fight for certain religious beliefs that challenge liberal values.

The Democrats don’t have a clear goal. To the Republicans all the Democrats want is to give way their money. The Democrats haven’t made a Green New Deal their primary goal. They spend a lot of time talking about the environment and immigration, but they appear to make expensive social programs their deciding issues, and some of those issues don’t even have universal appeal to liberals. Republicans know their key desires and vote in lockstep.

I believe the young are more concerned with the new eco-paradigm, but I’m afraid too many of them have completely given up on political action.

Right now, I don’t believe we’ll make it to the new paradigm shift. I suppose if we suffered some truly catastrophic natural disasters, way larger in scope than the present disasters, we might start pulling together. But that might only cause more fighting in the lifeboat.

Readers might think I’m psychologically depressed because of this essay. I’m not. I might be philosophically down, but not personally down. I have a stoic existential psyche. What happens is what happens. We all want reality to be what we want, but our reality is what is. I’m just trying to guess where humankind is going. I want to imagine what the future might be after I die. But guessing the future is next to impossible. Yet, it amuses me to try.

JWH

Our Cognitive Toolbox for Working with Reality

by James Wallace Harris,

All too often we think we know but we don’t. Why do so many people argue with 100% certainty against others who feel equally convinced? Often wisdom tells us the more we know the more we don’t know. Does that mean the person who claims to know nothing knows the most? Why is this reality so hard to understand? Even eyewitnesses are often fooled. And why is it so important to know thyself?

Reality is complex, but is it unknowable? Humans believe they are the crown of creation because all animals are ignorant of their own existence. Is our sentience really a quantum leap over all other life forms on this planet? If we compared ourselves to an amoeba, ant, or cat, we can see that awareness of reality has slowly gotten more complex and each of those animals perceives a larger portion of reality. Does that mean we see everything in reality, or are we just as blind to a much larger reality?

I believe we’ve evolved a number of cognitive tools to analyze reality, but it’s important to know the effectiveness of each.

First-Hand Experience. Common thought claims we have five senses for perceiving reality, but we actually have many more. People often believe seeing and hearing things for themselves is a primary source of knowledge. However, our senses can deceive us. For example, the lady cop who shot a man in Texas because she thought he was a burglar in her apartment when she was in his apartment. Just pay attention to how often eye witness accounts fail. Or better yet, recall all the times your senses have fooled you.

Instinct and Intuition. Our genes and unconscious mind direct us to act without thinking. Many people prefer to go by gut reaction than thinking it through. But how often does gut reaction tell us to kill or take what we want?

Language. By breaking reality down into pieces and giving each part a name goes a long way into gaining useful insight. But language is imprecise and the parts of reality are many. People who know the different names for trees have a greater understanding than the person who only knows the word tree. Language has evolved tremendously giving us one of our best tools. Pay attention to how words help you to perceive how reality works, and observe how people with lesser or better language skills fare compared to you.

Word of Mouth. We learn from other people’s observations. When we were hunters and gatherers hearing from scouts describe where animals could be hunted was vital. On the other hand, if a seafarer told you about mermaids you ended up believing in an unreal being. Word of mouth is very unreliable. Remember the Kindergarten game of Telephone? Word of Mouth evolved into journalism, and we know how reliable that can be. Word of Mouth has always had a fake news problem. Gossip, innuendo, slander are also descendants of word of mouth.

Counting and Measuring. Simple arithmetic became a tool that lets us invent, build, grow crops, trade, and develop an economy. Counting and measuring evolved into mathematics.

Mysticism. Mystics are people who claim to acquire knowledge from a higher source. They became shamans and seers who influenced other people. They also speculated about how reality worked, inventing higher beings. Even today many people still give credence to mystical insight. However, mystical insight has produced an infinite variety of conflicting information. We have to assume its all suspect. Mysticism tries to be the first-person experience of the divine.

Religion. Religion is codified mystical insight that is retaught as the truth. Religion allowed us to create very complex social structures. However, its truth is suspect. If there are a thousand gods, most followers are atheists to 999 of them. Religion succeeds in creating artificial realities that may or may not interface well with actual reality. Religion spreads best through word of mouth.

Laws. Laws are an external tool to encourage consistent thinking. Religious laws attempt to force mystical insights onto a population. Secular laws attempt to get people to work together.

History. If you study the Old Testament you’ll see it’s more about a history of a people than spiritual instruction. We have always tried to remember the past to explain how we got here. Early histories were no better than word of mouth stories that could be highly inaccurate. And each succeeding generation of historians alters the histories. A good example is the New Testament. Whoever Jesus was, and whatever he taught, has been constantly changed by each new writer of the New Testament. It appears the historical Jesus advocated communal living and sharing that today would be called communistic. The historical Jesus was concerned about creating heaven on Earth. It was later writers that gave him superpowers and turned him into God. Studying the history of Christianity is an excellent way to understand how history constantly mutates. History is a worthy way of understanding reality but it has to be tempered by comparing multiple histories.

Philosophy. Where religion taught that knowledge came from God or other spiritual authorities, philosophy teaches us we can figure things out for ourselves. Using rhetoric, logic, and mathematics men and women observe reality and deduce what’s going on. This was a great paradigm shift away from religion. However, like the game Mastermind, it leads to a lot of false assumptions. Elaborate castles of logic can build imposing concepts but that often turns out to be illusions of great knowledge. Philosophy is a major tool for understanding reality but it also has major faults.

Ethics. Ethics, like laws, attempt to come to a consensus on what’s right and wrong. Ethics is based on philosophy. Although in recent years, some ethicists have tried to look for a scientific foundation.

Science. Science combines mathematics, statistics, observation, testing, and philosophy into a systematic way to evaluate reality. Science assumes if tested observations and measurements prove consistent by scientists from any nation or culture then they might be true. Science never assumes it finds the absolute truth, but just the current best guess based on all the existing data. Science is statistical. Some science is so refined that it works incredibly well with reality. Space probes visiting distant worlds validate hundreds of years of scientific endeavors.

Scholarship. We have made education into a major portion of our life. We spend our entire lives trying to figure things out. We study, we think, we make assumptions. Like philosophy, scholarship often builds vast models of speculation. Scholarship tends to endorse results from competing trends. However, scholarly theories can be deceptive and even dangerous.

The problem is we use all these tools to explain our version of reality. Unfortunately, most are unreliable or clash with other people’s version of reality. Science has proven to be the most consistent at explaining reality, but science doesn’t cover everything. For example, right and wrong. These two concepts are ancient, probably coming out of mysticism or an instinctive desire for justice. Both religion and philosophy have tried to perfect them, but our reality is completely indifferent to morality or ethics. We have invented many concepts that just don’t exist in reality.

This causes problems. Several million people might believe with absolute certainty in a particular concept and then try to impose that view on millions of others who are just as certain such a concept is invalid.

We live in a polarize society because we all embrace different ancient beliefs, most of which we can’t explain how they came about. We just accept them as true. Most people believe in God because it was something they learned as a little kid. They won’t let the idea of God go no matter how much other cognitive tools disprove God’s existence.

Donald Trump seems to base most of his knowledge from first-hand experience and word of mouth information. Twitter is the perfect tool for word of mouth. Trump is neither religious, philosophical, or scientific. But this isn’t an uncommon way of dealing with reality. Few people are philosophical or scientific. Too many people only want to trust first-hand experience and instinct, but we know how unreliable those cognitive tools are. People who rely heavily on first-person experience and word of mouth tend to disbelieve science.

There have been various disciplines that try to teach self-programming that jettisons cognitive bullshit. Zen Buddhism is one. Meditation can be used to seek mystical insight or to observe the working of our own being.

The reason I wrote this essay was to help me think clearer. I’ve been reading books on Greek philosophy, and early Christian history. They are teaching me what people 2,000-2,500 years ago thought. I can see those ancient people struggled to make sense of reality without science. I can also see the same struggles today in people. We just don’t think clearly. We’re too influenced by low-level cognitive tools that deceive us. We base our existence on illusions created by those most primal cognitive tools.

I keep hoping the human race will get its act together and create a sane society that coexists with reality, and not on insane illusions and delusions. I realize until everyone becomes a master of their various cognitive tools, and learn the limits and limitations of each, we can’t start working on that sane society. We can’t start learning what’s real until we learn how to perceive what’s not real.

JWH

All The Things We Forget

by James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, February 5, 2020

The last time I went to a barber was in the 1970s. I got married in 1978 and my wife cut my hair after that until I went mostly bald, at which point I’d just mow my own head. But in the 1950s and 1960s, I probably went to the barber every 2-3 weeks. I’m sure, several hundred times. I have a few vague impressions being at a barbershop, but for the most part, all those memories are gone. I can remember having butch cuts, crew cuts, flattops and haircuts I had to comb. Those were in the years before the Beatles. After that, I tried very hard to avoid the barber. Maybe that suppressed the memories of haircuts.

There are 3,650 days in a decade if we don’t worry about leap years. And at age 68 I’ve lived around 25,000 days. Other than what I ate today, and maybe yesterday, I’ve forgotten roughly 75,000 meals. I know I had a lot of dinners with my family growing up, but except for a few fleeting images of Thanksgivings, I can’t remember them.

I have more memories of sitting with my parents and sister watching TV. I’m better at remembering people, but it’s an accumulation of countless vague encounters. The more vivid memories generally involved great joy or great pain. Average got forgotten, and I imagine 99.999% of my life was quite mundane.

I know I hated going to Sunday School and church when I was growing up. We even went on Wednesday night sometimes. But I can only remember a handful of specific events at church. So, did we go all the time, or did I only think we went all the time?

If I work hard I believe I can remember all the pets we had, but I’m not sure of all their names. I spend a lot of time with my cats now. They are always nearby or sleeping on me. I can’t remember how much time I spent with my pets growing up. I remember fleeting moments of playing with them, but not the day-to-day living. Now that I think about it, I believe my mother expected dogs and cats to live outdoors. I can remember our dogs walking us to school and meeting us afterward, but I don’t remember them sleeping with me or hanging out in my room.

One area of memory I really regret losing is memories of my classmates and teachers. I’d spend about 200 days a year with them, and at the time knew all their names and could tell you stories about each of them. I did pay attention — then. But it’s all gone now.

Because my family moved around so much I attended many different schools. There were schools I’d ride my bike miles rather than take the school bus. I tried to always walk or ride my bike, although when we lived in South Carolina the second time, out in the country, the school bus ride was 35 miles. The thing is, I can’t remember how I got from home to school in all those schools. Oh, there were a few places where we lived just a couple blocks from school and I can remember, but I’ve looked at Google’s Streetview trying to find my way around old neighborhoods and I can’t.

Am I alone in forgetting all these kinds of things? Am I alone in wish I had a photograph of all my bikes?

I had a very happy childhood. I’m very nostalgic for those years, but they were chaotic and stressful because of my parents’ alcoholism and our constant moving. I watched a lot of television and read a lot of science fiction to keep sane. And that’s what I remember most. In the last couple of decades, I’ve been rewatching those old shows and rereading those old books. That has only reinforced their memories. I now have better memories of TV and books than of my parents.

If I only focused on the present would I even think about the past at all? However, getting old seems to inspire looking backward. I noticed that many young people photograph everything they do and put it on Facebook, including their meals. I wonder what that will mean to them when they get old, having so much documentation?

There are so many things I wish I had photographs of now. And videos would be better yet. I wish I had pictures of every friend I made, of every teacher, classmate, and every classroom, every pet, house, car. I wish I had multiple photographs of every room of every house I ever lived in. I wish I had photographs of all the TV sets, record players, and radios I used. I even wish I had a few photographs of going to the barber and Sunday School.

I’d love the documentation of my past because it might trigger memories. I don’t think I’d need snaps of 75,000 meals, but a few hundred would solidify my sense of who I was. My parents had an old Brownie Hawkie camera, but I think they only shot two rolls of film of me and my sister. I figured they also shot two rolls of themselves before we were born.

That’s just 48 photos to document my youth. I really envy kids growing up with smartphones today. (But why aren’t I snapping pictures with mine now?)

JWH

Amazon Music HD

by James Wallace Harris, Saturday, February 1, 2020

Amazon Music HD promises to fulfill nearly all my current wishes for a streaming music service. The main ones are:

Provide sound quality equal to CDs
Provide every song ever recorded, or let me upload music into its system
Let me try super-high-resolution music
Have playlists that work across all music services

Streaming music has always been more convenient than listening to CDs or LPs, but audiophiles have bitterly complained that its sound quality was a compromise. With Amazon Music HD it’s now possible to stream music in CD quality. Audiophiles need to stop sneering at streaming music. This also means I can forget about physical media (if streaming always offered what I want to hear). And for years I’ve been chasing the idea of high-resolution music. I’m not sure I’m capable of hearing it, but so many audiophiles claim the difference is night and day and I’d hate to miss out.

To play Amazon Music HD or Ultra-HD tracks requires having the right equipment. My iPhone, Denon, and Yamaha systems can all handle the HD setting of CD-quality of 16-bit 44.1kHz. My iPhone and computer can play 24-bit 48 kHz songs, which is the low end of Ultra HD. So Amazon HD music lets me check off one of my streaming music wishes.

Another great aspect of Amazon Music HD is it always tells you about the quality of the streaming file. Actually, I’ve yet to find a 192kHz file. Of course, I’m not sure I can tell the difference between 16bit 44.1kHz and 24-bit 48kHz music.

Amazon Music has always let me upload my files to their system, so I can put songs on my playlists that Amazon doesn’t offer. Spotify doesn’t let me do that. That checks off another wish. I have 1,900 CDs uploaded to Amazon Music. So my collection is with their 50 million songs.

It’s my last wish that is so frustrating. Amazon offers the super-high-resolution files that I’m anxious to try (24bit 96 or 192 kHz files). Could I really hear a difference? I don’t know, because I don’t have the equipment to play them. And I’m not sure what equipment can. I know I could add a Dragonfly Cobalt DAC to my iPhone to get up to 24-bit 96kHz files, but what about those elusive 24-bit 192kHz files? Am I chasing a non-existant Holy Grail? I keep reading articles like this one that argues selling high-resolution music is a complete con. Still, I want to try the snake oil for myself.

However, to play the 24bit 192kHz files will require having a DAC that’s Amazon Music HD aware. And what I really want, is hardware that I can remotely control. I have a Yamaha WXA-50 streaming music server amplifier. It works great with Spotify, but its MusicCast software/app is the pits for any other service. I tried it with Tidal and its built-in interface to Tidal music was atrocious. So I canceled Tidal. Theoretically, the WXA-50 could be upgraded to handle Amazon Music HD but everyone is saying Yahama is terrible about upgrades. I feel I’m getting my money’s worth out of the WXA-50 now for Spotify, but I don’t plan to buy Yamaha equipment in the future.

I’ve read the Denon HEOS will handle Amazon Music HD, but I’m afraid if I buy one of its receivers I might be disappointed like I was with Yamaha. To work properly, I need a receiver that can serve all the Amazon Music HD files, and it has to have an iPhone app that works well with Amazon Music’s catalog of songs. The reason why Spotify works so well with the Yamaha is it uses the Spotify app itself. And that’s possible because the WXA-50 has a Spotify Connect awareness. Before I buy any new hardware to listen to Amazon Music HD I’m going to wait until stereo equipment has the equivalent of Amazon Music HD Connect. This is true of Amazon’s Fire/Alexa products, but I’m not sure if any of the present hardware can handle 24-bit 192 kHz files. My current Fire TV only handles 16-bit 44.1 kHz.

Spotify Connect is truly awesome. The Spotify app on my iPhone sees my computer, the Yamaha WXA-50, Denon AVR-X1000, as well as my Roku Ultra and Amazon FireTV Gen 2. The music doesn’t stream through my phone, but my phone controls the music streaming through all these hardware devices. It’s this app/server relationship that I want for Amazon Music HD. Theoretically, the DACs in all my devices could handle high resolution if they were upgraded with the right software, but I get the feeling I need to wait for new hardware to be specifically designed to be Amazon Music HD aware. So I’m getting close to the third wish.

I’m happy enough with Amazon Music HD to keep subscribing, but I’m not ready to cancel Spotify. I love Spotify, and it has a great interface, plus it works on so many devices. If Spotify offered HD music and the Spotify Connect servers in my Yamaha and Denon machines could handle 24-bit 192 kHz files, which I think they can, I might end up sticking with Spotify.

Plus, to switch to any other service would require recreating all my Spotify playlists. That would be a huge amount of work. My last wish is for a universal playlist format that would allow all my music services to use the same playlists. I doubt this will ever happen, but I can wish.

I follow a number of YouTubers who review Audiophile equipment. Three of them have had shows about audiophile burnout. They ask, “Are you into music for the equipment or the music?” I was passionately in love with the music I listened to in 1962 on AM radio played through a single 3″ speaker. My present equipment is lightyears beyond that. I shouldn’t think about hardware at all. Spotify offers millions of songs. What I really should be doing is trying to play all of them, and not worry about how theoretically perfect they might sound. But I do.

JWH

Trying To Control My Insane Impulse to Buy the Past

by James Wallace Harris, Friday, January 24, 2020

Lately, I want to buy the past. For example, I’ve been craving old computers I couldn’t afford back in the 1980s. Or I’ve been compulsively buying old books and magazines on eBay I once own when I was a teen in the 1960s. And now I dream of buying a mid-century house and fixing it up to look like the 1950s Florida of my childhood. Maybe even get a 1957 Pontiac to match.

What explains those impulses? I used to have in-the-moment impulses like eating junk food or getting laid, but my decrepit stomach gets upset at one and my elderly dick has become erratically indifferent to the other. That makes me wonder if buying the past is a kind of compensation for two of nature’s most basic impulses. If it is, it doesn’t work because I’m still hungry and horny.

Life used to be more satisfying when I could get satisfied.

Buying old stuff does provide a fleeting moment of pleasure but as soon as the UPS delivery person delivers my goodies I pack them away and think about the next relic of the past to purchase. A carton of Ben & Jerry’s would keep me happy for two evenings, and getting lucky would alleviate horniness for a few moments to a few days depending on my age in life.

Television used to be a great balm for itchy urges, but nowadays watching Perry Mason shows remind me of 1962 or viewing YouTube inspires collecting and renovating antiques of my twenties. If I had never watched The 8-Bit Guy I don’t think I’d be craving an Apple IIGS right now. I can understand where the genetic programming for pizzas and pussy come from, but what explains the biology driving me to buy decaying runs of Galaxy Science Fiction?

Getting old is nothing like I expected. I thought I’d go bald and become wrinkled, yet essentially be my same old self. I never imagined a time when I couldn’t drink Dr. Pepper and eat German chocolate cake. I was warned that my dick would wear out, but I assumed so would the horniness. That really wasn’t fair. I feel like Henry Bemis when his glasses broke.

My retirement years are everything I never planned. Why didn’t they warn us? I have all this time to indulge my whims and have all the whims of my youth, but being young when you’re old isn’t very practical. I still have a future. Maybe even a future as long as my working years. Everyone asks you when you are a kid, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” But who asks, “What are you going to be when you get old?”

I think I need new cravings. I need new urges and ambitions that suit a decaying body. Something more fulfilling than the urge to guzzle Metamucil. When we are young we study to understand the world and prepare for our working decades. I think I need to study for becoming a successful old person. I don’t need a retro 8-bit computer, what I should crave is a 128-bit computer and an engaging task that will maximize its use.

I need to be buying the future.

JWH