Sunday 10 December 2000

Pic of the day: If you expand your consciousness outward, will it be diluted? If you become a part of everything - will you then be nothing?

The greater self

As I mentioned on Friday, I've been gathering quotes from the game Alpha Centauri. A main bonus point of the game is that all of the factions have understandable motives. Somewhat disturbingly, I find that some of the best quotes come from the leader I like the least:

"Learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone, for they warp the matrix through which we perceive the world. Extend your awareness outward, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self of group and the self of humanity. The goals of the group and the greater race are transcendent, and to embrace them is to achieve enlightenment."
--Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, Essays on Mind and Matter.

Thought provoking, isn't it? And to think it comes from a fictional character. How humbling. But let me at it with the steak knife, people, because it may not all be cut from the same cloth. (Oops, my metaphors just got into a brawl.) Anyway, here's the analysis.

***

The crass demands of flesh and bone: This is a motley crew at the best of times. But make no mistake: The body is the matrix through which we perceive the world. So we should probably listen to it. After all, without a body we're not likely to perceive this world at all (perhaps another, but that's a disputable belief). And for many thousand years, culture and nature have evolved together. We see, we think and we act within the limits of our bodies. Nobody paint their walls in ultraviolet, or places the entry door on top of the house - all of which would be quite feasible if we were descended from bumblebees.

The body has a strong interest in taking care of itself, and so it dutyfully prompts us to feed it, clothe it, scratch it and whatnot. But left to its own devices, our body may easily fill our entire day with its favored activities, and so there would be a lack of other needed activities. We don't, after all, want to be like certain animals that do almost nothing except eat, sleep and look at you with big sad eyes.

And there's the point that yes, the needs and wants of the body do warp our perceptions. At best we are distracted, at worst we see things that aren't even there. But a hard-core asceticism does not really help. It is as much a focus on the body as the orgy is it. As anyone who has been close to a weight-obsessed female knows, dieting is all about food. It allows the poor person to think about food, talk about food, act on food. So even if she eats less than before, she is living more foodly than before, so to speak. (Hmm. I guess this is not the best place to detail my many years of celibacy. Perhaps another time...)

In short, I agree with all the major religions that people should try asceticism from time to time. If you think you are the master of your body, try a couple days where you eat nothing except water. Then come back and tell me of your mastery and enlightenment.

***

Extending our awareness outward, beyond the self of body ... I think most of us do that. In fact I think we are programmed to do that. Whether by nature or nurture, that's hard to say since no human can grow up alone any longer. We grow up as part of a family, and a tribe or ethnic group. We inherit the language, the customs, the dress code, the food ... we are already, by default, as much part of the "group" as we are individual bodies. But we may not be aware of it.

Here in the west at least, we have for centuries been made aware of our unique and personal self and its possibilities and responsibilities. There have been some attempts at group-thinking (nazism comes to mind) but they have actually been just poorly disguised monarchy. It's not a good idea to style the society as a body and then insist that all thinking should be done by 1 brain cell. Such a body is not destined for a long life, I dare say. (Despite claims from friends that they know people like that.)

But I think people also feel a lot of awareness of their group. We say they identify with something: A nation, a church, a sports team, an unusal sexual alignment or attraction. When we ask someone who they are, or to describe themselves, they will rarely stop with the body.

But do we expand our sense of self to include all of humanity? That's a pretty big task. I guess we won't really feel that way until we know of other intelligent species. When visiting an alien planet, perhaps we will understand fully how human we are. Until then, it will probably be a vague feeling at best. I certainly know that I have such a vague identification with all of our civilization. That's not quite all of humanity, I admit, but it's still a lot of people and a lot of time. And it does make me feel strange at times, when I see that people think the world ends at their borders or started when they were born.

***

I guess you can say you've transcended something when you don't think just of yourself. But it's pretty tame, don't you think? And it's not very advanced either. Primitive tribes have a less developed sense of individual self, in favor of the group self. The same holds for football hooligans and even some inner-city gangs. The fact that you for various reasons identify very strongly with a group does not mean that you've suddenly become spiritual.

I'm more impressed with those who earnestly fight for the future of the planet, and those who live on it. In all honesty, I consider most of these ignorant and misguided, but it's still a noble goal.

Look, I'll try to explain my view of psychogenesis, the shaping and growth of the soul through civilization and through the individual life. It's all about being responsible. That's worth a book in itself, but let me make it simple: You start with not knowing about responsibility. Then you understand that others are responsible for you. You start to take on a part of it, and more, until you grow responsible for yourself. Then you start to take care of others, and you feel responsible for them. Eventually you want to leave something behind when you leave this world.

Right now we, as a civilization, are in our late teens. Until recently we just polluted the air and the water, and made weapons of mass destruction, and we hoped that God or Fate or Something would make it all all right somehow. Now we've started to think. We have started to take responsibility for our continued existence. We've even started to think about the rest of the biosphere - perhaps we should keep alive some species that are not obviously useful to us, just because, well, it's our planet and theirs too. I have to say this bodes well, but it's a long way to Tipperary. And even longer to Enlightenment.