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Zen Physics
p27 We would rightly regard someone who habitually spoke of himself as being a robot or a machine as being crazy. Yet this is precisely what science seems to be telling us about ourselves. The brain? An organic computer. Love? A process in those neurological systems that underpin mood. Anger? An activation of neural impulses in the amygdala-hypothalamus structures. And self-consciousness as a whole? A fairly recent, emergent phenomenon of matter.
All of this may be true. We may, in one sense, be awesomely complex machines. But such a description fails to do proper justice to the human condition, because we are not only objects in the world but also objectifiers -- and both aspects of our nature, the outer and the inner, need to be encompassed by any credible worldview.
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p28 … In mechanistic terms, as well as the appearance of the brain-body machine, there is the feeling of what it is like to be that machine -- the subjective experience of being a certain someone. Consciousness, we might say, is the symmetry-breaking factor between the objective and the subjective.
…since there is no reason to suppose there are any great differences between the subjective experiences of one person and those of any other, language is in fact a useful way of telling each other what we are feeling.
I have to take issue with this. I’m surprised he doesn’t mention Synesthesia here at it so wonderfully demonstrates that the world we experience isn’t necessarily the world as it really is since some people experience it very differently.
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p29 ...the bodily I, by itself, is too simplistic a notion to capture all the possibilities of what we might consider ourselves to be. There is the question, for instance, of whether we are our bodies or whether we simply own them. The reductionist, the materialist, would claim the former, the Cartesian the later.
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p30 ...What really matters to us is not what happens to our bodies when we die, but what happens to us. The implication is clear: we instinctively consider ourselves to be something more, or at least something very different, than just the material contents of our bodies and brains. We are the “what it is like to be” experience that our bodies give rise to...
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p32 ...Few people in their right minds would choose to be a jellyfish -- or an ant, a worm, or a grasshopper. To be any of these, most of us might imagine, would probably be not much better or worse than being nonexistent...
But isn’t that the goal of the Desert Fathers and other contemplative types? To lose the “I”.
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p33 Much of what we believe about ourselves derives from how others relate and react to us. And, for this reason, total isolation from society can prove devastating. In 1988, a French woman, Veronique Le Guen, spent a record-breaking 111 days alone underground, 250 feet below the surface at Vaat-Negre in southern France. Deprived of a clock, natural light, and any form of contact with others, Le Guen had only her diary for company. In one of the entries she described herself as being “psychologically completely out of phase, where I no longer know what my values are or what is my purpose in life.” It was an experience from which she never properly recovered, and in January 1990, at the age of thirty-three, she committed suicide. Her husband said, “She had an emptiness inside her which she was unable to communicate.”
This is very problematic. How did she come to take part in such an extreme experiment? Was it the social isolation or the conditions of her sunless, probably dank living conditions that caused her problems? I’m assuming she was taking lots of vitamin D. How did her psychology, both before and after the experiment, compare with the suicidal woman Michel Foucault wrote about?
I’m sure this experience would be difficult for anyone, but this is a messy case to use as a precedent like this.
Regular, close social interaction is vital to our self-definition, to bringing the fuzzy edges of our psychological bounds back into focus (Footnote: Mystics and ascetics often choose isolation for the very reason that it encourages a breakdown of conventional self-boundaries. [My point from before, but now I’m thinking of people (the elderly or the insane living on the street) who also lack any real social feedback.]) (This is strangely analogous -- and I wonder if it may [be] more than that -- to the situation in quantum mechanics {see Chapter 10} where repeated observations of an atomic nucleus serve to prevent it from decaying.) We assimilate the responses of our fellow humans both to our appearance and our behavior. And this results in a feedback loop. Our appearance and behavior are subject to change according to the internal image we hold of ourselves. And any modifications in how we appear outwardly affect people’s responses to us, which may result, again, in further alterations to our inner beliefs about ourselves...
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p35 You and I are different not because different things are happening to us right now, but because, throughout our lives, our brains have acquired different narratives and ways of responding to the world. We are the products of our life stories. Your story is different than mine. But what is crucial in defining and distinguishing between us is not so much the differences between the actual events and surroundings that you and I have encountered, as it is the different way in which our brains have interpreted and remembered what has happened to us. An essential part of being human involves trying to make sense of the world, seeking and finding meaning (whether it is there or not). We have to do this from one moment to the next, every second of our lives. So, inevitably, a lot of what we remember is not what actually happened -- whatever this may mean -- but rather a kind of myth or confabulation that helps us sustain the impression that we know what is going on. We tell ourselves white lies all the time to bridge the gaps in our understanding of an impossibly complex world... we lay down these countless little fictions in our memories and subsequently treat them as if they were factual... We are as much a myth as the stories we tell ourselves...
SOMA in transition
Earlier this year I saw an exhibition of Janet Delaney’s photography of San Francisco’s SOMA district from 30 years ago. These pictures were taken when the neighborhood was in a transition from the Skid Row/light industrial wasteland it was then to the up-and-coming (semi-gentrified but still Skid Row in sections) place it has become today. The current building boom has again put pressure on the older, rundown sections that still remain, so, again, people are either sad or irate at the prospect of losing what is already there.
What strikes me about Delaney’s photos is the focus on two areas: What is now the Moscone Convention complex (in her photos some of it is under construction, some is being cleared, and the rest hasn't even been doomed to conversion yet); and the little side streets of Hallam and Langton. I just happen to have important associations with the new built environment in both areas.
I can’t recall now when I stopped attending the MacWorld Expo’s at Moscone -- sometime in the late ‘90s I believe. But in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s I all but lived at Moscone for the duration of the Expo. At first I gathered with thousands of other attendees for the doors to be thrown open on the first morning of the show. Later, I help set up and man the BMUG booth, so I was there before the show opened and stayed after it closed. MY participation expanded to the parties associated with the show. Many good times were had. Much equipment -- both hardware and software -- was purchased. I signed books and schmoozed. I made friends.
More recently I’ve worked a number of conventions in my new “greening” capacity. The Oracle and Salesforce conventions are huge and dull, but the VMWorld show was interesting. The people watching at such a nerd-centric event was... interesting. IT trolls really shouldn’t be let out during the day. But it was at this show that I first learned about cloud computing and virtual machines, which at least got me interested in computers again.
The point is, there were many people who didn’t want to see Moscone built, the project was delayed for years and years, and at the time, I didn’t imagine the convention center had anything to do with me, yet I can scarcely imagine my life in this city without Moscone Center. If you could pluck all the memories, all the connections related to Moscone Center and Yerba Buena Garden out of my memory (something like the movie Dark City, perhaps) the effect would be devastating. And I’m not one of the union workers who have made a living (or at least a good portion of my living) working events there for the past 30 years.
A convention center is an odd sort of civic amenity; it probably sits empty the majority of the time. Only the full time staff (not many people, I would imagine) really “own” the place. It isn’t like a sports stadium that is beloved by thousands of diehard fans. And yet it can touch the lives of so many locals and outsiders; all the incredibly disparate groups that hold events there for a day or a week at a time. And of course all the workers drawn in as needed plus the businesses on the periphery that benefit from the periodic flow of conventioneers. Such an unpredictable, yet powerful, economic catalyst.
Because SF is a popular destination for tourists in any case, I think (I know) that family members are likely to come along with the convention goer. And that means more business for restaurants and shops. It must have been so frustrating for the proponents as they slowly fought to overcome all the arguments against building the original phase of the center. Once the South Hall was in operation, it was easier to get the North Hall approved. There’s now a West Hall and a plan for still more expansion so still larger conventions can be booked.
I doubt I’ve ever been at Moscone (not counting the Metreon and Garden) more than 10 days in any year, and yet, over the decades the effect on just my life has truly amounted to something. I would not have predicted it.
Hallam street was the scene of a huge fire back in the ‘80s that, more than likely, destroyed buildings where Michel Foucault had enjoyed “limit-experiences” and “un-thought.” He would have been dismayed, but it cleared the land for a new era of buildings and I happen to know several people who have settled in these new structures. The Brainwash cafe and laundromat (a favorite of mine) is just across Folsom at Langton and I know someone who lives on that little street as well. As always happens with cities, each iteration of a neighborhood is replaced by something new. Are today's Hallam and Langton better than thirty years ago? I can't answer that except to say that the buildings probably house more people and are more fire and earthquake resistant.
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