Corruption, Assimilation and Debt

Thieves of State

"Thieves of State" is about a particular form of society - sadly perhaps the most common form of society - a kleptocracy. "Thieves" goes into a lot of detail about how individuals are drawn into (assimilated into) this form of society ("dragon"). The examples allow us to drill down to get a close-up view of how assimilation takes place, how it is almost inevitable and why it is so difficult to resist.

It's hard to find an example of a social form that doesn't feature a "strongman" (usually but not always male) with built-in mechanisms that draw group resources to the strongman and his immediate family. This is as true of a Canadian "first nation" as it is of the Trump administration in the USA.

Chayes describes how this phenomenon permeates the whole society in a kind of fractal structure, with layer upon layer of mini-strongmen paying up to the strongmen above them while extracting resources from humans below them in the pyramid. We may think of this structure as the skeleton of the dragon. Its joints are made strong by the bonds of mutual protection and flow of resources up and down the structure.

Mid-level strongmen (who may be humble officials such as border guards or policemen) are bound to the system by being laughably underpaid (making bribes necessary for daily survival) and the debt incurred by buying the position in the first place (There is an echo here: the theme of "debt strangulation", where 99% of the population is in debt to the top 1%). The exchange involved is not just for money. It involves the tacit assumption that anyone in the structure will be protected by all the others. For example, the corrupt border guard can be assured that nobody in the police force will prosecute him for his involvement in smuggling drugs. In mature kleptocracies, protection of corruption is burned into law, especially protecting individuals from prosecution, stripping debtors of rights, making corrupt courts accessible only to the corrupt. "Freelance corruption" can be framed as "crime", allowing the kleptocracy to attack its rivals with the full force of law.

I wonder if these structures arise out of almost physical or mathematical necessity out of the way that basic human needs are met more efficiently by larger and larger groups of humans. Within these groups networks of control, obligation, power and wealth quickly lead to kleptocracy. Another interesting question is whether the same conditions work in a "free" society to produce dramatic inequality. "Capitalism" tends to give free reign to these forces. Debt is the lifeblood of capitalism, creating "legal" bonds that may be structurally identical to those in more "primitive" kleptocracies.

"Socialism" can be seen as a counter-force against the natural tendency for power and wealth to concentrate whether or not the society can be described as an overt kleptocracy. On the other hand, there is a distressing tendency of even "socialist" governments to be captured by networks of obligation, mutual assistance, and general desperation. From this point of view, we may see all of politics as corruption versus socialism. We see that socialism requires extensive state intervention and strict rule of law since the natural order of society (unregulated) is to slip into kleptocracy. In the US, the key difference between Republicans and Democrats is the Republican insistence that all regulation be dismantled (most recently the EPA and consumer protection), while the Democrats see more and more programs and regulations as needed to create a just society.

This question would seem to be something that could be addressed empirically and historically - perhaps in the form that "Thieves of State" takes. Are there countries that successfully counteract the natural tendency to become "kleptocratic"? In "Thieves", Chayes points out a range of policies (all ignored) the US can employ to avoid support of corruption in states it is trying to "stand up", like Afghanistan. Is there a set of similar policies that could be adopted as part of a political platform of a socialist party, such as the Canadian NDP? Such policies would focus on issues such as undermining the power of the banks and freeing people from the chains of "rents" that flow up the pyramid to the rich and powerful.

I provide a related rant on money and debt in another post.

Focus - November 19, 2017

I have a lot of time on my hands - perhaps too much. I read a lot, usually 2 serious books per week or maybe more if you count the books I check into and decide not to read or put on the back burner for later. In the "later" category is the emerging genre of books explaining all the details of Donald Trump's horrible personality and personal history. I get it. No further information required.

There is a danger of being pulled into a rabbit hole, following "click bait" until starvation sets in. Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing something similar on a larger scale, taking advantage of the cheap and easy access to books (Kindle) and general information (Google/YouTube).

So here are, in theory, the "topics" I'm following.

THE SELF & COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

This is a hold-over from the main thread in my "Christian Skeptic" blog. At the moment, it concerns questions about the nature of the self (aka, "soul"). I'm convinced that this issue is very widely misunderstood. Most recently, I have wondered if we should have another pronoun, similar to the "royal we", that refers to the conventional "I" plus all the myriad of influences that determine what "I" know, what "I" want and how "I" make decisions. See The Knowledge Illusion and Behave. Perhaps "I" should just refer to the immediate experience of consciousness in the moment - a result of all those influences. This perspective is not unrelated to long-standing questions coming from "Dragon Theory". How is it that we are deeply "assimilated" into "dragons" like religions and corporations? What does assimilation feel like?

The distinction between "I" and the "Royal We" is important on a day to day personal level - what I might call the "Zen" outlook. I increasingly separate the pseudo-spiritual aspects of Zen from the simple discipline of mental and moral clarity implicit in the practices and traditions. In this case, there is not much more to learn - only the day-to-day struggle to apply what I already know. It's also a conscious effort to be "assimilated" into the right traditions, groups, political parties, and social media "bubbles". To some extent at least, we can determine what our personal "royal we" is.

Perhaps the easy way to understand this perspective is to note that human intelligence, like bee intelligence, is collective. The bee doesn't "know" how smart it is, or why it performs its wiggle dance or why it feels compelled to fly off in a given direction after watching a wiggle dance. Yet, when seen from the viewpoint of the hive, the behavior is perfectly intelligible. This idea applies on many levels to human behavior, but the interesting one applies to everyday experience - the fact that almost all of what we "know" is actually signaled in some way from other humans. Just think of what we "know" as we drive a car across the city.

CHRISTIANITY

I found "Fantasyland" to be a particularly scathing critique of religion - especially the American fundamentalist "Christian" version. However,  I still take the Christian ideal of forgiveness as an antidote to the current witch hunt "outing" all men who have ever behaved in an outrageous manner to any woman. Let him who has no sin throw the first stone. I expect a few stones to be thrown my way when I express this idea. For my own part, I am trying to banish "moral outrage" from my emotional toolbox. In spite of the widespread acceptance of moral "relativism" (acceptance of "gays" for example), most of us are unwilling to go the entire (Christian) distance to recognize that we all have things we are ashamed of and we all need forgiveness: the permission to start over.

Can all my reading and thinking serve to address practical questions, such as What kind of person should I be, How should I act? This has nothing to do with celestial "carrots and sticks." These are questions of personal and public morality. The current tsunami of moral outrage illustrates that many of us are addressing important moral issues with rather blunt instruments. 

ASSIMILATION

The idea behind "Dragon Theory" (now "Programmable Ape") can be seen from two perspectives: "top down" from the "dragon" or "bottom-up" from the assimilated human "component" of the dragon. I started from the "top," asking such questions as Is the "dragon" alive? Quite rightly, one of my readers pointed out that this is chiefly a matter of definition. Subsequently, trying to define the dragon has been quite a project, not unlike the effort to define a "meme." There are similar problems when one attempts to say anything that can not be said without the concept or to say anything that sheds a special light on the phenomenon. Accordingly, I now consider the original vision of the "dragon" as a first draft or glimpse of the phenomenon that is in need of a major overhaul. "The Corporation" remains as one of the most accessible introductions to this idea. On the other hand, my early versions of the idea, namely the "Creedal Group" and the "Spirit System" (dating back to 1970) seem to be surprisingly durable.

I have been encouraged by seeing the progress that some have made with the "meme" idea, especially by Daniel Dennett - most recently in "Bacteria to Bach." Really durable memes are be formed as a result of environmental constraints or the laws of physics. In other words, our "ideas" don't (always) grow out of unconstrained fantasy. In a sense, our ideas connect us to the "real world." Duh. To put it in another way, our "minds" are a (perhaps muddy) reflection of the world we live in. 

I continue to be well served by "Surfaces and Essences," the classic study of how analogies form the very basis of human thought. I'm always on the lookout for the analogies that underlie my ideas. Some analogies are better than others, but they are all analogies. It is wise to use analogies as a "whiteboard" sketch of a concept but always be on the alert for the need to drill down to the details of a phenomenon - especially those that challenge your favorite analogy. For example, from the beginning, "Dragon Theory" set itself up to be a promoter of confirmation bias, especially ignoring the substantial contribution made by individual decision making and constraints imposed by the environment. For example, by definition, the corporation operates in a financial environment, resulting in "behavior" that is more accurately seen as a result of the environment. To use an analogy, the behavior of a fish is, to a great extent, determined by the physical properties of water.

I have made more progress coming from the "bottom up", asking how it is that people get "assimilated." Early on, I realized that part of the answer is to be found in common assumptions, most notably in language and money. Most recently, that has been generalized with the aid of an AI concept: the "fitness function." For example, in the case of a for-profit corporation, the fitness function is entirely expressed in terms of money. This translates directly into the way that humans are assimilated, through hiring practices, employee incentives, customer relations and investor participation. All this is increasingly implemented by AI algorithms, but this only goes to reveal the fitness function that was there all along. By automating a fitness function, we create a monster. This is eloquently pointed out in "Weapons of Math Destruction" and supported by quite a few other sources such as "WTF." "WTF" is an instructive tutorial in how the simple idea of "money" as a fitness function actually works in Silicon Valley. You'd be surprised ...

Special assimilation issues arise in fantasy-ridden, fundamentalist American culture (See "Fantasy Land").

"Wiser" gets into the nuts and bolts of how "herd instinct" works in small groups such as juries and corporate boards. "Wiser" is a road map of how people are assimilated into a group, allowing the group as a whole to be more stupid than any particular member.  "Polarization of opinion" and "race to the bottom" are psychological phenomena subject to laboratory study. There is a large literature about exactly how corporations make stupid decisions. It comes as no surprise that we don't need fancy analogies to explain how the "brain" of the dragon - the prefrontal lobe - makes wrong decisions.

CLIMATE CHANGE

This issue used to literally keep me up at night. I now regard it as a kind of background fact - one of the "givens" that we all need to deal with, such as Calgary weather. It's been awhile since I have read anything new or important on this issue, although I try to connect the skeptics to information on the subject if they chose to actually learn something about it. Strangely, I often find myself in the awkward position of pointing out that there are other things besides climate change going on. Climate change is the background, but sometimes disasters are "ordinary" things like hurricanes, floods, and droughts. We need to deal with these events whether or not they are the result of climate change. To put another way, our preparation and response are within our control. It is useful to think this way since it calls for action from all quarters, including the climate change skeptics.

Zen plays a large part in my ability to retain a cool head while the world heats up. It is important to accept what you cannot change. In particular, we must accept impermanence - even the impermanence of life on Earth.

The boids the boids !!!

The Basic BOID

Boids are an artificial intelligence entity that simulates flock activity. Very complex and realistic flock activity can be generated from very simple rules -- from Wikipedia:

• separation: steer to avoid crowding local flockmates
• alignment: steer towards the average heading of local flockmates
• cohesion: steer to move toward the average position (center of mass) of local flockmates

More complex rules can be added, such as obstacle avoidance and goal seeking.

Boid-like rules and flock behavour can easily be observed in human populations.

Separation, Alignment and Cohesion in typical human settlement 

Humans demonstrate how human intelligence allows us to flock more perfectly than birds.

Being so much smarter than birds, fish and bacteria, humans are able to flock in complex non-physical dimensions to produce flocks like political parties, corporations and nation-states. However the principles of separation, alignment and cohesion still apply. No good human flocker wants to be exactly like his fellow flocker (we all want to "think for ourselves"), but wants to be facing roughly in the same direction and moving at the same speed as his or her immediate neighbors. This relatively mindless conformity produces mass flocking movements of thousands or millions of individuals that closely resemble the behavour of fish and birds. In this respect at least,the shape and behavour of human flocks is remarkably less intelligent than what any individual flocker could produce on his or her own.

As pointed out above, it is possible to produce different flock behavour by varying the simple rules in simple ways. In the case of humans, language or even skin color barriers can break the "cohesion" and produce random, unpredictable results. Flocking also breaks down when the flockee starts to become aware of individuals who are not immediate neighbors or even the same species.

All this results in the eternal human dilemma: Who shall I flock with?

Simple boid-like rules go a long way to explaining why humans are so easily assimilated. In other writings, I will refer to this as the boid hypothesis.

Boid Hypothesis

Humans are not birds, but perhaps the rules that govern human groups are simple, like those governing the flocking behavour of birds and fish. More precisely, the issue is how much of the flocking behavour of humans can be described by simple rules and how much these simple rules form the "gravity" behind assimilation. To be blunt, we use the boid hypothesis to rule out more sophisticated (and flattering) "official" reasons for the group in favor of simple almost physical flocking rules. For example, we need not look into reasons why people listen to pop music,  join the armed forces or get tatoos. Flocking rules cover almost the whole phenomenon.

For humans, finding the right flock to fly with is extremely complex. It's a bit like being a fish on a coral reef, surrounded by hundreds of different species. If you want to mate (one adaptive function of flocking) you need to recognize individuals of the right flock. In nature, this is done by markings that are not adaptive in themselves but serve merely to identify flock mates. In humans, this can be as simple as the approved hair cut, jacket, skirt length or eye makeup.

This idea is very similar to one I came up with in 1977: the "Credal Group". That was the idea that we form groups based on nothing but agreement to "believe" in a basically meaningless "creed". The creed allows us to perform the one fundamental thing we need to form a group: identify insiders and outsiders. In 1977, I noticed that Creeds are necessarily meaningless. Any trace of actual contact with verifiable reality would threaten the usefulness of the creed. Best to have something anyone can say without it impacting their lives in any way other than being their "ticket" to join the flock. Once accepted as a member of the flock, it is very unwise to threaten individuality by attempting to discuss the creed. For example, in practice, "theology" is the last thing discussed in social gatherings of Christians.

Flocks present an interesting paradox. The flockee must minimize the difference between other flock members but also stand out as an individual (a requirement of the sexual reproduction process). You can see this problem in a flock of a million penguins - indistinguishable by the human eye but, to any penguin, a million individuals. In humans and penguins, "individuality" is often achieved by aggressive conformity - being the prototypical flockee.

Being Alive

It's worthwhile to base our understanding of the human condition on the brute and obvious fact that we are living things.  "Being alive" involves participation in a vastly complex environment - sharing that environment with all living things. This is where to start - not the illusion of individuality.  In this way, we cannot escape the most fundamental form of assimilation: participation in the drama of all life.

Since Darwin, our idea about what it means to be alive has changed beyond recognition. It is fair to say that the old myths, based on simple stories about the human condition, have not kept up with what we now understand our situation to be. Especially in the West and the Abrahamic religions that are base on the fate of the individual "soul", the simple fact of our interdependence has been forgotten.

The discipline of mathematics and physics can be applied to the science of life (biology) but few biologists, let alone the lay public, have been exposed to more than High School math, which most of them have forgotten anyway.

As a result, we see biological theories based on radical over-simplification:

• The "individual", essential to the mythology of "survival of the fittest". The picture here conjures up a struggle between "individuals", with those possessing the most adaptive modifications passing on their genes to the next generation. In fact, identification of the "individual" is somewhat arbitrary and the idea that the species (collection of individuals) "evolves" while the "environment" remains static is even more arbitrary. In fact, the whole environment is constantly changing due to the stunningly complex interactions between its "components", which can be animals, species, genes and even the wobble of the earth's axis. Traditional views of evolution are serviceable enough within their scope but ignore important aspects of reality. In practice, the sciences of medicine and ecology are both sciences of systems. Any challenge to "Darwinian" evolution is considered heresy.
• The system of life on this Earth is dynamic, not static. It's striking how the political prejudice for "order" and "equilibrium" dominated 19th and 20th century thinking. Extending conservative politics to physics and biology, we saw the world as essentially unchanging except for the little corner where we spun our theories about small changes - such as the evolution of man. As humans, we have a hard time visualizing vast, complex change over long periods. We also tend to take credit for "surviving" when the lion's share of the credit belongs to an environment conducive to human existence (so far).

Especially since the 1960's applied mathematics has provided tools that help us understand dynamic systems. Sadly, mastering the math of dynamic systems (and the resulting intuitive "feel" for dynamic systems) is out of reach for anyone lacking a strong background in analytical math. 

Dynamic systems are characterize by a set of equations (often a very large number of them) that describe the rate of change of variables and/or the relationship between variables. Time is of the essence. It is not generally possible to "solve" the equations to predict the value of all the variables at any one time. Even so, you can predict the behaviour of the system as a whole in important ways. For example, you can answer such questions as:

• Are there stable "orbits"? Does he system settle down into a repeating sequence of configurations or just wander around aimlessly? 
• Is the system chaotic? Do small changes in the initial conditions result in arbitrarily large variations over time?
• Does he system "settle down". If you start with a given configuration, will the system tend to move into a predictable state? Even a "stable" state (fixed point) where all variables remain constant?

In the case of a biological system, we can visualize a vast number of dynamic equations, specifying rates of change. For example, the rate that a substance can be metabolized (used for life) depends on its availability and concentration, along with the availability of proteins (enzymes). Availability of proteins depends on the existence of certain genes and the expression of these genes. If we are picturing the tiny environment of the human body, we can ask which genes. It's not just the human genome that is active. Every human being is a composite of two genomes (at least): one from both her parents and the completely independent mitochondrial genome "infecting" the egg - responsible for creating ATP - the essential energy currency of the body. And then there is the "microbiome", the genes working in the bacteria we host, which play an essential role in digestion and he immune system. Availability of essential substances also depends on the active genes in the food we eat - for example the genome of wheat (the world's oldest GMO) and the genome of the bacteria that are responsible for 70% of the energy available to cattle. We could consider all these genes working together to be an "individual", but perhaps it's best to put aside the notion of an individual altogether.

We can then go back and ask the kind of questions we typically ask of a dynamic system. For example, we see the daily rhythms of life - meal times, sleep times - as "stable orbits". We see the death of the "individual" as a stable "solution" to the dynamic equations under a wide range of circumstances where the rate of change for all relevant variables goes to zero. Disease and injury can be seen as radical departures from "normal" which may or may not lead back to stability. This concept of disease can be applied to "individuals", environments such as a coral reef, entire ecosystems or even the entire planet.

Stepping back from the "individual", we can see how vast collections of factors (metabolism of quadrillions of living agents) together determine the state of the system in the next moment. Ththte entire system is constantly changing. Many factors, including evolution and climate change, ensure that the overall trend is for the system not to "orbit" around a stable set of conditions. Life has a way of being unrepeatable. Or, as they say, extinction is forever. 

A simple example may suffice. A simplified mathematical model can be created for the relationship between predator and prey. Under certain fairly narrow conditions, the numbers of predators and prey swings around an "orbit". However, under different assumptions, either the predator or the prey is driven to extinction. The fate of either species is determined not by "fitness" but by the parameters of the system as a whole. This can be seen intuitively if one imagines a predator that is "too efficient" and wipes out all the prey, starving itself out of existence. On the scale of human current events, we can see that humans may be so efficient at consuming all possible prey that they literally eat themselves out of home and go extinct. Seen from the traditional perspective of Darwinian evolution, he "fitness" of a species quite obviously depends on the environment the species is found in and that environment is never static.

In mathematical terms, there are only a certain configuration of variables that are possible. Others, while possible, are radically unstable, leading quickly to stable solutions with a lot of zeros. Zeros in this case mean no metabolism: no life.

Assimilation

The original title of this blog was "Dragon Theory", which referred to my idea that humans create organizations that are alive in some sense and, in another sense, are machines like other human creations. There is a "flip side" to this theory. It's about how humans are assimilated into this machine. It turns out that assimilation is an easier thing for most of us to understand, since intelligent machines are (for most of us) a subject of Science Fiction ("AI"). In fiction, "AI" is presented for dramatic purposes as something super-human and implacably opposed to human life. "Real" AI is something else entirely. It presents a real and present threat precisely because it is so poorly understood.

The concept of assimilation is quite familiar to most of us. We take it for granted that "social" animals form entities (herds, swarms, flocks, schools) that have a behavior all their own - behavour that cannot be described solely as the sum of behavior of the individuals. Application of this idea to humans is, for some strange reason, resisted.

In the case of humans, social structure is more than a matter of simply sticking together for the purpose of hunting and safety. Human societies are intelligently designed. In this sense, they are intelligent machines.

It's also true that the way that humans are absorbed in these social structures (assimilated) is uniquely complex.  In this post, I'd like to focus on the most common and most powerful ways we are all assimilated:

• Being Alive.  To be alive is to actively participate in the Universe. This forces us to divide the world into things useful, things dangerous, "me" and "not me", "mine" and "not mine" ...
• Being Human. Obviously, we all share a human mind and body, making it hard to relate to such things as the immorality of driving species to extinction. We share a mortal time-frame of less than a century. Our senses are dull but our minds are full of speculations that would never occur to an animal with comparable intelligence (such as a dolphin).
• Culture. The most obvious aspect of culture is language, which limits what kinds of thoughts we can share and even the kind of thoughts we can have. Especially in the "West", philosophers have over-emphasize the role of language. Culture includes "technology" which surrounds us, opening all kinds of possibilities but also limiting the way we see the world. For example, if we have a gun, we will tend to use the gun to solve our problems with society. If we have poison, we will use it to exclude inconvenient living things from "our" environment.
• Flocking. The boid hypothesis hold that a great deal of human "group" behavour can be explained by simple rules governing all kinds of flocks and swarms. Deep psychology is not required.

Built on our common humanity and the fact that we are all absorbed into some kind of culture from birth, other powerful forces are brought to bear:

• Mythology. Structures our lives with a complex set of stories that provide a sense of "meaning" and direction (as long as they are not held up to close scrutiny)
• Economics, especially the mythology of money. For the vast majority of human beings in 2017, money (and the need for it) is as real as air.
• Status. Backed by cultural myths, human societies seem to automatically stratify into "haves" and "have-nots" - leaders and followers.
• Brute Force. We cannot overlook the fact that, for most of humanity, there is no choice but to participate in society, even at the most desperately poor and disadvantaged level. When we go to war, most of us are "cannon fodder" with our individuality seen as an inconvenience and obstacle to the functioning of the war machine. On the other hand, when the tools of brute force are placed in our hands, we tend to use them - turning others into objects that exist only to further our personal ambitions. Ironically, such ambitions are themselves a product of assimilation. The oppressor is as assimilated as the oppressed.

All these forces can add up to the dragon/assimilation phenomenon where, for example, young men can excuse the slaughter of "enemy" civilians as "just doing my job". Such mental gymnastics would be completely incomprehensible if we ignored the process that turns a helpless, innocent child into a mindless, expendable component in a war machine.

The Borg

Trekspertise explains the origin of the Borg

It is interesting to note the perspective of the narrater, who is totally "assimilated" into the Star Trek multiverse. He sees the Borg threat as a symbolic treatment relationship between humanity and technology.

According to the narrator, the Borg represent the perfect foil for the values represented by the "good guys" in the Star Trek Franchise: freedom, diversity, individuality. In fact, these values can be recognized as uniquely American. The premise of this blog is that the threat to these values does indeed come from technology, but there is no need for technology to be particularly advanced. The first time that assimilation appeared in history on a frightening scale, it was enabled by the expert bowman riding on horseback.

Conquerors soon learned to to enslave their victims instead of killing them. Fredrick W. Taylor, the first management consultant and inventor of the assembly line put this explicitly. His contempt for "freedom, diversity and individuality" was visceral:

'I can say, without the slightest hesitation,' Taylor told a congressional committee, 'that the science of handling pig-iron is so great that the man who is ... physically able to handle pig-iron and is sufficiently phlegmatic and stupid to choose this for his occupation is rarely able to comprehend the science of handling pig-iron.

Treating human beings as agricultural machinery (slaves) was hardly new to America. But Taylor generalized and crystallized the concept for the industrial age. The importance of human beings was to be interchangeable cogs in an industrial machine, whose purpose was to create things efficiently at the lowest possible cost.

In the alarmingly shallow world of Star Trek, the future of the human race is depicted as exploring the "final frontier" in a flying first class hotel. Manufacture of anything has mysteriously disappeared, but our heroes are still armed with devastating personal weaponry and post-nuclear destructive "photon torpedoes". Their peaceful exploration "where no man has gone before" includes a weapons officer on deck at all times.

The crew survives to fight another battle each week by means of clever battle strategy, often laughably connected to some last-minute flourish of "out of the box" thinking. The enemy is never presented as having "freedom, diversity or individuality". They are exterminated like rats. The original series aired during the Viet Nam war, where the average American assumed that victory in war validated the goodness of the victor. They were in for a shock.

Star Trek is about expanding American "freedom, diversity and individuality" throughout the galaxy at the point of a gun. Back home in the real world, the real Borg (corporations and armed forces) are granted legal personhood and assimilation proceeds unchecked.

Assimilation and Atheism 101

Interesting discussion between leading atheists 
Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

A wide-ranging discussion of subtle issues with atheism, including an unusually subtle treatment of why people accept religion - the process of assimilation and the difficulty in freeing people from assimilation.

• Risks associated with criticizing Islam;
• When to take the gloves off - being polite to people who have been indoctrinated;
• Vetting the authorities;
• How liberal kids get assimilated to radical Islam;
• Sam Harris speaks eloquently about the powerful meme of Islam;
• Dawkins doesn't understand that everyone doesn't think like he does;
• Dennett refers to the "narrative arc" in TV shows and movies, which primes a person for assimilation;
• The appeal of Islam to intelligent, liberal women;
• Ali calls Islam a form of madness;
• Dennett compares crime committed for religious reasons with drunk driving
• Harris points out that religious delusion is excluded in DSM 
• Are religious people just lazy;
• Dennett makes the important point that religious people "just go along", they are not intellectuals;
• Harris makes the point that theologians are not lazy. Making sense of religion is hard work;
• Dawkins is unsympathetic - regards believers has having their ears stopped up;
• Harris points out that crazy Christians understand crazy Muslims better than atheists do. Atheists don't take belief seriously;
• Ali points out realization of individual identity as a core challenge to Islam. "Submission to Allah" is basically surrender of individuality;
• Dawkins makes a similar point about the depth and scope of the "bossiness" of religion, far beyond reason. Why do religions make things so hard for believers?
• Dennett points out the parallel between religious hokum and "viral" memes - "infectious stupidity". 
• Dawkins- quotes Chesterton- when people stop believing in religion, they don't believe in nothing - they believe in anything;
• Harris makes the point that, for example, there is nothing in Science to fill the "Santa Clause Hole";

The discussion is continued without Ayann, adding Christopher Hitchens

• doubt - the idea that doubts are "normal";
• faith - nice discussion of how belief without evidence becomes evidence and a barrier to further evidence;
• Dennett calls it all a "bag of tricks" - cons could be used to sustain anything;
• Harris points out how easy it is for Christians to spot the "bag of tricks" in other religions;
• Theology is like stamp collecting - theologians "take in each other's laundry";
• Dawkins again displays his lack of appreciation of myth;
• Dennett confusing myth with metaphor;
• Harris points out the pride of religious people when they maintain their faith in spite of the "hammer blows" that destroy all its premises;
• Dennett complains that the professionals "know better" but the problem with the flock is that they have ceded authority to the professionals. The buck stops with the professionals. The pastor's job is to know what he's talking about;
• How is scientific authority different from religious authority? Competitiveness, structure of the discipline, predictions, puzzles vs. mysteries, glorification of "mystery";
• giving up the demand for intuitive understanding; 
• religious moves are not allowed in debates. For example, if you say this is just what I believe, you disqualify yourself from the debate;
• Harris: "Is there a single sentence in the Bible or Koran that shows it's not a work of a human author?" If these are not "magic books", Christianity and Islam collapse.

Dennett and Dawkins Circle Around Dragon Theory

Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins share ideas on religion.

The conversation is interesting because Dawkins is generally credited with the invention of the idea of the "meme" and Dennett is best known for making the idea more precise and useful. Interestingly, Dennett's grasp of evolution (and even memes!) seems to be more nuanced than Dawkins', even though Dennett is a philosopher and Dawkins' credentials are in biology.

Dawkins focused originally on the idea that memes survived in a way analogous to evolution (In his preface to "The Meme Machine", Dawkins admits that he's surprised that people took the idea seriously). The conversation struggles to keep this analogy going, trying to make the case that religion is a parasitic meme, surviving at the expense of the believer. It seems that Dawkins uses "meme" mainly as a rhetorical device -- part of his arsenal of weapons to attack what he imagines to be "religion". Dennett, on the other hand, generalizes he idea and takes it into some very interesting territory. In either case, it can be asked if the "meme" analogy tells us anything useful about the way humans think.

Returning to the meme analogy, both of these guys miss the obvious fact the meme doesn't need to "infect" individual brains. More precisely, memes help to assimilate the individual, but this doesn't go all the way to explaining religion. The cluster of memes that give religion its ability to survive and "morph" to meet challenges from the environment include those that assimilate believers but there are others that are strictly necessary for the survival of the religion as a human organizational structure. These memes are not so different from what we find in other "Dragons", such as nations and corporations. For example, every Dragon must "feed" (find resources), protect its form (protect itself from "infection" from outsiders) and simply survive. To survive in the long run, a religion needs to make the transition to some kind of corporate structure. Otherwise, the "religion" will fizzle out as a mere "cult".

The best way to see this is by analogy. An ant doesn't "understand" that it's part of an ant colony, yet the colony as a whole acts in a very purposeful way. It's not correct to say that the colony itself "knows" that purpose.  Dennett is good at pointing out that a meme can emerge without anybody actually "knowing" the meme (Dawkins doesn't seem to get this). His favorite example, mentioned in this discussion, is the way canoes are "designed" by the sea by the simple process of copying the ones that don't sink. Ant hills are "designed" by Nature, simply by randomly stumbling into a working "design". Corporations "evolve" in the same way, converging on the psychopathic "person" described in The Corporation.

Interestingly, Dennett and Dawkins discuss the problems faced by professionals in the Church. Seen from the perspective of Dragon Theory, these people are trying to escape assimilation. But Dennett and Dawkins address this as if it's simply a matter of recovering rationality. This keeps them from drawing parallels with other people escaping assimilation, such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Is it really about "rationality"?

Not surprisingly, Dennett and Dawkins agree that religion is doomed to wither away in the near future. You can make this case, if at all, by a suitable definition religion. You must/ignore the religions of militarism, nationalism, consumerism. and all the varieties of ignorance people refer to when they identify themselves as "spiritual". In a broader sense, they are predicting the end of assimilation, which seems to be a core aspect of being human. You must assume that everyone but you is "irrational" and somehow the laws of nature dictate that, sooner or later, everyone will see the world the way you do.

It's always fun to watch these two guys circle around the issues that religion deals with (or tries to deal with). They are crippled by their lack of deep understanding that would have come with a serious investigation into what religion is and why people are swept up in it. They gave up too soon. Here, they try to glorify death in an echo of the stories religion tells in the West, failing to take account of the stories he Buddha told.

Evolution of the Meme World

A wider and more optimistic picture of assimilation can be found here. The progress of human thought, including technology, depends on the individual being "assimilated" into the way society "thinks".

Another Look at Dragon Theory

The premise of "Dragon Theory" is that we get "assimilated" into intelligent machines - social structures based on mechanical rules - thereby losing our fundamental humanity. The assumption of Dragon Theory is that this "assimilation" is a "bad thing", even a dangerous thing. Perhaps even a threat to the continued existence of human beings on the planet.

On the other hand, I have a thread of reasoning in Diary of a Christian Skeptic that recognizes that there is little or nothing in my personal "meme world" that doesn't come from other people, many of which can be identified by name. According to this picture, my mind is simply a kind of eddy, through which the memes of mankind flow. According to Zen, there are no borders to the individual mind. Properly speaking, the mind is infinite and contains "reality". The mind of a modern intellectual "contains" a lot more "reality" than the mind of an educated person 200 years ago because the insights of modern science are readily available to reach deeply into the workings of reality itself. This is the result of being "assimilated" into a world that today might be called the "Google World".

This idea can be forcefully illustrated by picking up a dictionary (Do you still have one of those around?) This is a massive list of all the words (each one a meme) that I have inherited just by being born in an English speaking country and subjected to the kind of socialization that is lamented in "Dragon Theory". In fact, Dragon theory explicitly acknowledges the fact that language itself is a powerful force for assimilation, even more powerful than another assimilating meme: the idea of money.

But it's also true that Math, Physics and Philosophy are woven into the culture I'm embedded in. In fact, what aspect of my "humanity" does not owe itself to "assimilation"? Is it no true that the fantastic richness of human experience that is so threatened by assimilation is also due to assimilation? Unlike other animals, human beings thoroughly adapt to their environment and the tools available (both physical and intellectual). A man with an axe is a different animal from an man with no axe. Every tool, every sweeping change to he environment (now mostly "man made") changes what it is to be human.

Turning back to the "Dragon" image of a machine made up of human components, can we not imagine a "meme machine" constantly re-working and exploring its store of memes?  The "thinking" of this machine includes the exponential growth of human knowledge in every field, described in Kurzweil's "Singularity". In this vision, we are "assimilated" into a thinking, dreaming, creating machine that is growing bigger and more powerful by he second. In fact, this "group mind" can't be described as a machine at all, since he creative, human energies of individuals add to produce much more than any one individual could produce. "Dragons" drag individuals to the "lowest common denominator", for example, reducing their lives to a scramble for money. Is it not true that we lament this process precisely because we benefit from centuries of thinking about what is meaningful and worthwhile about human existence? We want the benefits of civilization without surrendering the imagined purity of he "noble savage".

In this context, it's worth remembering "The Real World of Technology" which outlines the intimate connection between technical progress and dehumanization of the individual.

Perhaps it is a mundane observation that "assimilation" is a two-edge sword. We are swept along in the stream of history, constantly being redefined as human beings. Is it possible to step outside this process and say which changes to the definition of "human" are acceptable and which are not?

At the very least, this line of thinking challenges Dragon Theory's pessimistic view of our future as a species.

Swimming With the Sharks

In Swimming With the Sharks, Joris Lewindijk provides a stellar inside look at the "City", London's financial industry. His work is remarkable in that he manages to tease out the differences between matters on a human scale and what happens to the system as a whole. He focuses on "perverse incentives", a key mechanism of "assimilation" whereby ordinary people surrender their humanity to the impersonal machinery of the investment banks.

The book should be read with "The Real World of Technology", which describes the phenomenon of assimilation in an industrial society in general (not just banking).

"Swimming" is a modern classic, to be compared with "The Corporation". At its heart we see acceptance of the fallacy: money as a proxy for value.

"Swimming" presents the clearest case I know of how the "Dragon" created by the common efforts of very smart people takes on a life of its own. But the whole is so much less than the sum of its parts. The "mind" of a Bank is stunningly stupid. "Swimming" points this out by quoting the repeated rhetorical question of bankers in the industry, Why would the banks want to destroy themselves?

The answer is quite simple and it's not that different from the similar question you might ask about stupid armies. On the evolutionary time scale, they are a new life form. Their behavour in their environment is relatively untested. Physics imposes no natural upper limit to violence, so the "survival strategy" of an army (to destroy all other armies with maximum violence) will end with the destruction of all armies along with the humans that make them up and support them. In the case of banks, the blindness resulting from mistaking money for value puts them in a death spiral that sucks all the real value out of the world, leaving only money (and uncollectible debt). "Swimming" shows how close we came in 2008 to destroying the worldwide "real" economy.

"Swimming" hints at several ways that assimilation works on individuals, sapping them of any semblance of a human life. This is useful to Dragon Theory itself, since it provides the reader of a way to understand the dangers that Dragon Theory describes without getting in to descriptions of the monster created by assimilated human beings:

• Perverse incentives. Built-in rewards, short term goals, removal of accountability.
• Alienation. 
• Destruction of loyalty. Anyone can be fired on a moment's notice. Every man for himself.
• Economic pressure. Loss of a job can involve a drastic step down in lifestyle, especially impacting on hopes for children (expensive private schools etc.)
• Compartmentalization. Nobody is asking whether the system as a whole benefits anyone.
• Competitiveness. Focus on "winning" the game while forgetting that the game is harming everyone. "Dog eat dog", zero-sum situations.
• Physical exhaustion. A key element of brain washing in every context. No time or energy to ask what is happening to one's life.
• Reduction of "value" to "money", then "money" to "status". For many (not all), it's a blood sport whose reward is status.
• Excitement. The challenge is a reward in itself, even though he "problem" solved is just another way to cheat or deceive.

"Swimming" also documents what is lost when people are assimilated.

• Time. The most fundamental thing of all. Life itself.
• Health.
• Relationships.
• Self-esteem.
• Camaraderie and team spirit - the "social" aspect of "work".
• Security.
• "A life both broad and deep", no time for hobbies, interests, projects outside of the job. Life closing in around the never-ending emergencies of the job.

It is useful to compare "Swimming" to "The Corporation". "Corporation" sees the "Dragon" from the outside as a pathological "person". "Swimming" sees the "Dragon" from the inside in terms of the way it absorbs individual human beings. In both sources, it is abundantly clear that the behavior and goals of the Dragon are utterly different from the behavior and goals of the people that make it up. The people are interchangeable and expendable, made abundantly clear in "Swimming".

Finally, it should be said that "Swimming" documents the particularly nasty world of investment banking. Most of what is said can be said of corporations in general. In particular, the "person" created by a public offering of shares means that the people working in the corporation don't bear the risks that the corporation takes. In fact, senior management is perversely incentivized to maximize risk. If the risk pays off, they are handsomely rewarded. If the risk destroys the company, management can usually walk away unscathed. The goals of the corporation are narrowed solely to making a short term profit. Competition between corporations for shareholders guarantees that the scramble for profits will be ruthless and unforgiving.

Ursala Franklin - The Real World of Technology

This is a series of Massey Lectures, available on-line through the Ideas archive or as a book.

The lectures are well-worth reading. Franklin is a deep and original thinker. For the purposes of this blog, her most significant idea is the way that technology turns society into a collection of compliant robots - a specific reference to the "Dragon Theory" idea.

How does this work?

Technology demands "work" to be parcelled out into steps or specialized components. Each piece of work needs to "fit" with all the others, so "good" work is basically work that tightly complies with specifications. Human qualities of judgment are ruled out. Any identification with the end product is removed. This in what Marx called "alienation". But Marx traced alienation to the fact that the worker no longer owned the means of production or the product of his labour. Perhaps the deeper reality was the switch to mass production, centralized because the power source was central (first water, then steam).

Ms Franklin provides an almost mathematical proof that technology itself leads to "assimilation". The industrial revolution lead to an emergent structure of society in which people need "jobs" to participate. This re-defines work, what it is to be human and even the physical structure of the city.

Resisting Assimilation

Very few people are able to grasp the idea of a machine made up of "soft" human parts, let alone an intelligent machine.  At least in 2016, the prevalent mythology easily accepts the idea of "an" AI, a malicious but more or less human mind bent on enslaving or destroying humanity. Yet these same people obediently trudge off to meaningless labour for faceless corporations every day, always dimly aware that there is "purpose" behind what they do, but it's not their purpose.

How is it possible that a machine (like an army) could have an "intelligence" separate from the people who make it up? My background in artificial intelligence makes the concept obvious and natural to me, but the vast majority of readers have not really given much thought about what "intelligence" means in general, let alone what it could mean when we are not speaking about a living thing.

On the other hand, the idea that we are "assimilated" into "machines" is relatively easy to understand and widely shared. Once this is understood, perhaps the reader can dip his toe into the much more frightening idea that the planet is ruled by intelligent machines.

The common rhetoric of attributing moral responsibility to large corporations and government needs to be challenged. The machines have no morality. Their operational rules are designed for their own self-preservation, nothing more.

The Failure of Representative Democracy

Whatever problems are faced by human beings, they overcome them by sharing the burden with other human beings. We are all in this together. This is what it is to be human and this is why we are so easily assimilated into the machines that are the subject of this blog. If we solve the problems of life to by getting a "job" or joining the armed forces, we become a cog in a machine with a life of its own. Just as the cells in our bodies do well as long as they serve the purpose of the body, the human cogs are granted the necessities of life, to "thrive" within the constraints imposed upon them by the machine.

But is there another way?

We are *all* assimilated into culture and language at a very early age. This immediately constrains us to thrive within parameters set by a much larger group, largely without any conscious agenda or awareness of alternatives. We may say, however, that the group created by language and culture is not systematically opposed to the thriving of the humans that make it up. In the first approximation, the "blood and bones" of the culture is made up of the hopes and needs of the people who make it up.

But conflicts are inevitable, even within relatively small and culturally homogeneous groups. That's where "politics" emerges. Where there is politics, there are losers - humans who do not thrive. Humans are assimilated into political machines (Nations) that do not necessarily protect the interests of the humans that make them up.

In the vast majority of cases, Nations are machines that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. These people, who think they "control" the Nation, are as assimilated as all the others. They sell their humanity at a higher price than those who are crushed into subservience or discarded on the trash heap like surplus parts.

Is it possible for a political system to work in any other way?

In most of the "developed" world, we place our hope in a machine "blue print" called "representative democracy". The idea is that somehow the interests of each citizen will be considered to arrive at policies that benefit the nation "as a whole".

How is that working out?

The idea of "representation"

If things are working well, I am allowed to chose between 3 or 4 different individuals who compete for the honour of "representing" me in Ottawa. Such a person will also "represent" the mandarins of the oil industry in their 10 million dollar mansions overlooking the city and unfortunate single mothers living in subsidized housing down by the river. What conceivable "common interest" do we have? We are working on the assumption that since we all live within a few miles of each other, we have common interests. This is absurd in 2015. It is a hold-over from a time when electoral districts were the domain of a local lord and the "parliament" existed to sort out the conflicting interests of the lords.

The idea of "common interest"

Since our candidates cannot realistically claim to know (or care about) any genuine common interest among the people they "represent", they need to fake it. This involves a race to the intellectual bottom and a lot of flag waving. We are all supposed to care about things like the "health of the economy" and "trade". Amazingly, we are all supposed to  believe that one candidate cares about the "middle class" more than the others. It's all fakery but behind the fakery is the fact that (barring immanent nuclear attack) there are very few real interests that the voters in one district share. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that candidates need to find or manufacture issues that they can disagree on, such as Niqabs or abortion rights.

Do we know what is good for us?

Any flavour of democracy assumes that we will resolve conflicts by balancing what is good for X with what is good for Y. How do we know what is good for X and Y? Ask them. But don't ask them what matters. Give them a multiple choice between representatives, each of which assures them that they care very deeply about what matters to their constituents. Whatever that is ...

Even before having it all cut down to an irrelevant multiple choice, this assumes that X and Y know what is in their best interest, even if we assume against all evidence that X and Y give a damn at all. In practice, our political leaders bend over backwards to "sell" their platforms, which cherry pick issues that they hope will appeal to Mr. X and Ms. Y during the 30 minutes or so that they consider their political options before an election. "Talking points" are purely rhetorical, aiming to produce a knee-jerk reaction and putting huge barriers up against anyone who wants to "drill down" to what is actually being talked about.

In a perfect world, politicians would take it upon themselves to educate the public about the importance of issues facing the nation, such as whether trade deals threaten sovereignty or whether climate change will create an unliveable world for the generations to follow. In practice, politicians act as if increased understanding among the general public will hurt the chances of all politicians to claw their way to power. As I write, Canada is in the throws of an election that could determine the very existence of the parliamentary system -- our ability to make choices at all. So far, I have seen only one party - the Greens - that has made a concerted effort to educate the public. The Greens have an outside chance to win one seat out of 308.

The party system

In all the "democracies" I know of, politicians organize themselves into "parties" and agree to a common set of "talking points" that are (hopefully) crafted to appeal to enough voters to put the party in power. Party platforms are sold like Florida real estate. In mature "democracies", the party can count on a large block of voters who identify themselves with the party. For example, in the US, the question "Are you a Republican" is not as laughable as a similar question, "Are you NDP" would be in Canada.

Voters generally chose on a blend of three considerations (a) the party they voted for last time (confirmation bias) (b) the leader they like most or despise least (c) the local candidate they like because he or she is "most qualified", usually the candidate running for the party in (a). During the election, candidates pander to all three groups, cheer leading for the "base", sticking to the leader's talking points and polishing up their own resume (a laughable exercise for "warm body" candidates with zero chance of winning). This selection process tends to completely bury the concept of selecting the person who will best represent the interests of any actual voter. An alarming number of voters will cast their ballot based on a single issue: usually a "dead cat" issue (like the Niqab in 2015) or visceral dislike of the leaders of the parties running against whoever they voted for last time.

The party system erases any vestiges of actual concern for real people and turns the election into a beauty contest where the party with the best talking points and the biggest "core" voters wins power. The role of "representative" is then homogenized away, with national policy basically dictated by the people who really control the party. The average citizen has no idea who these people are or what their interests are, but whatever those interests may be, it is hard to argue that the end result is a government that operates in the best interests of the ordinary citizen. We are left to hope that general welfare will "trickle down" from the heights of wealth and power.

Bottom line

"Representative democracy" is not democracy at all. It is the sophisticated form of oligarchy. By sitting in the stands and enjoying farcical elections from time to time, the average person is prevented from taking up arms and actively revolting against the system. The oppressor is amorphous and impossible to target. The mythology that the oppressor was somehow chosen by the oppressed serves to bring down the temperature of discontent until the next election where we feel that somehow we'll at last get a chance to change things.

Meanwhile, there is the distraction of finding and keeping a "job", to and becoming a useful cog in a corporate machine. One thing that all politicians promise is more jobs, more "incentives" for corporate welfare and a welcoming environment for business. We are assured that we will all get our chance to be comfortably assimilated into the "middle class" or, failing that, the army.

P.S.

Since writing this piece I have become increasingly aware of the role of ideology in all of this. Since we can't really lump people into electoral districts and assume that this somehow allows them to pool their interests, the only practical alternative would be to have a discussion of ideology. What are the ideas that we should draw on to create a future for ourselves and our descendants? How much do we really care about people who are being cast aside by the way we do things now? For 9 years, Harper has shown us what neoliberalism looks like in practice. We saw it South of the Border in 2008, where unregulated banks showed us how well they handle the common welfare when trusted instead of regulated. But what are the alternatives? Is socialism the opposite of neoliberalism? Is the *lack* of ideology (the Liberal approach) itself an ideology?

Canadian voters can somehow be convinced that billions need to be spent to answer the threat of "terrorism". Shouldn't it be possible to convince Canadians that poverty and injustice pose an even greater threat? Should we be talking about hypothetical tax benefits to the "middle class" when we still have people sleeping in the streets and living in 3rd world conditions on reservations? Are we really willing to destroy the planet to protect "jobs" and the "economy"? Do the CSIS agents that infiltrate aboriginal "special interest" groups represent our values? Do we care about evidence? Are we interested to know the facts about ourselves and the challenges that face us? These are questions of values and I believe that it *is* possible to make them valid issues in an election, which, in theory at least, could lead to a government that shares the values that we hold together as Canadians.

As long as elections are a matter of cynical Coke versus Pepsi marketing campaigns, attempting to buy middle class votes with their own tax dollars, values will be pushed to one side.

P.P.S.

"Pepsi" won over "Coke" in the 2015 election. "Ginger Ale" was reduced from 2nd to 3rd place among Canadian's choice of sugary soft drink politics. Predictably, supporters of Coke (PC's) are now claiming that the problem was with marketing the product, not with the recipe or the toxic, nutritionally worthless nature of the product itself. Perhaps just the desire of the Canadian public to try something different. Outside observers are talking about the "landslide" victory of Pepsi, ignoring the fact that yet another "majority" government has been formed with 40% of popular support. The election *did* send a wannabe dictator back to obscurity, hopefully restoring the outside chance that representative democracy, with all its faults, might have a chance in Canada. That's not nothing, but it's strangely depressing to think of how long a road we still need to travel to get a government that represents the interests of the Canadian public. I will be encouraged if we see if the general public debate shows signs of elevated interest and knowledge of the issues. In the end, we get the government we deserve.

Thoughts on Assimilation August 27, 2015

The original idea behind this blog (Dragon Theory) is that there is a dangerous tendency for human beings to be assimilated into machines, giving up their essentially human nature to serve the nature of the machine. By "machine", I mean a system that operates by impersonal inflexible rules, in contrast to the chaotic, creative behaviour of real human beings. We use "machine" in this way when we talk about an army as a "war machine".

I still love this idea. Like all good ideas, it raises more questions than it answers. Today, I'll consider some of these questions. In some cases, the questions are more interesting than the original thesis, which is a good thing. I have always thought that progress results from asking impertinent questions rather than from the answers we discover.

The theme of a recent issue of Scientific American (August, 2015) is "How we conquered the planet". Curtis W. Marean puts forward the thesis that the key to our world-conquering success is our ability to cooperate, especially on large scales, with individuals who are unrelated. Like any good thesis, it raises more questions than it answers--many of the same questions raised by "Dragon Theory".

Exactly what is meant by "cooperation"? Several threads of cooperation come to mind and all of them promote "assimilation" - surrender of individual human nature to an artificially created entity.

• Trade. There is plenty of evidence that humans are traders by nature, quite willing to barter with strange humans rather than simply stealing what they want. Trade is the mother of "economy" -- a slippery slope leading to the idea of money. The more a person depends on trade the more a person becomes defined by economic principals. A person becomes poor when he measures himself by the degree to which he participates and relies upon the money economy and that participation is slight (the famously large part of the human race that lives on less than a dollar a day).
• Conquest, loot and pillage. A very popular form of human cooperation which is made possible when individuals think and act as members of a gang or army. The degree of coherence and assimilation often determines the "success" of the conquering hoard. In many cases, it defeats enemies who are "weak" only because they are less organized, less assimilated. The Mongol "hoards" are my favourite example of a "war machine", which assimilated most of the civilized world by means of a very short list of operating rules - laws which explicitly overrule such human qualities such as mercy, fallibility and judgement. 

There are obviously many other forms of assimilation that humans are good at (religion comes to mind), but I will pass over these to focus on one that has, until today, escaped my notice: language.

It seems that language is the key to the unique degree of cooperation that Marean talks about. Today, I started to wonder if, by learning a language, we automatically become assimilated into something that has a life of its own. This is an idea that is hard to discuss using language itself, like fish discovering water. Do we surrender something of ourselves by learning to describe our experience in the same way as those around us? Without realizing it, do we learn to ignore every aspect of our experience that cannot be communicated and discussed with those around us who speak the same language?

Western philosophers assume that all truth is accessible to language. There are notable exceptions. Wittgenstein claimed that what cannot be said must be passed over in silence. Of course, we can't say just what is passed over. But we can ask if the same things will be passed over by speakers of different languages and whether there are important things that will be passed over by any speaker of any language.

I have been a computer programmer since there were computer programmers, I have seen the evolution of computer languages over half a century. "Languages" like FORTRAN and COBOL barely deserve the name of language. Modern languages, like Java, make it possible to express ideas that could never be expressed in COBOL or FORTRAN - ideas that are, in many cases, very difficult to express in "human" languages. For me, it's quite natural to see that language defines a world of ideas that can be expressed and also a (presumably larger) world of ideas that cannot be expressed. Moreover, as a follower of Zen and Tao, I'm quite aware that the world is larger than the world of human ideas, whether these ideas can be expressed in language or not.

Returning to the issue of assimilation, is language the necessary mechanism of all assimilation? Noam Chomsky famously claims that the ability to form ideas that can be communicated linguistically is an innate quality of the human brain. Does this mean that we are "hard wired" to be assimilated?

Human languages are famously sloppy, fuzzy and ambiguous. Computer languages are none of these things. The use of "language" to describe both systems is an analogy only, but the language of Mathematics is closer to the computer side of the analogy than the human side. What is more, hardly any scientific knowledge is respectable these days unless it can be mathematically described. 

Again, we are faced with the problem of a fish discovering water. It seems that we are totally immersed in a world that is described (or lied about) exclusively in language. If, for the moment, we imagine a world outside of that world of language, we come to understand what we mean by being assimilated by language.

In the current historical moment in the United States, the emptying out of language is nourished by the assault on the civic imagination. One example of this can be found in the rise of Donald Trump on the political scene. Trump’s popular appeal speaks to not just the boldness of what he says and the shock it provokes, but the inability to respond to shock with informed judgment rather than titillation. Marie Luise Knott is right in noting, “We live our lives with the help of the concepts we form of the world. They enable an author to make the transition from shock to observation to finally creating space for action - for writing and speaking. Just as laws guarantee a public space for political action, conceptual thought ensures the existence of the four walls within which judgment operates.” The concepts that now guide our understanding of US society are dominated by a corporate-induced linguistic and authoritarian model that brings ruin to language, politics and democracy itself.

- Truth Dig

What would be the alternative? How does the fish walk up on the beach? One hint is the idea of aesthetics. Anyone who appreciates art understands the futility of describing its meaning with words. Yet there is meaning. To the Western mind, a "philosophy" is something constructed out of words. This includes Western religions, such as Christianity, whose "theology" rests firmly on centuries of arcane interpretations of ancient stories. Other traditions, especially Tao and Zen, specifically eschew words and even human ideas in general to promote an aesthetic -- a way experiencing the world wordlessly.

This points to a way of escaping assimilation (at least this type of assimilation), which is to cultivate aesthetic sense. This is to value our direct experience of the world and to be skeptical of attempts to draw us into the herd by means of language. We need to be skeptical of "reasons why", interpretation, valuation, analysis and synthesis. Actually this isn't such a huge leap. We have just been sold the idea that things are not "real" or "important" unless they can be boiled down to language. Most of us understand quite clearly that this is wrong but (of course!) we have problems saying just why this is. 

Perhaps the world we "pass over in silence" is the important one. Perhaps it is where we can discover who we really are.

Note to self: comment on "Monkey Sphere and Echo Chamber"