Resistance is Futile

Such argument is hardly worthy of serious refutal.

— John Harvey Kellogg

Like the Borg, "physicalist" philosophers are a hard-nosed bunch.

Physicalists hold that there's absolutely nothing that's supernatural: the only real substance is physical, and everything that's real is nothing more than its physical properties—the mind included.

By extension, one day the mind will be explained fully by neuroscience, according to physicalists.

For a century, physicalists have dominated debates about the 2,500-year-old "mind/body problem" in philosophy.

But—despite a century of vaulting advances in neuroscience—the tide of opinion is turning.

More and more philosophers today resemble Hegelians, the philosophers who dominated the mind/body debate in the 19th century. (Hegel believed that "All that is real is rational and all that is rational is real.")

One example is Galen Strawson. He believes everything is mind—that electrons are conscious.

Strawson is a new breed of physicalist, one who holds that, while everything is indeed physical, mind pervades it, a view known as panpsychism.

Strawson arrived at his opinion by realizing four truths:

1. Each of us knows for certain that he, she or they exists—that minds exist.

2. There's only one kind of substance—physical substance. 

3. Therefore, mind must be physical.

4. But there actually is no "substance," according to contemporary physics; there are only "vibratory patterns in fields." Mind must reside therein. It is latent in the energy that composes electrons—every electron, everywhere. Mind is everywhere.

Strawson's argument has merit because, like Hegel's, it's simple, positing neither all-natural nor supernatural substances. Everything is a unified one. 

And there's no longer any cause to debate where body ends and mind originates. Body ends nowhere. Mind originates everywhere. 

Debate over.

If panpsychism sounds whacky, it's not. It's mainstream.

Resistance is futile.

Polymaths

You know you're old when you're asked, "Do you have hobbies?"

— Warren Beatty

Bob Lowry, a blogger I enjoy, recently asked whether the search for a "perfect passion" in retirement isn't a fool's errand.

"There is no doubt that a passion or hobby that is meaningful to you is one of the keys to a satisfying retirement," Lowry says, "but searching for those things that inspire and motivate you might be a waste of time."

You'd be better off, he says, trying your hand at a lot of "imperfect" pursuits.

"Don't allow yourself to stagnate just because you haven't stumbled onto the one thing that lights your fire," Lowry says. "Try all sorts of activities. If what you are doing doesn't grab you, drop it. 

"When you find that passion, the thing that pushes you out of bed each morning, you will know it. In the meantime, you have had fun, learned something new, got your blood pumping, or at the very least gotten off your butt."

Lowry's spot on: there's nothing wrong with polymathy—in fact, quite the opposite. Polymaths are often the ones who connect dots we would never, ever connect—or notice in the first place.

The late motivational speaker Barbara Sher called polymaths scanners, people "unlike those who seem to find and be satisfied with one area of interest." 

Unable to latch onto one or two imperfect passions, scanners are "genetically wired to be interested in many things," Sher believed.

That polymathy makes scanners disturbing to others. 

"Because your behavior is unsettling, you’ve been taught you’re doing something wrong and must try to change," Sher said. "But what you’ve assumed is a disability is actually an exceptional gift. You are the owner of a remarkable, multi-talented brain."

One of my favorite polymaths was Winston Churchill. We remember him as a politician, but throughout his life he devoted equal energies to writing (the greatest source of his income), painting, horse breeding, and bricklaying.

Yes, bricklaying.

As he found painting (and brandy), Churchill found bricklaying a remedy for the "worry and mental overstrain" (i.e., manic depression) that dogged him most of his life.

In pursuit of the hobby, Churchill built brick walls, walkways, fish ponds, patios, a swimming pool and a child's cottage, all on the grounds of his estate. 

He also became a member of the local mason's union—despite his vocal opposition to unionized workers' wage demands and the right to strike.

Churchill had little interest in the betterment of the working class.

Even a polymath has his limits.

Now and Then

The future ain't what it used to be.

— Yogi Berra

Every day I read about a retiree who say she's never been happier.

I'm glad I can say the same.

The reason why occurred to me just this week: I have lost a whole dimension of time: the future.

My career, I see now, always forced me, at the cost of the present, to focus on the future: on plans, budgets, deadlines, pitfalls, and potential catastrophes; on this afternoon's call, tomorrow's meeting, next week's presentation, next month's earnings, next year's trends.

Today I pretty much ignore the future. 

Now I live in the now—and then.

Now I fill my time with projects that absorb all my attention, and pastimes that fling me backwards in time, into mankind's, or my own, history.

Sure, I keep a calendar and a to-do list, but they don't exert much influence. What's in store holds little sway over me any more.

In fact, having lived mostly in the future, I now see it's vastly overrated.

Above: Head III by Francis Bacon.

The Time Has Come for Amtrak One

If TV's Secret Service agent Jim West could travel in his own private train, why can't President Joe Biden?

Biden's weekend visits to Delaware, as widely reported, are an irritant to local drivers, who get trapped in hour-long backups as he's chauffeured to and from his Greenville home.

A private train could solve the problem.

Just as the commander-in-chief boards Air Force One for flights to Europe, he could board Amtrak One for hops to Delaware.

It would perfectly suit his reputation as a loyal rider—Biden rode Amtrak every day for 36 years—and unflagging champion of rail travel.

Please feel free to forward this blog post to the Oval Office, if you have any inside contacts there. I'd do it myself, but so far I've had little success at influencing White House policy.

Could be my taste in old TV shows.

Who Owns the Earth?

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs,
but not every man's greed.

― Mahatma Gandhi

Republicans are often called "idealess," but that's unfair.

They have an idea: they want to own the earth.

But is it even possible? Can a party of people own the earth?

Our Founders' favorite philosopher, John Locke, answered the question in 1690 in his Second Treatise of Government, arguing "no."

While reason would suggest no one can own the earth, Locke says, the Bible proves that fact: "God has given the earth to mankind in common." 

But if that's true, why do we believe in ownership at all? How can anyone say he owns any piece of property? How can he say he owns something which "God gave to mankind in common?"

Locke answers the second question by examining an age-old farming practice: fencing.

Although nobody "originally" owns the earth's natural resources, Locke says, we can't make use of those resources until we "fence" them, as it were. 

"There must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other, before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular man," Locke says. 

That means of appropriation is fencing.

And when someone fences—"removing" a resource from access by others—he adds value to it—the value of his labor. 

"The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, are properly his," Locke says. "Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property." 

A man's labor "annexes" and "encloses" a property, Locke says, excluding it from "the common right of other men.' 

In a phrase, workers keepers. "The condition of human life, which requires labor and materials to work on, necessarily introduces private possessions," Locke says.

Work, in effect, infuses any resource worked on with property rights, which allow that resource to be owned by the worker.

Appropriating resources you haven't worked on, on the other hand, Locke calls robbery—in his eyes, a sin.

"God has given us all things richly, but how far has he given it to us?" he asks.

"As much as any one can make use of life before it spoils, so much he may, by his labor, fix a property: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil."

So no one can own the earth, but any man can have his own little acre—provided he works to improve it, Locke says. 

If he does not improve what he grabs, he's letting it spoil. That's Locke's definition of robbery.

You can't defend robbery by claiming, "Well, all of us own the earth, as God commands," because God also commands that all men should labor. Those who don't have no "title," no right to "benefit of another's pains." Those who don't labor are—literally—robber barons. There's no place in the world for them.

There's also no place for their greed, Locke says. 

Greed urges you to take more than you can improve—or ever use. 

If the barley inside your fence goes to seed, the vegetables die, the fruits rot, and the sheep and goats get sick, it signals you have grabbed more than you can care for, more than you can use; and therefore that you're greedy. 

It's "useless" and "dishonest," Locke says, to grab more than you can tend to or consume.

Although he's been dead for three centuries, Locke would be the first to say the modern Republican Party is the party of despoilers, robber barons, and greedy sinners.

But you knew that.