Wednesday
8:03 a.m.
Dear Editor,
Thank you so much for the opportunity to subscribe to your Harvard Mental Health Letter. I am anxious to receive it. Brain research, consciousness theory, and physics advances are also interests of mine.
[Before you read the remaining portion I feel a need to tell you, I am not customarily this bellicose. I not only find this topic stimulating, I also recognize this topic to be of critical significance. One sober glance at our world easily confirms something is terribly wrong. This something has been terribly wrong for a very long time, and if this something is not accurately diagnosed and effectively addressed, this something will likely destroy not only mankind, but all life on this planet. The locomotive is barreling down the track, and for the length of the track, as far as I can see, there are only ostriches with their heads buried deep. There is within me, perhaps, a rather frantic sense of urgency. My bellicosity reflects this sense. After you have read what remains, perhaps you will better understand. Do, please, read on.]
On another note, like Alice, I find it incredibly curious, curiouser and curiouser, you might say, how credentialed people in and about the brain science field can talk about the physiological, physics-based mechanics, realities within the quantum physics level of our brain which provide understanding to why a plethora of human behaviors exist, and can yet cling to something as insubstantial as free-will. Distill all the mental health rhetoric down to two words and what you have is the cause and effect model. To my way of thinking it is like Columbus clinging to the flat earth model while sailing west, or Copernicus and Galileo believing the earth is the center of the solar system after having presented their findings stating otherwise! It doesn't make sense! Knowing what contemporary upper echelon thinkers know, why can they not just connect the dots? They cling to an intuitive impression rather than accept a determined logic. It defies empiricism! This is what religion does in its effort at containing gargantuan realities. Go figure! Homo sapien, it seems, is a hopelessly religious beast!
In the days of Columbus, Copernicus and Galileo, there really was no urgency. Mankind's existence did not pivot on the acceptance of their theories. This is not the case today. Free-will is not simply a superstitious nuisance, a dysfunctional paradigm relegated to the moss covered bastions of religious thought. Free-will is an incredibly divisive, relationship devouring, irresponsible, social science cancer. This bears repeating. Free-will is an incredibly divisive, relationship devouring, irresponsible, social science cancer.
Free-will has been consuming mankind for thousands of years. During Columbus, Copernicus and Galileo's days, the box was big enough; human population was such that its influence on earth's ecosystems was nominal. Again, this is not the case today. Today, at this moment in time, there is extreme urgency! Not only is mankind on the cusp of extinction, free-will threatens to make Earth a sterile planet! Attempting to live in a determined universe as if it were a free-will universe pretty much produces the world-wide psychological dysfunction we have today. Al Gore, bless his heart, I Love him, is merely addressing a symptom and seems to be completely unaware of the disease. Free-will would have us focus on the patient's temperature while vital organs are consumed. In a psychological vein, if insanity is functioning in a false-reality as if it were reality, then free-will has made ours an insane society! This qualifies for being addressed as a mental health issue. To mankind's chagrin and devastation, it would seem this insanity easily includes the credentialed people at Harvard, Princeton, Oxford, Yale, and all other institutions of learning. From pre-school teacher all the way up, or down, to those occupying prestigious positions at eminent universities, the naked emperor is adored. When everyone is insane, the insane appear to be sane. When the norm is insanity, the insane seem normal. It isn't a pretty picture, but it explains a lot!.
In an effort to be candid, my words have been forceful and aggressive. Truth is hard as granite, cold as steel, and very rarely soft and furry. Extinction is a lot like Truth. In a free-will context, this equates to a shot across the bow, a glove across the face, or a thesis nailed to a cathedral door. I challenge you! Being of a determined mindset, I am able to accept extinction, coming or going. If extinction is to be our reality, it will simply be the culmination of previous universal experience, or rather, the deficit nature of previous universal experience. Nothing more and nothing less. Just a reality! The downside of extinction for me is, there's no more fun! However, those of a free-will mindset would find extinction quite frightening!
I would like to talk. Would you? If not, do you know of someone who would?
1:02 p.m.
Perhaps there is something I don't know. This isn't an outlandish possibility! I do know there is an overpowering logic founded in what is able to be confirmed by the scientific method which buttresses a comprehensively determined universe. This consciousness thing; this self-autonomy thing, however, remains the most resistant impediment to mankind's acceptance of a choice-less reality and harmony with nature. Heartfelt intuition is the slipperiest of eels!
I have recently described the Hebrew I and I concept as involving the conscious I and the functioning I separated by an impervious existential sheet of glass; an ego-id dichotomy. I guess I need to obtain confirmation of Steve Pinker's assessment that consciousness is an after-the-fact concoction; a non-participatory awareness. I do reinforce my thinking with his assessment. My readiness to accept Steve's assessment had been developing for close to twenty years, however. It wasn't a knee-jerk reaction, or a thoughtless, emotion weighted plunge into the abyss.
