Saturday, 27 January 2018

Pooh, Woozles, Owls, Mirrors, War, Self & SRH

[Warning 2338 words]

My fave story as a kid was Pooh’s search for a Woozle. After some searching he finds a set of tracks which he believes are those of a Woozle. Soon, that Woozle is met by another and then another and so on. Eventually Owl who is sitting in the tree points out to Pooh that he is simply following his own tracks. Eureka to me as a child: this is the difference between another and oneself.

So we need take the perspective of an owl to avoid the looping path that occurs with dogs chasing their tails. In psychology this ability is often tested with the Mirror Test. Animals who attack their reflection as a peculiarly hostile stranger, are quite distinct from those that eventually treat their reflection with interest. Animals which pass the test include expected creatures like apes, elephants, whales and dolphins but also surprising animal like magpies and even a study provides evidence that ants can distinguish between their refection and another ant behind glass. Humans gain this ability after about 18months, so it is not innate and obviously some humans are better than others. Some may never get to this stage.

Sadly owls do not pass the test. But, perhaps this makes sense in the analogy as in the story we need an owl in the tree to see we are following our tracks. If they could pass the test they would need another owl in the tree above them to point out they were following their tracks. Owl sitting in the tree cannot see his own tracks! This is the essence of SRH again. I return to this later.

It is to be noted that animals that fail the mirror test often show hostility to themselves. What is notable about this hostility is that it quickly escalates. To the mirror unaware creature both animals are the same size so there is no reason to back down, and both animals attack at the same time so their opponent appears to show no fear. The more they try to beat their opponent, the worse their opponent seems to get. Obviously with an owl in a tree above we can be alerted to the deep futility of this conflict. We may wish to fight our image for fun thereafter, but a deep “ontological” connection has been formed between the reflection and ourself. The illusion of “another” is broken: we know it is “our” reflection and we can own it as ourself. Such escalations of conflict are a positive feedback, but with a higher perspective of an owl we can break the feedback and deescalate to a nature state of peace.

It is worth noting that battles between animals and their unrecognised reflection and battles between an opposing creature are identical. To owl watching the battle the animal is behaving as though the reflection is a stranger. What ends the battle for good is not material, no shaking hands, no backing down, it is simply a change in perspective. I’ll use that word “ontological” to distinguish a battle that ends in exhaustion or defeat from a battle that is fundamentally, ontologically ended. Once ontologically ended there can be no conflict.

Now there is a second mirror that isn’t recognised in modern psychology. Two individuals can get locked into exactly the same positive feedback that they would with their reflection. One gets injured somehow and escalates, which the other takes as an act of aggression so they in turn escalate and if no-one backs down the cycle of violence escalates. To creates that pass the second mirror test there is an owl watching the cycle of aggression, and even while owl sees two separate organisms, owl never-the-less sees that the two organisms retain the same characteristics as their reflections. You step forward, I step forward. You raise you hand, I raise my hand. I grab a weapon, you grab a weapon. So in the second mirror we realise that another person is actually the same as myself.

Returning to “ontological” again, there is an important point to make at this stage. We can empirically note that other people behave as ourself. We punch them, they hurt and are likely to punch us, or at the very least get angry and seek to harm us in return. We can form an empirical acknowledgment that other people are like us, but it isn’t deep. That is the same as an animal empirically learning that there is this strange other creature (owl knows is created by the mirror) which unlike other creatures happens to be identical to it. Yet the animals never makes the step to understanding that this strange other animal ontologically “IS” it. I’ll call this a “smart mirror failure” (SMF). In the world of a SMF there is itself, there are other creatures and then there is a third type of thing: the identical other. This is the same fallacy as Plato’s Third Man Fallacy. When we have “Three Things” it is good practice to have alarm bells ringing. In the mirror graduate (MG) who passes the test properly there are 2 things: themself and the other. The mysterious third identical person is actually a mirror image of themself: an illusion. Ontologically (that is: regarding things that “really” exist) the MG makes a deep connection between the mirror image and themself so that they become “one thing” in reality, but with two different images or appearances. This is exactly what is meant by “illusion”. It is often found that appearance, also Form, is separate from what really exists. In an identical way there are two beings that pass the Second Mirror test. The “smart second mirror failure” (SSMF) and the “second mirror graduate” (SMG). The SMG makes an ontological connection between themself and their combatant, while the SSMF makes only a superficial recognition.
People who pass the mirror test are common. However people who pass the Second Mirror are extremely rare. Most people are Smart Second Mirror Failures. This includes myself. The Second Mirror I recognise intellectually, but deep down I still think other people are separate from myself. This illusion is unfortunately engraved in the stone of Western Society, which makes its that much harder to gain a perspective upon it.

For those intellectually however it is easy to see that the second mirror is passable even if we cannot graduate ourselves yet. We spend most of our life hovering very near the pass mark. With friends and family we often lower our barriers so far that our owl in the tree above makes no distinction between ourself and people close to us. We tolerate all sorts of transgressions that we would not tolerate of a stranger. We make mistakes, but we would make mistakes if we lived with ourself! We are watching a film and a hand goes into *our* popcorn, which for a second we don’t realise is our own and pull the popcorn away. Likewise we may be watching a film with our kids and a hand goes into “our” popcorn and we withdraw the popcorn only to realise it is “our” kid and we return the popcorn as though it was our *own* hand. Prince Harry once had had though about it shares his popcorn, but the instinct your’re not me is natural for almost all humans.

 


If we were watching “Oblivion” we would have an interesting blurred case not mentioned in this essay or clones: Tom Cruise treats his clone as himself, and sacrifices himself so his clone may live with his true wife. In Oblivion the clones are not even reflections, but are individual people who only share superficial resemblance. If Tom Cruise can do that, he is a tiny step from sacrificing himself for a completely separate person. We are familiar with these ideas from Jesus’ teaching of “love ones’ neighbour as oneself” and this is echoed throughout the world and history as the universal truth. But it is difficult for beings that fail the second mirror test to ever come to ontological peace with other people, as they have with their reflections after passing the first mirror.

Other intellectual ways of seeing this are more philosophical. It is worth focusing on what really separates people. We are all made of the same “stuff”, all born, all will die. To prove this I can eat another person and make them into myself – what more proof is needed that we are the same stuff. Or if I want to avoid thoughts of cannibalism I may let a person rot in the ground, let worms take up their material, let chickens eat the worms and then eat the chickens. We are all drawn on the same identical canvas of the world. Charles Darwin dedicated his life to showing the similarities especially theorising that all organisms descend from common ancestors. All humans, at the very least, he argued are part of the same family if you go back far enough. This was argued in the mid 1800s yet even today there are groups who think they have a special origin amongst other people. But this is the “genetic fallacy” of thinking that we entirely dependent on our origins or make up. Recent studies of epigenetics reveal quite literally that I may indeed inherit a gene from my parents, but I can choose whether to express it.

One persistent ignorance that exists with people who fail the second mirror test is the idea of a soul. In Indian philosophy the usual state of people is believing in an self or soul and also an external world. There are 2 things in their world so we know they have passed the Mirror Test (where there are 3 things), but failed the Second Mirror (where there are 2 things). Second Mirror Graduates have just 1 thing and this is called “Tat Tvam Asi” (Tho Which is Art) in India. This is the realisation that the Other person is identical with Myself. It is the deep ontological passing of the second test. “Soul” is an illusion exactly like a mirror image. It exists like a mirror image, but we avoid giving it real significance just as we do with our mirror image. Science cannot find a “soul” any more than it can find a “mirror image.” Yet we acknowledge that both exist. Just as “soul” is an illusion, so is “self”. They are actually interchangeable. But as a mirror image is a fascinating thing for animals that fail the Mirror Test, so self is a fascinating thing to animals that fail the Second Mirror test.

Returning to conflict it is of note that animals that fail the Mirror Test avoid dangerous conflict. Body counts from conflict in the animal are low. Humans who pass the Mirror Test, but fail the Second Mirror test have huge body counts. It is as though recognising oneself in a mirror strengthens the power of allegiance, but at the cost of make Other creatures greater foes. Creatures that pass the Mirror Test it seems are more likely to lay down their life for their own kind, and thereby escalate violence against their foes to a much more brutal extent. This no-mans land of illusion caught between the ignorance of having “no owl” to watch out tracks, but having a myopic owl that only sees our own tracks, and still lacking a True Owl which sees all the tracks appears to be a horrific shadow of death that mankind must pass through toward true ontological peace. Indeed the horror of such violence has often been the catalyst to encourage people to find the True Owl.

Finally I return to the issue of SRH. Now suppose Owl sitting in the tree could see how own tracks. This is clearly problematic since we cannot both be in the tree and seeing ourself going around in circles and also believe we are still pursuing Woozles. Owl and Pooh must be separate beings. But let us still suppose we can occupy both positions as one unified entity. What it would mean is that this entity has no need for any other entities, since it can both be itself and know itself at the same time. It can happily pursue a Woozle in the full knowledge that it is a Woozle. It is a self justifying being. I will call such a being a Monad. It is a universe in itself, and a greater universe must be full of such Monads although each Monad is only pursuing itself: it has no care for other tracks. Happily we know this is impossible. Each Monad will eventually meet their owl who is watching them happily skip around the tree following their own tracks aimlessly and without meaning and point out the futility of their enterprise. The Monad will dissolve interestingly into a giant single Monad that contains Pooh, Piglet, Owl, Tigger, Eeyore and Christopher Robin and also every other being mentioned and not mentioned in that world of the Pooh Stories and beyond. For just as the Pooh stories forms a Monad, we are another Owl watching from our tree, be that tucked up in bed or where ever we read the story, and indeed any reader who got this far in this huge essay is another Owl peering down into the world and watching all the world skipping along pursuing Woozles with varying degrees of insight.
SRH remains unproven, but it is the recognition that there is just one world, both in reality, in thought, in logic, in stories and in time. Each attempt to close down into a Monad as Pooh tried when we went in search of a Woozle will always eventually be broken by an Owl who will interject a perspective from outside the Monad and break it once again to a greater Monad. Of course Owl has his own Monad sitting in the tree watching Pooh, but we the reader start watching him very closely as he also breaks us out of our own Monad of chasing the words on a page in search of a Woozle and see the tracks we have written.

Done it: proof that Jewish thinking is limited. Spent most of the day avoiding triggering ChatGPT but it got there.

So previously I was accused of Anti-Semitism but done carefully ChatGPT will go there. The point in simple terms is that being a Jew binds y...