Reciprocity – Like Water to Fish, Part Three

Bob Fiske

Reciprocity – Like Water to Fish, Part Three

CLICK HERE to go to Part Two.

Engines of Reciprocity.  The value of reciprocity is deeply embedded in our culture and our thinking.  I think we are well aware how intrinsic the engines of marketing and the engines of advertising are to the methods of conducting business on a daily basis. 

The actors in these sectors are hard at work dreaming up new and better ways to promote the idea that your giving away something of value (your money, your credit) will result in an even better return to you.  We need look no further than the advertising in print media, broadcast media, billboards and the Internet to appreciate how omnipresent this “value of exchange” is, and how actively it is being promoted.

Apparently promoting reciprocity—the good deal—works because tons of people respond to Black Friday mania, convert cash to precious metals (or vice versa), own over-priced and over-designed technology, etc., etc, etc.

The Crack in the Fishbowl.  But let’s remember that reciprocity is so ever-present, so woven into our lives that it is like water to fish. We swim in it, just a bunch of fish in a fishbowl.  Strangely, more and more folks are starting to notice the crack in the fishbowl.  They are becoming aware of, and are questioning, reciprocity.

There isn’t so much to go around anymore, and the efforts of the big, the rich or the powerful to keep their tubs full is starting to draw attention—and stimulate outrage.  That is understandable.  The deep value of reciprocity pretty much mandates that we keep our senses tuned to the frequency of detecting “unfair exchanges”.  More and more fish in the school are starting click and clack in distress.

But that is not the end of the story, as I recently recognized.  The imbalances in our society may be a good thing, insofar as they lead us to notice, question, and replace the deep, unquestioned value of reciprocity.

Recapitulation.  We have all been conditioned, not just to strive for payoff, but to hold out for the good deal.  Here are some examples.

I’m going to drag myself out of bed the day after Thanksgiving, and IN RETURN you’re going to give me half-off on all the Christmas presents I need to buy.  Or, I’m going to give four years of my life to this university and accept a debt to lenders, and IN RETURN you’re going to set me up for life.  Or, I’m going to give you all the labor hours I can, and IN RETURN, you’re going to assure me and my family of a secure life.  Or, I’m going to shop at your supermarket, and IN RETURN you’re going to print a number on my receipt that shows me how much I’ve saved (to make me forget how much I spent).  Or, I’m going to give you my vote, and IN RETURN you’re going to give me some promises.

The Hidden Debt.  The good deal is hard to resist.  Even knowing what I do, I will still choose the gas station that has $3.57/gallon over the one that has $3.59/gallon, as if it really matters!

What we are not told (or choose to forget) is that nobody in the United States pays the true cost for anything.  We are taking from Third World labor, irresponsibly mined resources, and the health of the planet without giving back to repay the debt.  The costs have been mounting for two centuries, at least, and the debt that Western civilization has been accruing is knocking at the door.  Reciprocity is a lie because the true costs have been hidden.

This question of unacknowledged debt is key.  Which brings me to my second proposition.  If you take something from someone or somewhere and do not return a fair share, you are a criminal.

We are all criminals because for two centuries we have been taking from the earth (our ultimate bank) and have not replenished what she has given us.  So, before I sit in judgment of someone else, I best remind myself that we ALL share responsibility for creating and maintaining a broken system.

How the System Got Broken.  Long ago, when financial accounting methods and money were being invented, we all bought into the idea we could make everything balance.  What was taken would be matched by what was given, and both parties would be satisfied.

Over time various social experiments tinkered with this.  Different models of exchange were tested.  Along the way, the methods of reciprocity and fairness got refined.  An evolution was underway, and the most widely accepted system would be declared “the winner”.

The capitalist ideology has become dominant.  In this worldview it is presumed that fairness is preserved.  Now, of course, many of us know that fairness is not preserved, but what I’m doing is arguing from the point of view of proponents of capitalism (at least for the moment).

Summary of Part Three.  Marketing and advertising promote the idea of reciprocity every day, and help it become a deep value that is barely noticed.  The system of “fair exchanges” is more and more out of balance.  Some are reaping far more rewards than others.  The result of this is that significant segments of the world-society are recognizing that reciprocity does not necessarily lead to balance and fairness.  The good deal we have been conditioned to seek out may hide important costs.  The spirit of accounting, in which all benefits are matched by costs of equal value has been tinkered with.  Experiments in economic systems produced a dominant form—capitalism—that expertly hides so-called externalized costs.  These are debts we owe to the natural world and to exploited workers who remain beyond the view of our consuming society.

CLICK HERE to go to Part Four.

Nature’s Brains, Part 4

July 8, 2012

Bob Fiske

Nature’s Brains, Part 4

(Note: I invite you to read Part 3 before you dive into this part.)

Sooner or later, in nature’s tinkering with brain designs, a truly superior model was bound to come along.  The simian family lays claim to this prize.  Scientists don’t really understand how this happened, yet we see many descendent species alive today that clearly show the innovative features that formed over time.

One of these innovations was exquisitely fine motor control.  This capability appears to have co-evolved with body characteristics that could express new types of movement.  For instance, all monkeys and apes possess a finger-based hand that shapes itself with greater precision than is given to clawed or hooved mammals.  Also, some of these species are endowed with long limbs and tails that give them the arboreal advantage to swing, climb and hang.  Of course, living in trees also requires balance, eyesight and hearing to match the motor skills.  These are jobs handled by the new brain, and they couple well with this brain’s superior learning ability.

Courtesy of e-mail, I once watched a film of a gibbon teasing a pair of tiger cubs.  (You may watch it here, though be warned that the film quality is low.)  If ever I saw a gymnastic wizard, this little gibbon was it.  It is a remarkable testimony of the superior level of body-and-brain coordination possible using a simian brain.

Other capabilities emerged in the simian brain.  A brain that can learn is a brain that can teach.  Thus, it is possible to pass brain-encoded patterns from generation to generation without relying only on the DNA hard-wiring of behavior.  By the way, the teaching of new generations is not a monopoly owned just by simian brains.  Bears teach their cubs how to forage, and many types of young male birds must learn their songs from older males of the same species and geographic location.  Nonetheless—as we well know—the simian brain would push the ability to learn and teach to new heights.

The most recent brain innovations are sported by the hominids, or great apes.  Some of our less intellectual cousins, chimpanzees and gorillas, show that they, too, carry the seeds of the type of intelligence that flourished in the Homo (human) line.  Chimps have been observed to make simple tools such as using sticks to fish out ants from a nest for eating.  These species show other “human” traits such as problem-solving, concern for the welfare of others, and self-awareness.

And, surprisingly, both chimpanzees and gorillas have revealed that they possess previously unsuspected symbolic language skills.  Given the right expressive media (American Sign Language, computer screens or colored shapes), hominids in research settings have amassed sizeable vocabularies and have shown that they can fashion novel “utterances” to express, wants, needs and general observations.

Finally in this discussion of the “advanced design” hominid brain, I wish to mention a series of brain structures that are loosely bundled under the term “the limbic system”.  The limbic structures lie at the base of the cortex, at the juncture where it surrounds the “old brain”.  In fact, these structures (the hippocampus, the amygdala, the nucleus accumbens, and others) appear in other mammalian brains of less intellectual stature than the hominid brain.  In spite of this fact, it is probable that, in hominid brain design, limbic structures were enhance and pressed into service to perform more complex functions.  Limbic functions are thought to play a role in reward, fear, addiction, emotional memories and memory formation in general.  Perhaps that’s too much anatomy.

The idea I want to paint about the new-and-improved hominid brain might be better conveyed using broader brush strokes.  This brain permitted a new level of behavioral and thought patterns, patterns that were the product of emotions, punishments, rewards and social transactions.  In ape communities we see such things as exchanging grooming services, currying favor and shifting dominance hierarchies.  However, in human communities an entirely new social reality was called into existence.  Its final metamorphosis would be expressed in human culture.  In this culture the social, emotional, symbolic, political, artistic, economic and intellectual components could take on reality as  by-products of a marvelously large brain.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO PART 5
CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE LAST PART

Nature’s Brains, Part 1

July 8, 2012

Bob Fiske

Nature’s Brains, Part 1

 "But the old crow comforted me, saying, 'If you only had brains in your head you would be as good a man as any of them, and a better man than some of them.  Brains are the only things worth having in this world, no matter whether one is a crow or a man.'  After the crows had gone I thought this over and decided I would try hard to get some brains."
     -- The Scarecrow in: L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900

I have a little story to tell.  I went on a walk in the neighborhood I grew up in on a sunny morning in July, 2012.  This is a section of Los Angeles that is a little hilly.  Most of the houses have foundations that are above street level.  All of the streets curve both up and down and to the side.

I came around a curve and caught sight of a clear plastic bird feeder mounted on the outside of one house’s large living room window.  It was shaped like a little house with an opening in front and a sunken floor for holding the bird seed.  Its unusual position—in the middle of a large plate glass window—was what probably attracted my attention initially, but it took only a fraction of a second to notice the little, brown sparrow inside of it.  Standing sideways to my vantage point it leaned forward and down to peck at the supply of seeds.

I stopped, and so did the sparrow.  I did not want to disturb the bird, I wanted to watch it eat.  But the sparrow stood (sideways to my view) and waited.  It waited for me to walk by and away.  I did not.

This little bird stopped its eating because a large animal—a human being—came into view.  The large animal was close enough to pose a potential threat, and so the bird shifted to defensive behavior.

"Close enough".  That is noteworthy.  The house sat on a rise behind a retaining wall.  I was perhaps 15 feet from the front of the house.  Moreover, the base of the house was at least five feet above my eye level.  And the plastic bird feeder in the middle of the window was an additional eight feet above that.  So that little bird sat on a perch 18 feet above the ground on which I stood and 15 feet away.  Or (thanks to the Pythagorean theorem) there were a good 23 feet between my perch and the bird’s.

And, yet, that sparrow registered me as a threat.

Of greater interest to me was how the bird reacted to this threat.  It watched me.  Remember, a sparrow’s eyes are on the sides of its head.  This is generally true for prey animals.  So, standing sideways, it had a direct view of me.  It made tiny little movements up, down and side-to-side with its head.  This is an understandable response to threat.  Not only was it watching me, but it was scanning the environment, the better to assess if there might be other threats.  The better to assess possible escape routes.

I imagine that this sequence of behaviors—feed, detect, assess, and prepare for lifesaving flight—is a normal affair for a foraging, prey animal such as a sparrow.  Its brain is wired with strategies for preserving its existence.  More about that later.  Yet, I wanted to see if I could maintain a non-threatening status long enough that the bird would relax its threat response and return to eating.  So, I stopped.  I stood still.

I stood motionless, and the sparrow scanned with its little head movements.  I am a patient person.  I waited.  After nearly a minute the bird made a little forward-bobbing movement with its beak.  Just a little movement.  It wanted to return to eating.  But the parts of its brain responsible for the defensive scanning and preparation for flight overrode that impulse.

These impulses, feed, detect, assess and prepare for flight, seem to have independent existences in the brain.  Like a committee formed of department managers, they must come together and negotiate.  Who is going to dominate?  Who will take control of the bird’s behavior?  That all depends on the current conditions, of course.  If a potential threat appears, then the defensive managers win the negotiation.  If the threat fails to materialize, then the feeding manager garners more power in the negotiation.

I could see these internal negotiations taking place—from something as insignificant as a tiny forward-bobbing motion of the head.  I knew that I could affect the outcome of the negotiation simply by continuing to wait without moving.

Another 15 or 20 seconds.  Did I see another forward head movement?  Perhaps.  Now it was well over a minute since our encounter had begun.  There, definitely.  A forward head movement, followed by more scanning.  Another quarter of a minute.  A forward movement, this time more pronounced.  Not the actual eating of the bird seed on the feeder’s floor, but a clear indication that the impulse to feed had not been completely suppressed.

And so it went.  I believe that it was coming up on two minutes.  Finally I saw a deep bowing of the head.  The bird’s beak appeared to make contact with the seed.  Nervously the sparrow resumed its eye-scanning.  Then it tapped its beak back to the bird seed.  After a short pause it did that again.  And again.

I was rewarded by my frozen stance.  As I expected, I could outwait the nervous behavior produced by the little sparrow’s marvelous little brain.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO PART 2

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE LAST PART

Dawkins Versus Collins: On the Things Which Spark Debate*

After being sick for three weeks, my mind is starting to click again.  (Poor you.)  Can I ask a question?  What is a “thing”?  As in my saying, “Buddhism is just a thing.”  What does it mean to call something a thing?

A thing is something that can be separated and removed from the other elements around it.  Thus, a stone lying on the road is a thing.

But this opens other avenues for drawing conclusions.  Something that is a totality, representing the superset of “wholeness”, cannot be a thing.  So, the universe cannot be a thing if, by the universe, we mean the sum total of everything.  Some people might say the same thing about God, seeing that God subsumes everything that is less than God.

I would say that the phenomenon known as conscious experience also qualifies as a totality.  We cannot directly “know” (or have direct awareness of) anything that falls outside the scope of conscious experience.  Elements within consciousness can be removed from the mix.  But consciousness itself cannot be removed (while we are conscious).  Therefore, conscious experience is not a thing.

Here is another distinction.  Some things can be described as “physical” things.  Other things have no physicality, but are, nevertheless, things.  Nonphysical things could be described as “mental” things.  They exist only in the mental environment of a conscious mind.

Example: I create a mathematical set that consists of the days of the week.  Each member of the set is a thing since I could remove it from the set and consider it alone.  And the set is a thing.  Why?  Because it is not the totality called “the set of all sets”.  (It can be removed from the set of all sets and can be examined on its own.)  Yet, we can recognize that all these are mental things and are clearly apart from physical things.

There is a special category of mental things: words.  A word is a constituent of the superset known as “vocabulary”.  What makes words interesting is that they have “correspondences” to other things.  Word correspondence can be representational: words stand for things.  Word correspondence can also be associative: word things can have similarities or relationships to other word things.  This permits classification, grouping and reminding.  In other words, word things have primary meanings as well as shades of meanings beyond the primary.

Word things can create confusion.  When I use a word I am using a thing, but do I mean the word thing or the meanings associated to it?

One area of word thing confusion might arise if the word thing refers to a rule.  “Rule X” is a thing that references a law or regulation that requires car drivers to turn on headlamps when continuously operating a vehicle’s windshield wipers.  If I invoke “Rule X” in conversation, am I making reference to the practical application of this rule on the part of a car driver?  Perhaps, I am in the legal or enforcement profession.  In that case “Rule X” refers to the word-for-word law that is recorded as the official wording of Rule X.  Or, maybe my use of “Rule X” in my speech would be a reference to the intent or the “why” behind the rule’s creation in the first place.

Many an argument has taken place precisely because the discussants were using the same word thing, yet conjuring in their minds distinctly different referential meanings.  The fact is that such debates happen and are given social importance.  To illustrate, we might step into a courtroom in which two law firms (and the parties they “represent”) are battling out a conflict to the point that one side’s meaning prevails over the other side’s meaning.

Here’s another example.  Suppose I use the word thing “God”.  Doing so, I might be referencing the word itself.  This is not a trivial usage.  Fundamentalist Judaism places strict limits on how and when words for God may be used.

Or, perhaps “God” refers to a specific religion’s understanding of a God-concept, and, indirectly, is a reference to that religion apart from other religions.  For instance someone who says “God” might be invoking the specific meaning “Christ”, which, of course, directly connects to a specific group of religions known as Christianity.

Alternatively, the word thing “God” could be indicative of a specific type of experience.  For instance, a person who says “God” might have in mind the entity to whom humans give praise and what it feels like to give praise.

Clearly, the experiential quality of praising is distinct and different from a specific God-concept, and both are different from a name for God.  Yet, unending arguments will burn because each participant is contributing a different sort of kindling to the fire of disagreement.  The debate happens because the participants can’t free themselves from the trap set by a word thing with different referents.

What this suggests is that we may need a new kind of language that can describe the use of things in multiple and different ways, thus freeing us from the confusion of “single thing, multiple correspondences”.  This new language (and the thought which accompanies it) would help us see past the confusions that arise when things enter the mind and take on form in conscious experience.

From such a language a new concept of things and meaning could arise, as well as a respectful understanding of the weaknesses that come with holding things such as words in consciousness.  From this new language:

A super-consciousness.

That renders consciousness as a thing.

A super-consciousness.

That transcends.

Words.

And.

Things.

*As I wrote this, I had in the back of my mind some of the great debates in recent years between believers and atheists.  One notable, and brilliant scientist, Richard Dawkins, has positioned himself to become a lightning rod for some of these debates.  For example, see the debate between Dawkins and NIH administrator Francis Collins that was arranged and published by Time magazine in 2006, “God vs. Science”.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1555132,00.html

Ignorant Food 1

Molly, who is the grandmother of Sarif and Rahul, once told this story to Nils.  Molly and Nils are like-minded in certain respects.  It is logical, then, that the story—a memory that Molly found quite moving—affected Nils in a similar fashion.

César Chávez was the legendary champion for the civil rights of migrant farm workers.  He co-founded the United Farm Workers union.  One source describes him as “a self-taught rhetorical genius”.  And so it was that Molly drove forty miles to hear Chávez speak.

Many things were spoken that day.  Of them all, a single thought lodged firmly in Molly’s mind.  You are about to receive this idea.  It is simple.  It has survived the eighty mile journey, the interval of two decades that passed until Nils heard it from Molly, and another ten years until Nils thought to share it here.  It still has the power to raise goose bumps on his neck.

“The ‘farmer’ comes to your table three times each day.”

There is more to this story.  Naturally, Nils shared this idea with Delores.  Her first reaction was, “I eat the labor of people.”  The idea cooked itself in her brain, and then food ignorance took another turn.  To be continued.