“So, I got to thinking, and, of course, as thinking often does, it raised a question. ‘Do our gregariousness and interdependency reflect our biochemical makeup?’ I asked myself.
“Then, I thought, ‘Why did carbon become the basis for life on Earth? Couldn’t silicon have become life’s element just as easily? Same number of valence electrons, I reasoned, and silicon plays an important role in mineral formation, and thus, in organizing crystal structure. Isn’t there a hypothesis that life got its structure on the back of crystal growth, mimicking the crystal pattern? But then there’s the ease with which carbon forms long chains of molecules with relatively little expenditure of energy. Energy expense associated with acquisition and use, as we all know from the cost of running vehicles and air conditioning houses, is the chief control on our physical lives. Energy efficiency seems to be built into our basic physical nature.’
“I continued this way, ‘Does that physical nature extend to our forming ideological blocks? Easy-to-form long chains of atoms appear to be a model for our social thinking. Long chains of like-mindedness are the molecules of today’s extended groups. We tend, I believe, to find security in common thinking because requires the least energy. We become just another link in the chain. And nowhere is this more evident than in politics, religion, and public media when groups of people vary little from commonly held thinking. The carbon of thought is any ideology that forms social chains. Thus, in a way, group thinking is lazy thinking because like a carbon chain it requires relatively little energy. When little effort is required, little effort is made.’”
“Where do you come up with this stuff?” you ask. “You remind me of Heraclitus in a way.”
“What way is that?”
“Well, actually, not just Heraclitus, but almost all the early Greek philosophers. They wanted to somehow tie the physical world to the nonphysical one. Heraclitus talked about the ‘Logos’ and seemed to suggest it was ‘the mind of god,’ but then he threw in the Eternal Fire as the primary ‘element,’ the stuff from which all stuff originates. Like those other early philosophers, he seemed to desire an explanation of the world that derived from something tangible. So, maybe he didn’t fully work out the details since he left only fragments of his thought, or maybe he did, but we just don’t have the appropriate fragments. Nevertheless, even his ‘Logos’ appears to have been part of this world. One wonders whether or not St. John used that thought when he said, ‘In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word (Logos) was with God, and the Word (Logos) was God, and nothing was made that was not made through the Word (Logos).’
“And you occasionally blog something similar with your analogies. Are you saying that we are carbon chains writ large? That we are our atoms come together on another level, an intangible level of existence? Are you trying to connect what we are in part to what we are in whole? Certainly, you aren’t very Gestalt-ish in that. Isn’t the whole in Gestalt greater than the sum of its parts? When you say we are manifestations of our atomic parts, you seem to limit us to some Heraclitean-like and ancient-Greek-like notion that ties what we are physically to what we are not-physically. (I hesitate to say ‘spiritually’ because I’m not sure that I can define that term). Anyway, If you want to use carbon chains as analogs of social chains, I guess that’s all right. I just think that you aren’t aware that this tying of physical nature to ‘spiritual’ nature or psychological nature isn’t new. And it’s been tried not just in ancient times, but also in our own era. Think Deepak Chopra. We are driven by our senses and experience to think in terms of the physical.”
“Well, how else are we going to describe or explain the indescribable and inexplicable? Why did Heraclitus use fire? Why did the others choose ‘earth,’ ‘air,’ and ‘water’ as the basic substances of existence? When you look at philosophers’ works, you will often find that many of them venture into biochemistry. Many look for analogies in the physical world. Twenty-five centuries of philosophizing, and where are we today? Still making some attempt to explain who we are in terms of what we are. Mind-body duality, right? There are even those who want to apply quantum mechanics to human behavior and thought. Strange, indeed, since the quantum world isn’t one that we can directly experience. Yes, I know people like Deepak Chopra and others, including me in a couple of postings at this website, look for some underlying truth about humanity in the weird world of subatomic particles, but really, wouldn’t that entail some sequence of actions that relates the tiniest particle in your makeup to your behavior?
“Here’s an idea. What if the ancient Greeks knew about Maxwell’s equations? Would they have made electromagnetism one of the fundamental elements, the Fifth Element, so to speak?
“It just seems to me that in all our philosophizing we’ve lost the central truth: That humans cannot yet define existence and explain human behavior to everyone’s satisfaction, and that includes both our gregariousness and interdependency. Sure, we can give psychological reasons, but we always come back to the question ‘Isn’t there something deeper?’ The only way we can have a meaningful conversation about our intangible world is to refer to something tangible. Go ahead, try. Try to explain your emotions, your intuitions, your philosophy without eventually drawing some physical analog. How does the mind work? And if it is independent ‘in’ everyone, why are so many dependent on a ‘common mind,’ on ‘group think’? The question requires a ‘mechanism’ in the answer. How does morality work? Or, in the instance of mob violence and group hallucinations, how does the connection among individuals occur? What’s the ‘carbon’ that links one to the others? Do morality and immorality lie in group connections? What’s the ‘logos’ at work in the social world of every generation’s groups?
“More importantly, what’s the ‘logos’ at work in the social ‘carbon’ chain in which you participate? Are you driven toward group think because you are a carbon-based life-form?”
You say, “I’ll think about it.”
I reply, “Just make sure that your thinking isn’t an extension of some long chain.”
“Then, I thought, ‘Why did carbon become the basis for life on Earth? Couldn’t silicon have become life’s element just as easily? Same number of valence electrons, I reasoned, and silicon plays an important role in mineral formation, and thus, in organizing crystal structure. Isn’t there a hypothesis that life got its structure on the back of crystal growth, mimicking the crystal pattern? But then there’s the ease with which carbon forms long chains of molecules with relatively little expenditure of energy. Energy expense associated with acquisition and use, as we all know from the cost of running vehicles and air conditioning houses, is the chief control on our physical lives. Energy efficiency seems to be built into our basic physical nature.’
“I continued this way, ‘Does that physical nature extend to our forming ideological blocks? Easy-to-form long chains of atoms appear to be a model for our social thinking. Long chains of like-mindedness are the molecules of today’s extended groups. We tend, I believe, to find security in common thinking because requires the least energy. We become just another link in the chain. And nowhere is this more evident than in politics, religion, and public media when groups of people vary little from commonly held thinking. The carbon of thought is any ideology that forms social chains. Thus, in a way, group thinking is lazy thinking because like a carbon chain it requires relatively little energy. When little effort is required, little effort is made.’”
“Where do you come up with this stuff?” you ask. “You remind me of Heraclitus in a way.”
“What way is that?”
“Well, actually, not just Heraclitus, but almost all the early Greek philosophers. They wanted to somehow tie the physical world to the nonphysical one. Heraclitus talked about the ‘Logos’ and seemed to suggest it was ‘the mind of god,’ but then he threw in the Eternal Fire as the primary ‘element,’ the stuff from which all stuff originates. Like those other early philosophers, he seemed to desire an explanation of the world that derived from something tangible. So, maybe he didn’t fully work out the details since he left only fragments of his thought, or maybe he did, but we just don’t have the appropriate fragments. Nevertheless, even his ‘Logos’ appears to have been part of this world. One wonders whether or not St. John used that thought when he said, ‘In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word (Logos) was with God, and the Word (Logos) was God, and nothing was made that was not made through the Word (Logos).’
“And you occasionally blog something similar with your analogies. Are you saying that we are carbon chains writ large? That we are our atoms come together on another level, an intangible level of existence? Are you trying to connect what we are in part to what we are in whole? Certainly, you aren’t very Gestalt-ish in that. Isn’t the whole in Gestalt greater than the sum of its parts? When you say we are manifestations of our atomic parts, you seem to limit us to some Heraclitean-like and ancient-Greek-like notion that ties what we are physically to what we are not-physically. (I hesitate to say ‘spiritually’ because I’m not sure that I can define that term). Anyway, If you want to use carbon chains as analogs of social chains, I guess that’s all right. I just think that you aren’t aware that this tying of physical nature to ‘spiritual’ nature or psychological nature isn’t new. And it’s been tried not just in ancient times, but also in our own era. Think Deepak Chopra. We are driven by our senses and experience to think in terms of the physical.”
“Well, how else are we going to describe or explain the indescribable and inexplicable? Why did Heraclitus use fire? Why did the others choose ‘earth,’ ‘air,’ and ‘water’ as the basic substances of existence? When you look at philosophers’ works, you will often find that many of them venture into biochemistry. Many look for analogies in the physical world. Twenty-five centuries of philosophizing, and where are we today? Still making some attempt to explain who we are in terms of what we are. Mind-body duality, right? There are even those who want to apply quantum mechanics to human behavior and thought. Strange, indeed, since the quantum world isn’t one that we can directly experience. Yes, I know people like Deepak Chopra and others, including me in a couple of postings at this website, look for some underlying truth about humanity in the weird world of subatomic particles, but really, wouldn’t that entail some sequence of actions that relates the tiniest particle in your makeup to your behavior?
“Here’s an idea. What if the ancient Greeks knew about Maxwell’s equations? Would they have made electromagnetism one of the fundamental elements, the Fifth Element, so to speak?
“It just seems to me that in all our philosophizing we’ve lost the central truth: That humans cannot yet define existence and explain human behavior to everyone’s satisfaction, and that includes both our gregariousness and interdependency. Sure, we can give psychological reasons, but we always come back to the question ‘Isn’t there something deeper?’ The only way we can have a meaningful conversation about our intangible world is to refer to something tangible. Go ahead, try. Try to explain your emotions, your intuitions, your philosophy without eventually drawing some physical analog. How does the mind work? And if it is independent ‘in’ everyone, why are so many dependent on a ‘common mind,’ on ‘group think’? The question requires a ‘mechanism’ in the answer. How does morality work? Or, in the instance of mob violence and group hallucinations, how does the connection among individuals occur? What’s the ‘carbon’ that links one to the others? Do morality and immorality lie in group connections? What’s the ‘logos’ at work in the social world of every generation’s groups?
“More importantly, what’s the ‘logos’ at work in the social ‘carbon’ chain in which you participate? Are you driven toward group think because you are a carbon-based life-form?”
You say, “I’ll think about it.”
I reply, “Just make sure that your thinking isn’t an extension of some long chain.”
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