Tal, a conversation with an alien (19 page)

I think in our paradigm, if you want something, you do what you
must to achieve it, no matter what. And if you don't achieve it, you weren't smart enough, or you just didn't want it bad enough.

Yes, your mental picture, your mental desire, is very important and you feel confident that it i
s good to achieve that desire. Your conscious mind plans ways to do it, and often you succeed in the task. Yet you have little control over the big picture, sometimes, what you achieve is not the best result.

This is what I dislike about politicians and religious zealots.
They are so sure of themselves and are always trying to convince me to think like they do. They will do whatever it takes to achieve their goals, even though it is obvious those goals are misguided. They subscribe to the philosophy that the end justifies the means.

Indeed, this concept of the end justifying the mea
ns is an interesting argument. The thought is that the long-term benefits of your plans will outweigh the short-term actions you know to be wrong, thus validating you short term actions. Yet humans can only create a mental image of what they think is a good outcome. They do not actually know the result, especially in the long term. They have no way of seeing into the future to see how a plan or an idea will turn out in the big picture. They have no way of choosing the variation of the universe that matches their mental plan. One of your most famous modern leaders, the Mahatma Gandhi, wrote specifically about this situation. His thought was pretty simple: you cannot know the future, you can only know at that moment whether your action is right or wrong. Violence was wrong, lying was wrong, hence regardless of the end, or the desired end, such actions must not be followed. He said, "It is the action, not the fruit of the action that is important." Though situations certainly came up in his struggle to bring independence to India where violence may have seemed like the best option, he preached non-violence. He was against violence because all he could really know was that at that moment, violence was wrong, and wrong action does not lead to right results.

This is a good point, though I think arguments could be made that we
have achieved some great things, not always with the best actions or intentions.

You do realize that you are heading towards a conversation about
human morality with an alien.

A Paradigm Shift

But there are real issues of how our society would function if we take
to heart what you are saying. If our decisions are mostly subconscious and their results affected by randomness, doesn't that make people less responsible for their actions?  Could a person just claim that they meant to do the right thing but some quantum randomness made a bad outcome, or even worse, they could claim some form of quantum randomness actually made them commit a crime?  How do we punish someone for having thoughts that they had no control over?

The
argument you just voiced is actually two different ideas. As to the first point of bad outcomes to good intentions, your court system is already in many ways more sophisticated than the general view of the public. Your court system typically does not punish you for outcomes. It punishes for intention. If you performed an action that lead to someone's death, if you didn't do it intentionally, recklessly, or illegally, you usually don't go to jail. So the justice system already assumes some external randomness that can turn a good intention into a bad result. Yet the fact that your intentions themselves, your very thoughts, are influenced by internally and externally random events, is usually not taken into account. Under extreme cases of mental dysfunction some people can be labeled insane and hence have a different punishment instead of incarceration, but generally, people are expected to take full responsibility for their actions, regardless of their mental or environmental circumstances.

Are you saying they should not?

Well, a society is constantly evolving. As it processes new external information, it often changes internally. This is what is called a paradigm shift. As the models of the universe on which you base your world view change, so does your paradigm. The classical views of simple predictable physics and simple predictable psychology will change. Your society values individual power, and believes you can control your destiny to shape your circumstances, yet in reality this is only partially true. Your society's ideal of the perfect self-made individual, its belief that all of your successes and achievements are your sole conscious doing, is a bit classical. As is the thought, that your failures or problems are all things you could have prevented. 

If you made the right choice perhaps you could.

I have shown you that science, through research and case study has evolved more and more to the conclusion that your thoughts, and thus your actions are deeply connected to the physical states of your brain and body. Yet in your paradigm, there is still a belief that you posses a soul; pure and uninfluenced by the outside world, and it is from there that your free willed choices emerge. That somehow you can step out of your brain and your world and make some spirit or soul based, perfectly sound, society and religion approved decisions. This is a misconception. Your environment shapes your brain, which shapes your actions. You can visualize your mind the same way you visualize a chaotic weather system. Even the most subtle events, from glancing at a few words on a billboard to the random firings of your neurons will affect your decisions. The hurricanes of your mind are manifested by the butterflies of your mind. It is certainly easier to continue to believe in an outdated model, since your brain has been conditioned to be very comfortable with it. And it is certainly easier to judge others based on that simple model. But it is important that social paradigms shift with scientific advances. Social and philosophical understanding should follow scientific understanding, because a rift between technology and the wisdom to use it can become quite dangerous. 

If
you are saying there is no soul, and that the origin of our actions is a purely physical manifestation, then even conscious actions are not free willed, there is always some underlying physical cause beyond our control.

That is actually the opinion of many of your neurobiologists. But there are also forces beyond your understanding
that mold your decision-making, quantum randomness being just one, and there are many interactions between your mind and those forces. To believe that the only things influencing you are physically measurable by your current technology is short sighted. Nevertheless, the fact that the physical world plays a very significant role in shaping your conscious perceptions and choices is a fact.

W
hat about heredity? Does it not play a significant role as well?

Yes, it plays a
major role. But if the patterns of your actions are already set within you before you are even born, it only amplifies my argument. Hereditary forces are perhaps more subtle than environmental forces but just as powerful, and there is plenty of randomness inherent in them. The battle of nature versus nurture has been going on for some time in many fields of science, with both sides claiming many victories because both play major roles. The combination of these factors creates a very complicated and not easily definable network of influences. If it were truly just one of these factors, their influence on behavior would be much easier to recognize. Every human has thousands of genes and variations of these genes, called alleles. Now that your scientists have isolated many of the genes in the human genome, they have begun to label certain genes and alleles for how they influence behavior. There is the Warrior Gene, the Adventure Gene, the God Gene. The adventure gene for instance, DRD4 and its allele 7R, is believed to make people much more risk receptive. Humans with this allele take more chances, get much more instant gratification from risky behavior, and in some studies are better at making risky choices. If a person is born with this gene in an environment that favors creativity and risk taking, say you are born into a family of Wall Street bankers, then that person will thrive and become a star of their society. If the same person is born into an environment that fosters criminal activity, that person will be a very good and very dangerous criminal, feared and hated by their society. A more risk averse person, in the same criminal environment will commit no crime for fear of being caught, and will be a model of good citizenship. If that person with the adventure gene is born in a very rigid fixed society, that person will challenge authority, and ultimately be imprisoned or killed by that authority. In fact, around the world, different countries have different amounts of the adventure gene in their population. Generally, in very rigid and conservative societies, people have much less of this gene. It makes sense, because if someone has this gene, they will most likely be ostracized by a society that is conservative and controlling. They will not have a good chance of reproducing and thus replicating and spreading the gene. Or they will be more likely to escape the situation by migrating to far off lands, thus removing the unwanted gene from the rigid society. This is just one example, and you have thousands of genes and alleles of those genes, all influencing some part of various behaviors and tendencies.

But we know of so many people in bad circumstances that chose to make a change, to change their lives for the better.

Yes, and your society glorifies those who make changes in line with its established beliefs. Such as rising from obscurity to become a millionaire or politician. But even that choice, to change a pattern, to even recognize a need for change, is a very complicated physical process in the brain. It depends on having the correct balance of enzymes and proteins. It requires the correct mix of genes, the correct function of neural networks. And it requires the right interactions with the right people, and the right environment for that change to create a successful result.

But certainly we have to take some responsibility for our actions and our condition.

I know what I am saying may make you uncomfortable. I am an observer from outside your paradigm. I cannot tell you any paradigm is right or wrong, but I can point out inconsistencies within a paradigm. When you look at your actions, do you really think you could have acted in any other way than the way you did? You acted a certain way for a reason. That reason is not easily identifiable, though your conscious mind will create an explanation. The simplest being that that you can ignore the physical influences you are not cognizant of, and focus on your pure, paradigm approved soul decisions. 

But what if there really is a soul?

Let us assume for a moment that there is a non-physical soul that guides you in your decisions. How do you define the ethics of that soul? Each paradigm has different ideas of what this perfect soul is. Even the altruistic, pure in spirit actions of a Gandhi would be laughed at in many of the societies of the past. His nonviolent actions would just get him and his tribe massacred. If a woman in Europe, just two hundred years ago, showed the desire for education, learning and freedom that your current paradigm praises so greatly, she would be ostracized and sent to her physician for various, therapies. So it seems to me that the pure light of soul is reflected to you through the warped mirror of your society. You can ignore that fact and still insist there is some pure, distilled, perfect soul information that reaches you. Yet every society and every person seems to harbor a unique level of connection to that soul, from intense to non-existent. The strength of that connection would depend heavily on environmental and hereditary factors. Some societies encourage people to tap into mystic intuitions, while others think it is foolishness. Some genes affect the body in ways that promote spiritual thinking, and some do not. In the end, the basic facts have not changed, soul or no soul. You just need to relax and understand that there are many aspects of the universe beyond your knowledge or control, including your thoughts and actions. In fact, things are very different for you in other worlds, where you have had different thoughts, made different choices, and lived a different life.

But those me's i
n other universes are not really me, they are someone else.

Well this lea
ds us to an interesting question, and it will take more time than this conversation for you to come to terms with the answer. But how separate are you?  How separate are you from the you's who have made other choices, the you's of other universes?

I don't know. They are in different worlds, I can only relate to this current me.

Really?  I would not say this is true.  

Well they are not here, I cannot communicate with them, and I know I am different from them. I am myself.

I would argue that you already conceive of many you's, and that you feel a strong connection to them.  

To who?

Think of you at time coordinates different from this one, you of the past or of the future, do you not think of those you's as you?

Well yes, who I was in the past, a
nd who I will be in the future are still me.

And t
his feeling of connection to past and future you's is very beneficial. It gives you a much greater sense of self, of wholeness, than just the thought of the single you of this moment, with no future or past. This feeling is perfectly valid, since all of these you's exist. They occupy unique coordinates in time within the multiverse. Yet you cannot communicate with them. You cannot talk to, or physically observe any of the past you's or future you's. Though they exist, these past and future you's are molecularly very different from the current you. The you's of other time coordinates have different thoughts and experiences than the current you. The past you was perhaps more adventurous, more optimistic, more innocent?  How about the you who at five years old only wanted to bike around all day and eat lots of sweets. Is that still you?