Date:     Thu,  31 Mar 94 0:22 +0200
From: MARSHLU-AT-vms.huji.ac.il
To: technology-AT-world.std.com
Subject:  transmition was bad. here's a cleaner copy - I hope.


3/30/94

Malgosia: Well _of_course_ you'd think that: you're writing at
3am!

David: Nice of you to notice. Thanks.

Malgosia: You know, I used to relate to this very intimately;
but now I discover I don't.  Somehow, my model has changed.  Let
me try to give you an idea of what it is.  Imagine a stream of
water falling through regions of different temperatures; or a
ray of light  ravelling through differently-refracting media.
The water will solidify in certain regions and then be liquid
in others; similarly the light will manifest itself
differently (assuming there is an eye) depending on th  medium
it is travelling through.  I see the material world as simply a
state taken on by the spirit as it travels though this
particular region of ... (of what?  I have no idea).  Thus, in a
different region this same substance -- _us_ -- manifests itself
differently.

David: The processes and phases are many. Just look at the non-
linear development of a fetus. But this negates nothing of what
I said. What did your model used to be and what do you think
might have led you to drop it?

Malgosia: I have real trouble relating to the discourse you use
above: emerging, real potential, Plato's cave.  Without any
doing on my part, my perception has over the years shifted away
from dualism, and now everything seems to be just different
modalities of spirit, like in a protracted Schubertian
modulation.  I do frequently talk and think in dualistic terms
and opportunistically adopt different paradigms, but if you want
my underlying ur-intuition, there it is.

David: It never occurred to me what I've been describing to you
could be seen in dualistic terms although I suppose it's
possible to reduce most everything to dualism. Language, I
think, lends itself to this especially when trying to
communicate simply and in as few words as possible. The cosmic
process whereby reality becomes fractionated, matter
precipitates out and confusion reigns is most complex and a
centerpiece of many religious and spiritual cosmologies. Do you
or don't you think something is separating us from our abilities
and from one another or do you think that consciousness and all
the rest is operating at a reasonable level of efficiency in
terms of what you believe human potential to be?

Malgosia: I don't think I am resisting this need; what I am
resisting is your language of external moral imperatives and
dangers.  I simply do not believe that there are any moral
imperatives placed upon humanity.  At least I am not aware I
believe it, and I find the language very strange.

David: Either we are mandated by cosmic circumstances or we
aren't. You can resist the idea if you can't see the elegant
sense of it but why resist the language it's expressed in.
What's so stange about my language? I really do strive to be
clear. If you think there are hidden assumptions lurking there
waiting to trap you, you can try to ferret them out (I should
think you'd be good at that) or just wait for them to surface in
the course of exchange.

Malgosia: Do we have to do something about that, or can we
meaningfully talk about technology without constantly stumbling
into this?   I have a suspicion that we can't.  On the other
hand, maybe in talking about technology you will catch me
thinking along very different lines, one closer to your own.

David: If I recall, this dialogue started with you agonizing
about finding a modus vivendi with technology and me trying to
provide a paradigm - holistic science - to resolve all the
conflicts (and which I am convinced it will). You are the one
who rejected the whole concept which sent us back to an
examination of our ideologies concerning the why and how of
things.

We can skirt ideology and cosmology if you wish, but I think
your suspicions are right. The moment we hit a snag we'll have
to refer back to our assumptions, which is analogous to what
I've been trying to say about the need to explicitize values.
Things are murky enough without refusing to turn on whatever
lights one can. I strongly sense that you have emotional
difficulty admitting certain things which you can easily admit
intellectually. If that's true (and I think it is for most of
us), it sure complicates the dialogue and helps explain, in
general, why there's so little clear communication accept where
technology/matter rigidly requires rationality and ignores our
emotional self-indulgence. It seems to me that neurosis
(emotional misalignment with intellect in the absence of
cosmically valid values to bind the two) is the corollary and
psychological expression of the spiritual/perceptual obscurity
of Plato's cave and our world.

The beauty of technology, I find, is in the static, material
nature of its medium. If I go through irrational periods in
producing the technological means of my/our liberation, the
matter patiently waits until I have a moment lucid enough to
advance the project a little. It ignores my folly and gives
cumulative expression to my more virtuous moments. So however
dark and obscure this world, if I commit myself to not
forgetting my aim and the rare moments of lucid vision that
revealed that aim, I'll eventually succeed in sculpting that
technology out of the materials at my disposal.

Since you seem to have trouble with teleology and cosmically
determined moral imperatives, allow me to shift the subject to
creativity since that is at the heart of the PM proposal and
connects the worlds of spirit and matter. S&T is a reflection of
our creative vision. Some discover in tiny increments, others
(like Tesla, Einstein, etc.) in larger steps. The process, as I
see it, is one of breaking through the obscurity to recognize
relationships that already exist or are implicit in natural law
(science) or dispositions of matter that _could_ exist, if
revealed through invention, in order to achieve a given end
(technology).

Without this notion of obscurity, we're reduced to the classical
"problem solving," "lateral thinking," "divergence,"
"bissociation," "happy accidents" paradigm of creativity which
is of interest mainly to a few academics who try to dissect and
measure the process at a level where it reveals no cogent
secrets and creates no technological revolutions.
Allow me to quote briefly from Kun's Project Mind:

  Insights are rarely gained by mere associative ruminating in
  the process of forming new and valuable combinations. In
  addition to saturating ourselves with the elements of a
  problem, a special quality of alertness and attentive
  watchfulness is necessary in order to recognize a promising
  combination, even in those oft-cited instances where chance
  plays a disproportionately important role. The more energy we
  have available for this kind of intensely profound, ongoing
  vigilance, the less chance needs to play its role in the
  creative process. The more we are able to "see," the less we
  are in need of happy circumstances to shock us into these
  isolated instances of seeing. (T.Kun, Project Mind, 47.)

Here's an edited and abridged passgae with Kun's remarks about
the creativity field :

  Not only is there a whole literature on the subject of
  creativity, there are even university courses that attempt to
  deal with the subject, all the way from theoretical research
  to attempting to enhance the creative powers of students. Less
  well known are businesses based on creativity-related
  disciplines and ideologies.
    Creative bull sessions can include mental and physical
  limbering up exercises, exercises for reducing inhibition, and
  exercises for maximizing the subjects' associational
  involvement with practical or hypothetical problems. One thing
  almost all schools of creativity have in common, besides a
  batch-processing view of creativity, is the group concept of
  the process. It is as though the sharpening of creaAfter encou
raging members to suspend judgment about ideas
  generated by the group, they are asked to offer their
  uninhibited input toward the solution of some problem or the
  creation of some new possibility. The opportunity to exhibit
  one's prowess before others and the prospects that one's
  ideas, sheltered from judgmentalism, will be appreciated and
  used suggests work conditions that could be considered ideal
  when compared with the discouraging ones we most often
  encounter. Such conditions, to the extent that practitioners
  succeed in producing them, are severely isolated in time and
  space. Any creative sparks that happen to coalesce from such a
  sheltered, inspirational pool will, against the wet blanket of
  everyday distracted, labyrinthine reality, have little more
  chance of implementation than the proverbial "snowball in
  hell." Furthermore, environments designed to shield
  participants from distraction have all lacked one principal
  feature - prepared individuals. In the absence of individuals
  relatively untainted by convention, who manifest true sparks
  of individuality, there will lack any true affinity between
  participants and environments meant to awaken their latent
  creativity.
    Unfortunately, despite the claims of certain particularly
  aggressive practitioners, these systems and seminars have
  found little more than marginal usefulness or acceptance.
  After all, even a small but consistent increase in creativity
  would necessarily lead to substantial improvements in
  efficiency and profitability. The news of such impact would
  spread like wildfire and transform the industrial and economic
  landscape before our very eyes. We'd all be clamoring to
  participate.
    While these comments may condemn tendencies of the
  established creativity field, their purpose is to recognize
  the existence of this field, and to acknowledge the wisdom
  accumulated in its literature. The glaring discrepancy between
  the material and spiritual expectations of the field compared
  with its inconsequential practical effects needs to be
  underscored. If there was ever a mouse that roared, this is
  it. Still, the fault perhaps lies less with shortcomings of
  the field and its practitioners and more with the enormous
  conventional forces of conservatism that express our abiding
  faith in the ascendancy of form and matter, and throttle our
  creative capacity. Even creativity specialists can be forgiven
  for underestimating the almost inconceivable virulence of
  man's attachment to the given, the banal and the status quo.

Since communication and cooperation (not to speak of true
teamwork) among humans is so rare and limited to the mundane and
pedestrian, perhaps the only hope we do have is our ability to
give cumulative expression to moments of vision in technology.
But here we hit another snag when we are forced to recognize
that the products of our vision do not articulate as we'd like
them to or work as cleanly and efficiently as a finite globe
would require. This suggests to me that our vision embodied in
technology did not penetrate sufficiently to the core of
nature's secrets where presumably (and this is an intuition and
article of faith) everything articulates in perfect harmony.
(This is too simplistic, of course, but indicate the principle
and potential). The other article of faith (shared with
technology) is that we could eventually gain total command of
matter at the molecular and even atomic levels and make it
totally malleable to our will. But there is a time imperative
created by physical, social, psychological and spiritual
pollutions that threaten to cut the experiment short. Hence the
moral imperative (if you agree that surviving and thriving is a
moral imperative) that something in you resists. This is the
basis of my belief in the possibility of holistic science which
is the mandate of PM.

Sorry for this excessively long posting. I'll try not to do it
again.

Blessings,
DSD
Project Mind Foundation

  Just as the restriction of mind by matter occludes mind,
  the restriction of matter by mind reveals mind. - T.Kun