THE FALACY OF MISCONSTRUED TRANSCENDENTAL EMPIRICISM

A fallacy of epistemology involving equivocation between phenomenology and ideology, and potentially relevant to understand as a culprit in politically incorrect behavior… Yeah, I know – the above is a mouthful. I have tried to think of a way to express it more simply, but I lose the clear meaning and so I find myself accepting the awkward language. The concept behind this fallacy is not new, but I am unaware of anyone else ever attempting to formulate it specifically as a titled fallacy. I find in my own experience that this needs to be done, so I am taking it upon myself to do so – partly for my own efficient future reference in communicating to others about mysticism. This is important for both theoretical and practical understanding, including issues of respect, functional communication and mutual understanding. Let me begin by explaining what I mean by a “fallacy of epistemology”. Epistemology is the philosophy of knowing – how we know, different ways of knowing, how to assess the truth of our knowing, and so on. Especially relevant here is different ways of knowing. A couple of examples will do much of my job of explaining this fallacy. I know that grass is green. I know this directly through perception, and there can be no confusion about it. If I wish to know the distance to Andromeda Galaxy, I can look it up in a book. I do not know the answer the same way that I know grass is green. For one thing, the green color of grass is a part of my actual being – demonstrated by the fact that I would never forget it (if, for example, asked on a test). I would also take issue with anyone challenging the answer. But I trust the answer to the distance to Andromeda. If someone argues, I may suggest a certain window of inaccuracy but continue to assert my faith in the science. Yet a respectful discussion is possible. Also, the answer is not part of my being. It is in personality (acquired) and not essence (innate) so I could forget it on a test. The distinctions drawn above reflect differences in the epistemology of the two examples. No doubt for the two examples given you have no problem with the distinction. But there are certain circumstances where this same distinction commonly fails to be recognized. That, in a nutshell, is the fallacy. You see that the problem does not arise in the above examples because of common ground. You share my experience of the color of grass. One can argue shades of color, or that dried up grass turns brown, but that misses the point – you know the difference between a generic statement and a meticulous accounting. So you accept that arguing over this issue is inappropriate. But should you fail to fully have a common ground in the experience of some truth claim under consideration, you might fail to recognize its character – that this is “grass is green” sort of stuff. In short, you might not recognize the epistemology of the situation as phenomenological, meaning that it pertains to direct perceptions and experiences. You might instead see it as “book learning” sort of stuff, like the distance to Andromeda. Or even worse, you might misconstrue it as an opinionated issue of ideology subject to debate. I could give accounts of actual instances of this fallacy – the fallacy of misconstrued transcendental empiricism – to show that such a thing can and on occasion does happen. At this point we need to look at those two words in the fallacy I have not yet explained. In the context of what I just said, it is not hard to understand why this fallacy would arise in the context of what-is-called transcendental experiences. Whatever else this means, it tells us for our purposes here that we are speaking of the kind of experiences that are not always universally common ground in commonplace experience, and therefore vulnerable to the fallacy. If people do not have common ground for certain kinds of experiences, it is easy for them to doubt their existence. The term mysticism is often invoked to collectively cover this turf, as we find in Ken Wilber. I offer in a separate blog post document a precise definition of this term (please refer to it as needed), but the more broad-stroked usage I just suggested will suffice here. Mystics (real ones) are obvious candidates for the most misunderstood people in the world, and the fallacy – MTE fallacy for short – is indisputably the single most important reason for that. Second place, I’ll mention in passing, goes to pseudo-mystical clap-trap from lunatics and charlatans like virtually all occultists. They make it easy for people to commit the MTE fallacy and remain confident in the soundness of their judgment. The word empiricism conveys an idea very similar to phenomenology. The “phenomenal” world is the world of appearances. The “empirical” world is the world subject to observation. Science studies the empirical world. Science cannot see my inner emotional states, but it can see overt manifestations of them and record my verbal or written accounts of them. That becomes the data for the psychologists. My inner states are empirical to me but to no one else (Ken Wilber’s upper left quadrant). To outsiders, my account of these states is a second-hand “book learning” sort of epistemology subject to considerations of trust (Ken Wilber’s lower left quadrant). But that does not mean the content fails to have an empirical referent. An outsider who denies that is actually accusing me of lying about those states. And, you see, the outsider could do that simply by misconstruing the epistemology of “inner states” as something like “ideology”. Let’s be clear about that: the outsider is not simply claiming I have a different opinion, even if that is what the outsider actually says. An outsider who frames the issue in that manner is committing the MTE fallacy. The outsider might be unaware of any disrespect entailed. Let’s make the fallacy and its ramifications blatantly clear. I can do that easily with a rather silly anecdotal example. My gender is empirical “grass is green” sort of stuff. It may not be so for the reader, but proof can be had – we will not go there. I am a male. Suppose you were to respond to me that I am being too “closed minded”. Perhaps I am a female, or something unspecific. You say that some academic psychologists remain unconvinced of the thorough validity and usefulness of the distinction, some even denying it altogether. I should be open to other opinions. How would I respond to this? In this case, I would be laughing too hard to actually be offended. I would respond in no uncertain terms that I know my own gender, thank you, and you are out of line challenging it. To that you respond that I am not only close minded, but arrogant and stubborn, and obviously not amenable to intelligent discussion. By this point I am probably feeling what-is-called “pissed”, and you are liable to encounter more spectacular examples of this alleged arrogance and stubbornness. The fault will be perceived as mine – arrogance, closed mindedness, etc. But the actual problem is that you have misconstrued the epistemology of the situation. You are treating phenomenology as if it were ideology. You have committed the MTE fallacy. Perhaps you are thinking that nothing nearly as ridiculous as this example would happen in reality and that I am making a mountain out of a molehill in presenting the fallacy. With all due respect, you would be mistaken. You have to understand that the experiences of mystics are typically by very definition (mine) more certain, clear, awake, unclouded, undistorted, unambiguous and reliable than their more commonplace states. (Of course, most of the time for all but a tiny handful of people in the whole of human history, the states of mystics are like that of everyone else – they can forget where they left their car keys, etc. Perhaps they distort the reality of their own being by identifying so heavily with exceptional states, but they more than anyone else can speak meaningfully of the contrast). Although plenty of epistemologically incompetent reductionists deny it, many people know, as I just hinted, that our usual states fall into the general basket of relative consciousness that is in reality less trustworthy than these exceptional experiences. This is why several major philosophies and spiritual traditions call our usual state “sleep” or other such terms denoting its incomplete reliability and “vivifyingness”. Examples are abundant, including the very premise of the entirety of the religion of Buddhism (the title “Buddha” means “the one who is awake”). Mystics are universally well known for proclaiming their position with authority. They say in effect, “I know what I know!” In my own most powerful experience, I proclaimed to myself (paraphrasing closely) that, “As God is my witness, I will never in my ordinary states question or second-guess what I have learned, as I know and mark it down for myself that I will never have the clarity and certainty in ordinary states that I have now!” That was three decades ago, and I kept my promise. I know what that experience was or entails with an essentially comparable kind of clarity, of direct knowing and of certainty as I know my own gender. For me, this is “grass is green” sort of empirical stuff. And claims by reductionists who commit the MTE fallacy with inflexibility and arrogance do not come across to mystics as much less ridiculous and disrespectful than the example of questioning my gender. Their stubbornness carries the weight of social conditioning and sanction, including many respected and popular academicians. An example in the course I am now taking is James Hillman, whose unequivocal and brazen proclamation that all transcendentalism is dangerous (he calls it “titanism”) is just as stupid, just as sick, and just as rude as the silly example of denouncing the concept of gender. And this scary myopia carries the weight of academic respectability. It is the “flatland” of Ken Wilber, whose entire third section of his book “A Brief History of Everything” makes it screamingly clear that this reductionism is the single most dangerous ideological problem facing the academic world today. Personally, I can be very tolerant and understanding of people who commit the MTE fallacy (with a great deal of innocence in most cases). But I am presently involved in a course that has the agenda of tackling these issues directly and attempting to move forward for a vision for the future that takes into account contemporary insights such as those of Wilber. I cannot be other than I am, and cannot avoid revealing in such a context the most fundamentally important fact of my existence – that of my mystical insight. Take that away from me and I am just another digit in one of Annie Dillard’s numbers (referencing her book For the Time Being). Disrespect toward me does not matter – I am not anything to get excited about, and fail to live up to my own ideology. But failure to learn and respect the MTE fallacy is a failure of respect toward the whole circumstance of our species at this point in its history, and a failure to provide it with one of its most important tools for any authentic hope for the future. Steve Adams, June, 2008

The most important short essay on consciousness ever written

NOTE: Before I present the text by P.D. Ouspensky my title above refers to, I wish to place it somewhat in context. The book is, in my opinion, almost unbelievably important, but it has accessibility issues. It must be understood that it is not a work of science, but on the other hand, nor should one be too quick to dismiss it as counter to science because of the way it is written and the way the concepts are packaged. I spent fifteen years myself grappling with how to reconcile the book with science and translate from one to the other. I ultimately discovered that the book needs translation, and in some respects is very badly “packaged” but is nonetheless mostly commensurate with cutting edge science – the more recent the better the fit. This shows that the intuitions of the book (published 1949, based on oral teaching presented from around 1910 to 1925) from a scientific standpoint were precocious. I must admit up front though, that this is not easy to see. The book draws from ancient traditions and retains myth, symbols and terminologies from these ancient non-scientific traditions. So, for example, we have the “ray of creation” from the Gnostics. This is actually very profound, but read as science it is nonsense. Even worse, science terms in at least one place are used in a new application that will never be acceptable: names of elements are used for something different. Nor is this necessary – the usage calls for new words. It was done as a corollary to the ancient philosophical usage of the “four elements” (earth, air, fire and water). The book presents a small part of the teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff (called in the book “G”) who uses what I call “pragmatic absolutism”. Like William James, Gurdjieff cared little for abstract theory that could not be practically applied, and he often spoke in statements too absolute or inflexible for literal abstract acceptance but very appropriate for his practical teaching and work with his pupils. The text below, as is true of the whole book, shows “G” in action discussing matters with his pupils, in this case the issue of consciousness. Notice that all material he presents is part of an actual practical program and that the pupils are following an applied tradition of self-transformation. One last point about Ouspensky: the text introduces a new concept, “self-remembering”. In another of Ouspensky’s books, The Fourth Way, Ouspensky writes, “For me personally …the most interesting idea [of Gurdjieff] was that of self-remembering. I simply could not understand how people could miss such a thing. All European philosophy and psychology just missed this point. There are traces in older teachings, but they are so well disguised and placed between less important things that you cannot see the importance of the idea” (page 13). I can relate to Ouspensky on this. I once had a friend read the text given below who claimed to respect it ostensibly, only to be with him a few days later and find him praising his newly acquired copy of Daniel C. Dennett’s misnomer Consciousness Explained. There is not one word about consciousness in Dennett’s entire book – it only speaks about the content of consciousness. So my friend was just one more “Volinsky” (self explanatory when you read the text). The part about Volinsky below is important. Ouspensky knew what he was talking about in the quote I gave above. In fact, his insistence on the significance and novelty of the idea of self-remembering is enough alone to rank Ouspensky as one of the top most important philosophers of the twentieth century. – Steve Adams Text quote from P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, chapter seven, pages 116 through top of page 122… On one occasion while talking with G. I asked him whether he considered it possible to attain “cosmic consciousness,” not for a brief moment only but for a longer period. I understood the expression “cosmic consciousness” in the sense of a higher consciousness possible for man in the sense in which I had previously written about it in my book Tertium Organum. “I do not know what you call ‘cosmic consciousness,’ said G., “it is a vague and indefinite term; anyone can call anything he likes by it. In most cases what is called ‘cosmic consciousness’ is simply fantasy, associative daydreaming connected with intensified work of the emotional center. Sometimes it comes near to ecstasy but most often it is merely a subjective emotional experience on the level of dreams. But even apart from all this before we can speak of ‘cosmic consciousness’ we must define in general what consciousness is. “How do you define consciousness?” “Consciousness is considered to be indefinable,” I said, “and indeed, how can it be defined if it is an inner quality? With the ordinary means at our disposal it is impossible to prove the presence of consciousness in another man. We know it only in ourselves.” “All this is rubbish,” said G., “the usual scientific sophistry. It is time you got rid of it. Only one thing is true in what you have said: that you can know consciousness only in yourself. Observe that I say you can know, for you can know it only when you have it. And when you have not got it, you can know that you have not got it, not at that very moment, but afterwards. I mean that when it comes again you can see that it has been absent a long time, and you can find or remember the moment when it disappeared and when it reappeared. You can also define the moments when you are nearer to consciousness and further away from consciousness. But by observing in yourself the appearance and the disappearance of consciousness you will inevitably see one fact which you neither see nor acknowledge now, and that is that moments of consciousness are very short and are separated by long intervals of completely unconscious, mechanical working of the machine. You will then see that you can think, feel, act, speak, work, without being conscious of it. And if you learn to see in yourselves the moments of consciousness and the long periods of mechanicalness, you will as infallibly see in other people when they are conscious of what they are doing and when they are not. “Your principle mistake consists in thinking that you always have consciousness, and in general, either that consciousness is always present or that it is never present. In reality consciousness is a property which is continually changing. Now it is present, now it is not present. And there are different degrees and different levels of consciousness. Both consciousness and the different degrees of consciousness must be understood in oneself by sensation, by taste. No definitions can help you in this case and no definitions are possible so long as you do not understand what you have to define. And science and philosophy cannot define consciousness because they want to define it where it does not exist. It is necessary to distinguish consciousness from the possibility of consciousness. We have only the possibility of consciousness and rare flashes of it. Therefore we cannot define what consciousness is.” I cannot say that what was said about consciousness became clear to me at once. But one of the subsequent talks explained to me the principles on which these arguments were based. On one occasion at the beginning of a meeting G. put a question to which all those present had to answer in turn. The question was: “What is the most important thing that we notice during self-observation?” Some of those present said that during attempts at self-observation, what they had felt particularly strongly was an incessant flow of thoughts which they had found impossible to stop. Others spoke of the difficulty of distinguishing the work of one center from the work of another. I had evidently not altogether understood the question, or I answered my own thoughts, because I said that what struck me most was the connectedness of one thing with another in the system, the wholeness of the system, as if it were an “organism,” and the entirely new significance of the word to know which included not only the idea of knowing this thing or that, but the connection between this thing and everything else. “Not one of you has noticed the most important thing that I have pointed out to you,” he said. “That is to say, not one of you has noticed that you do not remember yourselves.” (He gave particular emphasis to these words.) “You do not feel yourselves; you are not conscious of yourselves. With you, ‘it observes’ just as ‘it speaks,’ ‘it thinks,’ ‘it laughs.’ You do not feel: I observe, I notice, I see. Everything still ‘is noticed,’ ‘is seen.’…In order really to observe oneself one must first of all remember oneself.” (He again emphasized these words.) “Try to remember yourselves when you observe yourselves and later on tell me the results. Only those results will have any value that are accompanied by self-remembering. Otherwise you yourselves do not exist in your observations. In which case what are all your observations worth?” These words of G.’s made me think a great deal. It seemed to me at once that they were the key to what he had said before about consciousness. But I decided to draw no conclusions whatever, but to try to remember myself while observing myself. The very first attempts showed how difficult it was. Attempts at self-remembering failed to give any results except to show me that in actual fact we never remember ourselves. “What else do you want?” said G. “This is a very important realization. People who know this” (he emphasized these words) “already know a great deal. The whole trouble is that nobody knows it. If you ask a man whether he can remember himself, he will of course answer that he can. If you tell him that he cannot remember himself, he will either be angry with you, or he will think you an utter fool. The whole of life is based on this, the whole of human existence, the whole of human blindness. If a man really knows that he cannot remember himself, he is already near to the understanding of his being.” All that G. said, all that I myself thought, and especially all that my attempts at self-remembering had shown me, very soon convinced me that I was faced with an entirely new problem which science and philosophy had not, so far, come across. But before making deductions, I will try to describe my attempts to remember myself. The first impression was that attempts to remember myself or to be conscious of myself, to say to myself, I am walking, I am doing, and continually to feel this I, stopped thought. When I was feeling I, I could neither think nor speak; even sensations became dimmed. Also, one could only remember oneself in this way for a very short time. I had previously made certain experiments in stopping thought which are mentioned in books on Yoga practices. For example there is such a description in Edward Carpenter’s book From Adam’s Peak to Elephanta, although it is a very general one. And my first attempts to self-remember reminded me exactly of these, my first experiments. Actually it was almost the same thing with the one difference that in stopping thoughts attention is wholly directed towards the effort of not admitting thoughts, while in self-remembering attention becomes divided, one part of it is directed towards the same effort, and the other part to the feeling of self. This last realization enabled me to come to a certain, possibly a very incomplete, definition of “self-remembering,” which nevertheless proved to be very useful in practice. I am speaking of the division of attention which is the characteristic feature of self-remembering. I represented it to myself in the following way: When I observe something, my attention is directed towards what I observe – a line with one arrowhead: I -> the observed phenomenon. When at the same time, I try to remember myself, my attention is directed both towards the object observed and towards myself. A second arrowhead appears on the line: I ↔ the observed phenomenon. Having defined this I saw that the problem consisted in directing attention on oneself without weakening or obliterating the attention directed on something else. Moreover this “something else” could as well be within me as outside me. The very first attempts at such a division of attention showed me its possibility. At the same time I saw two things clearly. In the first place I saw that self-remembering resulting from this method had nothing in common with “self-feeling,” or “self-analysis.” It was a new and very interesting state with a strangely familiar flavor. And secondly I realized that moments of self-remembering do occur in life, although rarely. Only the deliberate production of these moments created the sensation of novelty. Actually I had been familiar with them from early childhood. They came either in new and unexpected surroundings, in a new place, among new people while traveling, for instance, when suddenly one looks about one and says: How strange! I am in this place; or in very emotional moments, in moments of danger, in moments when it is necessary to keep one’s head, when one hears one’s own voice and sees and observes oneself from the outside. I saw quite clearly that my first recollections of life, in my own case very early ones, were moments of self-remembering. This last realization revealed much else to me. That is, I saw that I really only remember those moments of the past in which I remembered myself. Of the others I know only that they took place. I am not able wholly to revive them, to experience them again. But the moments when I had remembered myself were alive and were in no way different from the present. I was still afraid to come to conclusions. But I already saw that I stood upon the threshold of a very great discovery. I had always been astonished at the weakness and the insufficiency of our memory. So many things disappear. For some reason or other the chief absurdity of life for me consisted in this. Why experience so much in order to forget it afterwards? Besides there was something degrading in this. A man feels something which seems to him very big, he thinks he will never forget it; one or two years pass by – and nothing remains of it. It now becomes clear to me why this was so and why it could not be otherwise. If our memory really keeps alive only moments of self-remembering, it is clear why our memory is so poor. All these were the realizations of the first days. Later, when I began to learn to divide attention, I saw that self-remembering gave wonderful sensations which, in a natural way, that is, by themselves, come to us only very seldom and in exceptional conditions… Sometimes self-remembering was not successful; at other times it was accompanied by curious observations. I was once walking along the Liteiny towards the Nevsky, and in spite of all my efforts I was unable to keep my attention on self-remembering. The noise, movement, everything distracted me. Every minute I lost the thread of attention, found it again, and then lost it again. At last I felt a kind of ridiculous irritation with myself and I turned into the street on the left having firmly decided to keep my attention on the fact that I would remember myself at least for some time, at any rate until I reached the following street. I reached the Nadejdinskaya without losing the thread of attention except, perhaps, for short moments. Then I again turned towards the Nevsky realizing that, in quiet streets, it was easier for me not to lose the line of thought and wishing therefore to test myself in more noisy streets. I reached the Nevsky still remembering myself, and was already beginning to experience the strange emotional state of inner peace and confidence which comes after great efforts of this kind. Just round the corner on the Nevsky was a tobacconist’s shop where they made my cigarettes. Still remembering myself I thought I would call there and order some cigarettes. Two hours later I woke up in the Tavricheskaya, that is, far away. I was going by izvostchik to the printers. The sensation of awakening was extraordinarily vivid. I can almost say that I came to. I remembered everything at once. How I had been walking along the Nadejdinskaya, how I had been remembering myself, how I had thought about cigarettes, and how at this thought I seemed all at once to fall and disappear into a deep sleep. At the same time, while immersed in this sleep, I had continued to perform consistent and expedient actions. I left the tobacconist, called at my flat in the Liteiny, telephoned to the printers. I wrote two letters. Then again I went out of the house. I walked on the left side of the Nevsky up to the Gostinoy Dvor intending to go to the Offitzerskaya. Then I changed my mind as it was getting late. I had taken an izvostchik and was driving to the Kavalergardskaya to my printers. And on the way while driving along the Tavricheskaya I began to feel a strange uneasiness, as though I had forgotten something. – And suddenly I remembered that I had forgotten to remember myself. I spoke of my observations and deductions to the people in our group as well as to my various literary friends and others. I told them that this was the center of gravity of the whole system and of all work on oneself; that now work on oneself was not only empty words but a real fact full of significance thanks to which psychology becomes an exact and at the same time a practical science. I said that European and Western psychology in general had overlooked a fact of tremendous importance, namely, that we do not remember ourselves; that we live and act and reason in deep sleep, not metaphorically but in absolute reality. And also that, at the same time, we can remember ourselves if we make sufficient efforts, that we can awaken. I was struck by the difference between the understanding of the people who belonged to our groups and that of people outside them. The people who belonged to our groups understood, though not all at once, that we had come in contact with a “miracle,” and that it was something “new,” something that had never existed before. A. L. Volinsky, whom I had met and with whom I had talked a great deal since 1909 and whose opinions I valued very much, did not find in the idea of “self-remembering” anything that he had not known before. “This is an apperception.” He said to me, “Have you read Wundt’s Logic? You will find there his latest definition of apperception. It is exactly the same thing you speak of. ‘Simple observation’ is perception. ‘Observation with self-remembering,’ as you call it, is apperception. Of course Wundt knew of it.” I did not want to argue with Volinsky. I had read Wundt. And of course what Wundt had written was not at all what I had said to Volinsky. Wundt had come close to this idea, but others had come just as close and had afterwards gone off in a different direction. He had not seen the magnitude of the idea which was hidden behind his thoughts about different forms of perception. And not having seen the magnitude of the idea he of course could not see the central position which the idea of the absence of consciousness and the idea of the possibility of the voluntary creation of this consciousness ought to occupy in our thinking. Only it seemed strange to me that Volinsky could not see this even when I pointed it out to him. I subsequently became convinced that this idea was hidden by an impenetrable veil for many otherwise intelligent people – and still later on I saw why this was so.

A QUOTE ON THE AUTHORITY OF MYSTICS

NOTE: Those sharing with me the course “Modern Problems of Belief” will likely discover that I can and probably will speak comparably to the quote below over the duration of the course, and I do not require someone else to say what is said here for me. However, I wish to note that I am not a lone voice in speaking about mystical authority as Rhea Miller does here. For example, Ken Wilber in numerous places in A Brief History of Everything and in many of his other books makes the same or similar points. There are other examples I could give, including many of the top scientists and philosophers of the twentieth century. But I like what Miller says and the way she says it, and so I share it with you. – Steve Adams, June, 2008 From: Rhea Y. Miller, Cloudhand, Clenched Fist, pages 53-54… One of history’s best kept secrets is that mystics are reformers, if not outright revolutionaries, precisely because of their authority. Contrary to public opinion, mystics are not wimpy, hidden away, uninvolved, “other worldly” folk. Mystics experience a vision, a new way of seeing; they believe in these visions and act upon them. Mystics exude authority. Mystics quite regularly shake up worldviews… The fact of the matter is that the authority, or truth of a knowledge-event or mystical event, is rarely given the opportunity to be verified, due to political agendas. [I would add social, religious, economic, scientific, and other agendas – SA] The problem is not that there is no way in which to verify the authority of a knowledge-event or mystical event. The problem is that such events are so threatening that we rarely have the opportunity to examine them before the mystics and their ideas are whisked away, belittled, dismissed, swept under the carpet, or destroyed. The irony is that the real danger lies not in the true mystical or knowledge-event but in the idolatry. Gestalt therapist Barry Stevens has provocatively asked why, when someone steps out of line, we order them back into line rather than asking them where they are going or what they are seeing. When we stop questioning and assume that what is “re-presented” to us is the truth, without ourselves experiencing its validity or authority, we engage in idolatry.

Q. How should the US view China's developing relations with her neighbors? Should the US modify its foreign policy toward these same nations in light of their changing relations with China? I wish to humbly suggest without too long a tangent to defend it that the word "should" in these questions is loaded, and suggests an ideal to which the US does not possess the necessary being to recognize and enact. I actually believe that morality is hierarchical, and involves epistemological threshholds, such that the whole idea of "revealed truth" basic to all spiritual tradition is a claim of a higher moral authority, which, could it be perceived correctly, would serve as a yardstick to amend our own ethical philosophies - that is to say, what makes sense to us on our own level. For example, many people snicker at the "simpleton" pacifism of Gandhi, assuming that their culturally conditioned worldview faces reality much better in a violent world. Yet anyone who studies the life of Gandhi knows he was far from being naive about the realities he faced. He saw deeper and further, and proved that a pacifist philosophy could in principle be pragmatic to the extent that on occassion it makes more sense that the brute force mentality of the rest of the world. No one who supports a trillion dollars and thousands of lost lives for a decade-long heinously violent imperialist campaign to stubbornly cling to fossil fuel myopia in a patch of Middle East desert has any room to call pacifists naive. That last remark pulls me back on track for the questions at hand. And having spent time in discussion board on Southeast Asia, I will devote more attention here to Central Asia. My source is Sean L. Yom in his discussion of SCO: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This is an alliance of Russia and China with the four "stans" that I'll not torture myself typing out. (The prior "Shanghai Five" left out Uzbekistan). The six countries pledged to fight "three evil forces": terrorism, extremism and separatism (violent Islamic radicalism). The alliance was lopsided with Russian and Chinese hegemony. But 9/11 and the Afgan conflict altered the playing field with more western influence and attention and Russia and China a bit diluted. The economic and political future of the region is dependent on three principle vectors: Sino-Russian relations,, the US presence, and Islamic militancy. All the "stans" have positive US relations. The US has two primary interests there: 1) oil and gas reserves, and 2) tactical ground. Needless to say, Russia and China are less than happy with the US presence development. US presence is the key variable of SCO's future. I'll spend my time more on one of the three vectors - Islamic militancy, and US presence will ride piggyback on that discussion. The militants are not well organized and are weak in resources. They are not terribly imposing as a military front, but more effectual in isolated terrorists tactics. Russian and Chinese hawkish policy actually overstates the threat, and on this the US hopscotches depending on where situated - placating in the "stans" and in accord with Russia and China in Iraq and elsewhere. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International complain that hawkish policy "actually sustains an ebb-and-flow cycle of Islamic violence". Brutal repression alienates unemployed youths who face little economic opportunity. Networks easily recruit more fighters from among them. Moscow and Beijing in the face of that population justify even further suppression and the cycle repeats in a positive feedback loop. The US might seem a counterbalance in the "stans" if their motive was humanitarian and not oil. The US first needs to extricate itself from the Bush regime (and not fall into another Republican oligarchy) and then re-think both motive and action in its policy. There is a part of me like many others that does not much care how the Muslims fare in all of this. They don't inspire my sympathy. But another part of me knows that such a position is the most myopic of any of my inner Munchkin's opinions. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International represent a wiser perspective, though I shall not presume to know much less elaborate on how this would or should play out. But at a time in a higher state I myself made the following quote: "Whoever sees reality for what it is knows that the only sensible consistent inner response to one's fellow humanity is one of compassion." I know that I was across a higher epistemological threshhold when I said that - said it not glibly but with real insight. I know to trust that insight. And yet, most of my life I do not live in the state where this is evident and it sounds hollow. I am just another cynic who would be more comfortable if all the Muslims were gone. US policy comes from this kind of level upon which I spend most of my time. Whoever has spent a trillion dollars on a decade-long experiment to put my quote into practice can call it naive. Steve

Blame tardiness on "black karma"

All that talk of movements, and here I am with a cold! Serves me right! Hard to make myself do anything, and I didn't see what I wanted on RSS feeds - I can't do the Tibetan Buddhists because I get too emotionally involved. But to pick something that "interests you" - I can do that. Our reading in Blum and Jensen (okay, so it's not from the news - flunk me!) included an essay by Dru Gladney, "Ethnoreligious Resurgence in a Northwestern Sufi Community". I have been interested in Sufism for many years (and no, I'm not naive enough to interpret it through the lens of Idries Shah). Here we have the Hui people in China in the small north-central province of Ningxia. The Hui here belong to the Khufiyya brotherhood which "developed from a branch of the Naqshbandiyya" - of interest to me if no one else, as the early Naqshbandi Order held an esoteric school. My reading of Gladney made it very obvious (to me) no such thing is present here in contemporary China, which is one reason the sociology takes on the character it does. (That's an observation - not a judgment). Sufism in general is a diverse set of mystical or quasi-mystical heterodox Shiite sects whose origin can be ultimately traced to a Hermetic influx that took on the garb of Islam as a cover against persecution (see Tobias Churton, "The Golden Builders"). The Hui in China don't seem to match such a description very well - to me, they're just Muslims, which is fine but (to me) doctrinally boring. In fact, I'm hitting at a main point here - these Hui are not very doctrinal at all. Researchers cite the most common answer they give as to why they believe in Islam: "We believe in Islam because we are Hui." Okay... Most of the sociological research reported on by Gladney centered on a village called the Na Homestead. These people during the Cultural Revolution had deviated from the straight-and-narrow, engaging in alcohol and tobacco among other things. Now they are very strict. Attendence at the local mosque is very high. Large numbers of men, some elderly, prostate for over an hour in prayer even when the ground is frozen. Han influence is all around, and the state is up to its usual nonsense, while the Hui cling to their identity strongly in practice even if not in overt ideology. Ironically, the economic liberalization policies of China in the post-Mao era has led to an increase in religious conservatism and practice. Chinese economic and political reforms are making the Hui feel closer to Islamic neighbors than to Beijing and intensified their religious and social identity. The state wishes to keep ethnic identity separate from religious belief and practice, but for the Hui these are shown to be nearly inseparable. This is especially the case in conservative Na Homestead. We tend to see the modern reforms in China as a unifying force leading toward globalization, but it can also be fragmenting, or lead toward greater unity in directions very different than intended by Beijing.

A Tale of Two Factories

Before I started this course, China was this "thing" over there that was taking American jobs and buying us out, and sending us cheap imports while "it" was getting rich off of us and we were getting poorer. This is a typical view of Americans - with lots of media scaffolding - toward China, and as a caricature, it has some degree of merit - provided it is not mistaken for anything more than a caricature. I was actually pretty good about that. I have this strong doctrinal position that one should not have an opinion about everything in the world about which one knows nothing whatever, that this in society may be seen as clever but I see it as lying. I am not perfect about practicing what I preach, but I did at least confine my attitudes to the impact here and not presume to understand what was happening over there - I knew my "thing" over there was a vacuous label. Now I'm even more messed up, because I presume to know something about that "thing" over there as well. And no sooner do I get a more "enlightened" perspective than I am hit with the realization that the situation is so fluid and dynamic that to know what I am talking about, I have to continuously update it. That point was driven home this morning - April 5, 2008 - when I looked for a news post to use on this blog post. Hot off the press in the New York Times it sat at the top of the list: an article in today's business section by Joe Nocera, with this title: "Seeing the Sights of Industrial China: 2 Factories, 2 Futures". The article was sufficiently rich to pose a dilemma of how to streamline it here... The context is the RMB against the dollar. RMB stands for "renmimbi" - also called the "yuan" - which is the Chinese currency. The yuan, as I will call it, rose 4% against the dollar since the start of the year. It would have risen higher, but it is moored to government control. US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson praised the increase, but wants China to let the yuan be "free floating" (the US sees a rising yuan as beneficial if Paulson's view is taken as "official"). The author visited two Chinese factories, both on the outskirts of Shanghai. The first is the Shanghai Jinjue Fashion Company directed by Mr. Jin Jue. This is the stereotypical run-down one-room cavernous complex with a dirty looking river running behind it, making stereotypical cheap goods garments for mainly European markets. But it is largely vacant: 60% of the work force either quit or has been laid off. Business is bad. "The RMB is killing me," groaned Jin Jue. With the rising currency, cheap goods are not so cheap anymore. Inflation was up 8.7% in February alone, and workers cry for more money to make ends meet. Recent labor laws have passed for worker protection, but this also raises Jin Jue's costs. Some Chinese goods are actually being labeled "Made in Mexico" and routed through Mexico to take advantage of NAFTA. Mr. Jin Jue said that with a rising yuan "all these factories will go out of business." The author said that it may turn out accordingly, inflicting short-term pain, but that it would be good for the Chinese economy in the long haul. "And it won't be a lot of fun for the West to watch" he added. In China today there is much talk of "moving up the value chain." China wants business to gravitate toward more complex, higher-value goods that bring bigger profit margins and depend less on cheaper goods made on the premise of rock-bottom costs. One strategist spoke of a deliberate policy to push manufacturing up the value chain, and added that it comes at the same time as rising raw materials costs. For example, in the high tech goods market such as iPods, the Chinese are no longer content to simply assemble the components. They want to make them as well, and own the brand. The second factory the author visited is an example of a business that has already fulfilled this dream. Li Xian Shou is founder and CEO of ReneSola, that makes silicon wafers for solar panels. His first quarter 2007 earnings were up 200% from the previous year. He made $53 million in 2007, almost double his 2006 profit. In January of this year he raised $130 million in a stock offering on NYSE. His complex is spreading like a wildfire, with some buildings no more than six months old. The number of people he employs rose from twenty in 2005 to 3300 now. At first his company assembled solar panels for companies in Germany and Japan who supplied him the silicon wafers. But assembly, he notes, is a "commodity business" and attracts much competition. So in 2005 he converted to producing the wafers themselves and now competes with the foreign companies. Because he does not export directly, but sends the wafers to solar panel assembly plants in China, he can demand payment in yuan. Asked about the effect of a rising yuan, "he gave an indifferent shrug." After all the other background from Blecher, Han Dongfang and others, I was encouraged to hear about the recent worker reform laws being passed, but nothing further about them was said. Here I confine my attention to the polemic posed by these two factories. I qualifyingly presume to agree that a rising yuan is in the best long term interest of China, but I am also inclined to the impertinence of suggesting that the same is true for us. In other words, the pain it may inflict here with rising prices and adjustments of competition will likewise prove a check on unrestrained myopic growth unattached to resources and long-term vision. For one thing, as a geologist I know there is only so much oil in the ground, and the implications of that fact are not being seriously faced. My wish for China is not that it cease to "get rich" at the expense of the United States, but that this "thing" over there ostensibly "getting rich" should include all the people of China and not just a few. I wish China good economic health. I wish all of us good economic health. We all need to start thinking more holistically global about that, or all of us may find ourselves missing out.

Chinese youth culture - the one and the many

It was a pleasure watching the interview of the bright young Alex - so upbeat and articulate, and speaking revealingly as a contemporary Chinese youth. The number one question that interview raised in my mind was how typical he was of Chinese youth as a whole. I had hoped to find other personal narratives reflecting comparisons and contrasts, but found little. What I did find in some ways may be even better - a recent thorough survey of Chinese youth culture that effectively answered my number one question about Alex. It also begs a question or two, leading finally to considerations of one of the main elements of contemporary youth - their use of the Internet. But with that, I am ahead of myself. Lets briefly hit the main points of Alex's interview, and then look at some data from a survey of Chinese youth ages 16-29 completed in December, 2007. Alex is a Chinese college student studying computer science (I assume here in North Carolina). He was interviewed by Dr. James Anderson. In summary, Alex said his hopes and desires for the future are just to be successful, and maybe help his family. This is similar, he noted, to his parents generation except that they had "smaller" goals to live and dress better, while the younger generation has bigger goals. Work means a good future in a comfortable career helpful to his family and country. His major could help his country perhaps by bringing high technology back to China. The future looks good for him now, noting that the economy is doing quite well and the government becoming more democratic. He sees the government as having already taken lessons from the Cultural Revolution and the Beijing Massacre, giving them experience that will aid the future. Parents and the government show responsiveness to youth in their emphasis on education, which is very important, costly, and devoted. Today's youth mainly pay attention to competition in the job market, which is much more intense as universities have increased capacity and many graduates are looking for jobs. The young generation likes western culture, with big influences from Europe, America, Japan and Korea. They pick western culture in a mixed way, having grown up in China and retaining Chinese culture which they do not dispose of. Their pop culture is a mix that adapts western culture to Chinese tradition. For example, dressing western does not make them think western. A web-based organization called Kairos Future out of Stockholm, Sweden posted this month (March, 08) a feature titled: "Chinese Youth - Down to earth people reaching for the stars". The feature, written by Ms Anna Kiefer, summarizes a December, 2007 survey of 22,000 Chinese, with an older comparison group to contrast with the emphasized study of youth from ages 16 to 29. I begin with a condensed paraphrase of her opening statement... Young Chinese are very optimistic about the future and have great plans. Important is to have a prosperous career, high status and earn a lot of money. Material possessions and fame are more important to Chinese than to Europeans. They [claim] importance to spiritual values, anxious to blend in, want to be similar to friends, and to live up to the expectations of others as well as of self. This dual loyalty may reflect the one-child policy. I will highlight a few of the specifics... They want it all: high status and high salary jobs with good benefits, but they know they have to work hard to achieve this. 60% of young men and 42% of young women want to start their own company. 81% think material possessions provide meaning in life. 60% consider certain brands important to express identity - three times the number of European youth who answered the same. But most answer "yes" that spiritual values should be more emphasized. Typical youth are satisfied with most aspects of their lives. Most are optimistic about the future, believing they have complete control over their own future and confident of having a good job. 82% say they have a lot in common with their compatriots compared to 48% in Europe. But a much larger proportion want to live and work abroad for a temporary period compared to Europeans. Watching TV is the most common media habit. Books are popular. Only 20% read foreign magazines and newspapers. Very few listen to radio. The number one activity during free time is surfing the Internet, ahead of spending time with family and friends or listening to music. My immediate observation is that my question about Alex is answered: according to what I read here, Alex is quite typical. Another observation is how easy it is to answer "yes" to the spiritual values question, but how far removed that is from meaning it and acting accordingly, for which the data compellingly proves otherwise. Chinese materialists are no different than American (whether they warm Sunday morning pews or not) in failing to recognize that any spirituality demands the primacy of an inner orientation that does not deny the material but puts it in its place. This will soon cost them, because they have a warped sense of reality. I wish them well and do not belittle the value and legitimacy of their optimism, but it needs to have a firm foundation in reality as a stable platform to construct their future. Their sense of invincibility will make spectacular success stories out of some, but jerk the rug out from others. They seem to me to be out of touch politically, spiritually and environmentally (including in regard to resources). Economics has been operating under the fallacy that continued growth is not checked by the natural infrastructure. It is its own world. This is building a Tower of Babel, and the Chinese youth seem to be busy laying the bricks. But there is one other concern I wish to bring out. The survey presented above was conducted online. This makes the results biased toward computer users. The chapter in Weston and Jenson about the Internet by Xiao Qiang was revealing in showing how the government sustains some level of success in controlling Internet content, but with diminishing returns as reform and greater openness inevitably result from the expansion of its use. The effect on society is quite profound: affecting public opinion, influencing and drawing out other media, and occassionally leading to successful reforms and acts of justice in response to public outcries, as in the case of police brutality on Sun Zhigang. Parallel to this article, The World News Network posted on March 4, 2008 on YOP.com (Youth Opportunities) a Reuters release (February 21, 2008) titled "Chinese youth push political expression online." This feature was very similar in content to that of Xiao Qiang. But it differed in having a youth orientation, and was an eye-openner on how extensively Chinese youth use the Internet and how fast that is growing. The feature said that the number of people using the Internet at the end of 2007 was up 50% from 2006. It said there is an "additional 200,000 new Chinese users going online every day", and that "the vast majority of Chinese users are young people - 70% are under 30." Telecom expert Duncan Clark was quoted that "Technology is driving reforms in Chinese society right now much more than political reform." Internet addiction and enthusiasm (long hours of use) show statistics that appear to surpass those of the United States among Chinese youth. The Kairos Future survey may be biased in only sampling online users, but that is hardly a subculture of Chinese youth. Rather, it is the mainstream. For balance, I would like to see a survey of rural agrarian youth. But the picture I am seeing here is, I believe, the bigger story. And Alex, our computer science major, fits right in.