Jeremiah 17:9 says the human heart is desperately wicked. Is it, really? Before we explore that idea, I should explore another consideration regarding the idea of negative feedback and the ‘purpose machine”.
But would they be “good” if allowed to act simply as individuals?
Hoffer points out that there are two levels of “disequilibrium” that occur, one at the collective level, described above, and one at the “inner” level:
“It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction between profession and practice–that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt–are likely to be most fervent in imposing their faith on others”.
if I am told as an individual that I cannot achieve the necessary perfection defined by the profession of the faith, and if I cannot achieve salvation without this necessary perfection, then I will tend to feel “guilty” about my shortcomings, and seek ways to “prove my faith”. One of those ways would be to “convert” others to the realization of their impotence before God, and convince them to follow the “one true church”, of which I am a member, of course.
But notice that the “faith” which I have sought for others is the recognition of the “disequilibrium” between my self and the reality I desire, but that equilibrium is unattainable by personal efforts.
What has occurred? Basically, nothing more than the conscious recognition of an evolutionary principle, which is simply the awareness that we are “at odds” with the world we desire, and that by “renouncing the self” and joining with others to accept the same dogma, doctrine, or ideology, we may collectively achieve that which we desire.
It is simply an evolutionary “purpose machine” with “God” at the helm.
The contradiction or discrepancy, however, exists at two levels.
1.Between our “selves” collectively and what is “out there”
2.Between our self individually and what is “out there” both in terms of the group and of reality itself.
By accepting the group reality, we choose to ignore the personal contradiction, at least for an an undefined time. However, as time goes on, we discover the discrepancy between “self” and other members, and begin to form cliques within the overall group.
In short, we have merely speciated in the name of God.
But are we actually violent as individuals?
Certainly that’s not the intended goal. The intended goal is peace and harmony among all individuals. The problem is, it is not just a discrepancy between ourselves and others, and between the group and reality itself, but a discrepancy between the things we desire for self, and the inner working of the self. That is, we seek to follow a prescription that will reconcile the discrepancy between our self and reality, but we have no knowledge of the proper solution. If we have no such knowledge, we will have a tendency to believe the group can offer what we cannot know, and find reconciliation by self denial.
But here is the important question: Do any of the members, as individuals, possess any greater knowledge than you of how to “overcome” personal weaknesses?
The answer must be NO. The reason is better explained by Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert in the study of the relations of the brain and artificial intelligence. Ray Kurzweil offers a portion of their statement in The Age Of Spiritual Machines:
“Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert describe the human brain as ‘composed of large numbers of relatively small distributed systems, arranged by embryology into a complete society that is controlled in part(but only in part) by serial symbolic systems that are added later…The subsymbolic systems that do most of the work from underneath must, by their very character, block all the other parts of the brain from knowing much about how they work. And this, itself, could help explain how people do so many things yet have such incomplete ideas on how these things are actually done’.”
This would mean that there exists an unexplainable discrepancy between our conscious mind, and the process by which we do things, a “gap” as it were, of indefinite proportions, operated by a near infinity of synaptic functions that accumulate to form what we think consciously.
If we start thinking about this discrepancy, what comes into play is the evolutionary purpose machine. The same overarching system is applied to “explain” the discrepancy. Since it is impossible to directly define the process at this time, we consciously begin seeking ways to eliminate such discrepancies by acting in social fashion, by cumulative knowledge, seeking patterns that help us better associate with others. We naturally form communicative dependencies that “inform” us at all levels of existence when needed, and screen out that which is unnecessary as “noise”.
We do this both at the individual level, and the collective level. We select that which has “meaning” and reject that which does not. If we did this exclusively in our attempts to survive, we would soon become extinct as a human species. Since the “purpose machine” is really an extension of the “survival machine”, the natural tendency is to reject those things that violate our perceived needs for identity and continuation, and accept those tings that extend our control over our environment.
The “purpose machine” as extension of the “survival machine” will drive us toward seeking “birds of a feather”. We develop ceremonies, ritual, traditions, extensions of collective memories that separate “self” from “other” as group members.
The “purpose machine” has simply gone to the next level of conscious group selection, followng the same prescription of eliminating all possible discrepancies between desired state and existing state. It operates by the method of negative feedback.
In the biblical sense, can I as an individual understand the operation of my brain so I can eliminate error? Not according to the apostle Paul.
In Romans 7, Paul explores this same discrepancy between my “self” or “me” and my brain. If “I” or “me” happens to be a symbol system derived by the function of the “cartel” of genes, to use Dawkins’ word, then “I” as a symbol system, am a result of the collective functions of my brain. Therefore, what I perceive as “me” is more like the “software” resulting from my brain’s actions, and my brain is the “hardware’ that produced “me”.
“I”, therefore, am merely a generalized symbol system that represents the specific working of “my” brain in time and space. The “purpose machine” or “survival machine’ that exists as a general set of rules, springing from the “cartel” of the genes, is little more than a series of algorithms by which I may make choices for my survival. These algorithms can as easily connect “Us” into one pattern of survival as “me”, because they are the result of a general cartel of genes.
Paul takes this up in Romans 7:15:
“For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that I do not: but what I” hate, that do I.”
Obviously there is “something” in Paul’s discussion that is leading him toward the recognition of a “duality” a process that keeps him from understanding how to do what he would like to do. Verse 17 shows some interesting insight in this process, but religion has taken it and perverted it into something else:
“Now it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me”.
If we take that word “I”, above, and define it as a symbol system that Paul used to represent himself apart from his brain, we have pretty much the same thing described by Minsky and Papert.
In verse 18, Paul declares further:
“For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not”.
The RSV states it as “I do not understand my actions”.
Paul, it would appear, had written something similar to Minsky’s statement. “Something” functions at a “lower” level, over which we have no real control, any more than the software of a computer can control the hardware of that same computer, since the software is dependent on the function and standard workings of that computer.
Or in verse 20:
“Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me”.
Paul is grasping the existence of “something” that drives him against his own desires, so there is a discrepancy between what he desires and what actually occurs. It is then that he describes that which is consistent with the study of the brain today, and also described by Minsky. Verse 21:
“I find then a law, that when I would do good, evil is present within me….But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members”.
So you have “hardware’ consisting of the “purpose machine”, which is a result of a “cartel” of genes in the “lower’ part of the body, operating in apparent separation from the “software” of the mind, which can only imagine, but cannot alter. Just as the software can act in many diverse ways from the hardware of a computer, so can our minds, as “software”, imagine and create a near infinity of diverse creations, while operating by the “hardware” of the brain.
If we collectivize the goals and moral intentions into a larger and larger group, the “purpose machine’ has no guidelines by which justice may be maintained for individuals. Since the “purpose machine” is a result of the “survival machine”, and since it is a generalized set of guidelines for maintaining equilibrium, there is no way of distingusihing “good” for the collective, and “good” for the individual, without constant feedback in both directions between the two.
We do not seem to have a “blank slate’ on which experience is written, but a pre-programed computer of sorts that “translates” general ideas into a “purpose machine”, a “computer that pre-exists the human brain and cause results we cannot control. That is the next essay.
