In what was undoubtedly the largest online gathering in the history of The Prosperos, some 26 students from across the country and the world gathered together on Sunday morning (Pacific time), May 31, to pay honor to our friend and mentor Carol Carter, H.W., M.
We talked about her past, her years in New York, her time at Co-Op ’69, and her funny, funny skits for the Clapsaddle Chorale. Then we discussed her love of psychodrama and the significance of her combining traditional psychodrama with the release inherent in Releasing the Hidden Splendour (RHS).
We closed with a moment of silent communion and Peggy Lee’s Love Song.
It was a healing moment for all of us, including, I think, Carol.
“We, this people, on a small and lonely planet / Traveling through casual space / Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns / To a destination where all signs tell us / It is possible and imperative that we learn / A brave and startling truth…” So begins Maya Angelou’s cosmic clarion call to humanity, one of the most beautiful and poignant poems ever written — a poem that flew to space, a poem that came from space: a poem inspired by Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot — his lyrical meditation on the landmark photograph of Earth, which the Voyager spacecraft took in 1990 as an afterthought upon completing its unprecedented photographic survey of our Solar System, and which Sagan spent years petitioning NASA to permit.
The “Pale Blue Dot” photograph captured by the Voyager 1 (NASA/JPL)
The Voyager, which had sailed into space thirteen years earlier, carried alongside its instruments The Golden Record — a visionary, intensely poetic effort to capture the essence of Earth in sounds and images that would convey to another planetary civilization across spacetime, and, perhaps even more vitally in the middle of the Cold War, mirror back to us who and what we are: a single symphonic species.
Tasked with the impossible, inspired work of distilling that essence was the project’s creative director, Ann Druyan. In the course of composing the record, Sagan and Druyan, to their own wonder-stricken surprise, found themselves composing a stunning love story with their lives. They spent the remaining two decades of Sagan’s life fathoming and figuring the universe together — writing poetic inquiries into the origin of comets, dreaming up children’s book ideas, collaborating on the iconic 1980 television series turned book Cosmos, which The Library of Congress listed among 88 books to have shaped the country’s conscience, alongside epoch-making triumphs of courage and vision that have changed the course of culture and the understanding of nature — books like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
Two decades after Sagan’s death — decades coruscating with dazzling scientific discoveries that have disquieted us into shedding more myths and beholding more of reality — Druyan picked up the thread of wonder to write and produce a continuation of Cosmos, starring astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and soaring into these new frontiers of our ever-evolving understanding of space and time. In the companion book, Cosmos: Possible Worlds (public library), she extends an invitation “to feel more intensely the romance of science and the wonder of being alive right now, at these particular coordinates in spacetime, less alone, more at home, here in the cosmos.”
Tracing our cosmic story — from the cyanobacteria through which life first bloomed on our rocky world billions of years ago to our search for life on possible worlds many lightyears away; from the cave walls on which early humans first mapped their spatial coordinates to the Rube Goldberg machine of discoveries that led to the lasers with which these caves are now studied; from the symbiotic evolution of plants and the pollinators that feast on them to the Russian scientists who starved to death in a murderous dictatorship to protect their precious collection of seeds ensuring our planet’s biodiversity far beyond their lifetimes — Druyan takes up the mission not as a scientist herself but as a lifelong student and steward of the scientific mindscape, a self-described “hunter-gatherer of stories”: stories that begin with the human, with individual scientists or teams of scientists, and beget the cosmic, parting the curtain to let in a few more golden rays of reality, chiseling some precious fragment of knowledge from the immense monolith of the unknown.
At the center of her expansive reach into past and future is a lucid, luminous look at the realities and responsibilities the present is calling us to rise to — an inquiry into what it would take for us to transcend our human limitations and foibles so that we may endure as stewards rather than destroyers of this irreplaceable planet. In a testament to the fundamental fact that science is “a truly human endeavor,” Druyan writes:
Science, like love, is a means to that transcendence, to that soaring experience of the oneness of being fully alive. The scientific approach to nature and my understanding of love are the same: Love asks us to get beyond the infantile projections of our personal hopes and fears, to embrace the other’s reality. This kind of unflinching love never stops daring to go deeper, to reach higher.
This is precisely the way that science loves nature. This lack of a final destination, an absolute truth, is what makes science such a worthy methodology for sacred searching. It is a never ending lesson in humility. The vastness of the universe — and love, the thing that makes the vastness bearable — is out of reach to the arrogant. This cosmos only fully admits those who listen carefully for the inner voice reminding us to remember we might be wrong. What’s real must matter more to us than what we wish to believe.
Learning not to confuse the strength of our beliefs for the strength of the evidence is, of course, one of the greatest, most difficult triumphs of our growth — as individuals, as societies, and as a species. In consonance with the tenets of Sagan’s timeless Baloney Detection Kit for critical thinking, Druyan offers her simple, elegant formula for telling the two apart:
Test ideas by experiment and observation. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. And question everything, including authority. Do these things and the cosmos is yours.
If science, like art, is to perform its mission truly and fully, its achievements must enter not only superficially but with their inner meaning into the consciousness of the people.
I am reminded — by Einstein’s words, by Druyan’s endeavor — of John F. Kennedy’s miraculous defense of poetry: “We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.” The man whose unassailable vision had landed the first human foot on another celestial body understood that in the poetry of reality, every portal of wonder, be it art or science, is a portal to truth. Sometimes — if our passion and persistence are great enough, if chance rolls its impartial dice suitably enough — it is a portal to “a brave and starling truth.”
On June 3rd, 2020 Venus retrograde is conjunct the Sun. This is when a new 584-day Venus cycle begins.
This is also when Venus transforms from an evening star into a morning star.
Venus goes retrograde less than any other planet, but when it does, it touches us to the core of our heart.
Venus retrograde is similar to a descent into the underworld: a part of us must die so that a new version of ourselves can emerge.
Did you know that Venus, our sister planet, is the 3rd brightest object in the sky, after the Sun and the Moon? Venus affects us deeply, and when it changes direction, our life changes too.
Venus retrograde is so much more significant because it happens only once every 1,5 years of 584 days. And Venus retrograde is nothing else but the beginning on a new Venus cycle.
Yes, just like Sun has a cycle (365 days, or a year), just like Moon has a cycle (29 days, or a lunar month), so does Venus.
What is spectacular about the Venus cycle is that it has two distinct phases: Venusmorning star, and Venus evening star.
For 9 months (btw, did you know that Venus cycle correlates to the human gestation?) Venus rises before the Sun. This is her morning star phase.
She then disappears from the sky for approximately 2 months. After 2 months, she rises again, this time as an evening star. After that Venus disappears again, this time for only two weeks. A new Venus cycle starts, with Venus rising again as a morning star.
Complicated? Venus’ movement back and forth, before and after the Sun can seem confusing. It was confusing for our ancestors too, and some cultures believed that Venus was two different stars!.
Venus’ metamorphosis from an evening star into a morning star occurs in the middle of the Venus retrograde cycle – that is June 3rd, 2020.
The Rebirth Of Venus
Venus retrograde happens exactly at the end of a Venus cycle when Venus shifts from an evening star to a morning star.
Venus changes her clothes and metamorphoses from an evening beauty into a morning warrior.
When retrograde, Venus has to leave behind her beautiful evening gown (Venus evening star) and embrace the purity of nature (Venus morning star).
Venus retrograde is nothing else but Venus’ rebirth.
The transformation is a complete metamorphosis. No wonder Venus retrograde completely turns our life upside down, too.
Venus retrograde is a process of transformation that is absolutely necessary.
Venus is retrograde for 40 days. Many myths have been connected to the 40 days period: Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days. Moses and the ancient Hebrews wandered in the wilderness for 40 days. Buddha is said to have fasted and meditated for 40 days before reaching Samadhi.
But perhaps the most significant Venus retrograde myth is the Sumerian myth of Inanna’s descent into the underworld.
Venus And The Myth Of Inanna
Inanna is no one else but the Sumerian counterpart of Venus. Inanna was the Goddess of fertility and abundance and the most important deity of the times.
Her morning and evening phase were indicators of agricultural productivity. Food was the most important thing for our ancestors, food basically meant life. No wonder Inanna (Venus) played such an important role at the time.
The myth of Inanna’ descent into the underworld is nothing else but an allegory of Venus’ retrograde cycle.
The myth starts with Inanna deciding to travel to the underworld to visit her sister Ereshkigal, the Goddess of the Underworld. To the Sumerians, Venus disappearing under the horizon meant Venus went to the Underworld
Inanna passes through 7 gates to Underworld and she has to remove a piece of clothing or jewelry at each gate–> she needs to let go of her old identification of the self
She finally arrives in the Underworld, but her sister decides to kill her –> this is the phase when Venus is conjunct the Sun and a new Venus cycle starts. To start anew, a part of us must die
The goddess of the Underworld who strikes Inanna dead is nothing else but our shadow side, which we need to learn to integrate
Emissaries from the Earth come to rescue Inanna and resurrect her. Inanna is resurrected and comes back to Earth –> this is the phase when Venus appears again in the sky, this time as a morning star.
Inanna’s myth is the story of Venus retrograde when Venus ‘shapeshifts’ from Evening Star to the Morning Star.
To recap:
At the beginning of Venus retrograde, Venus appears to change her direction and starts moving backward
Venus becomes invisible in the evening sky as she is approaching the conjunction with the Sun
Mid-retrograde cycle Venus conjuncts the Sun and a new Venus cycle starts
7 days after the conjunction Venus appears again, this time in the morning sky
And 10 days after her appearance, Venus finally starts to move forward again.
The Real Meaning Of Venus Retrograde
Two things are important to keep in mind about Venus retrograde:
Venus changes from an evening star to a morning star–> Venus retrograde is about a metamorphosis from one state of being to another
Venus starts a new cycle –> Venus retrograde will come with a new beginning in your life.
Venus retrograde and a new beginning? This can come as a surprise to you because you probably have a long list of things you should NOT do when Venus (or any other planet) is retrograde.
But now that you know that Venus actually starts a new cycle when retrograde, it makes sense it comes with new beginnings.
That’s not the case in the first half of Venus retrograde. The first 20 days of Venus retrograde are about letting go of the old, and NOT a time for new beginnings. This is when old lovers or unfinished things from the past come into your life – so that you can finally deal with them.
So yes, the first half of Venus retrograde is about letting go of something we value.
However, when we start the second half of Venus retrograde things take a completely different turn.
Born Again
This is a little-known secret but exactly in the middle of the Venus retrograde, when Venus is conjunct the Sun and closest to the Earth, this is the best time for a new beginning. This is when you have more free will than ever. In the heart of the Sun, you can manifest whatever your heart desires.
This can also be a time of confusion. When Venus is conjunct the Sun, she is “invisible” disappearing in the glare of the Sun. Things may not be what they seem. But now, more than ever, it is important to listen to your heart.
Let the heat of the Sun burn you, just like Venus throws herself into the arms of the Sun, just like Inanna is killed by her alter-ego, Ereshkigal.
If you do it, you will finally shed your old skin, and let go of whatever is no longer serving you.
And then, just like Venus is born again, this time in the morning sky, a new you will emerge.
At the time Venus is conjunct the Sun, she is as close to the Earth as she can be. This is the time to have an honest look at your core values and discover what you hold most dear.
Yes, Venus retrograde can initially come with a loss. You will have to let go of old values, relationships, or your attitude to these relationships. But if you do it, then your life will be completely transformed.
Even if Venus conjunct the Sun will come with great insights and clarity – this doesn’t mean you should make big decisions yet. It will take a few more days until Venus will appear in the sky again (Venus will rise as a morning star for the 1st time around June 10th, just before sunrise). This is when things will start to make more sense to you.
Venus Morning Star, Venus Evening Star
Venus retrograde is that part of the 19 months or 584-day Venus cycle when Venus changes from an evening star to a morning star.
Venus spends half of the cycle as a morning star and the other half of the cycle as an evening star.
These two faces of Venus correspond to the two signs Venus rules: Taurus and Libra.
Taurus has the characteristics of Venus as a morning star, and Libra has the characteristics of Venus as an evening star.
When Venus rises a morning star, before the Sun, she is straightforward, sensual, and keen to meet her needs and desires.
Venus morning star is about self-love – about learning how to love yourself for who you are, straight and simple.
You were born with Venus as a morning star if your Venus is before your Sun in your natal chart.
EXAMPLE: If you are a Virgo, but your Venus is in Leo or Cancer, you are a Venus morning star. If you are a Virgo and your Venus is also in Virgo, Venus has to be before the Sun (e.g. Venus is at 10° Virgo, and Sun is at 20° Virgo) to be a Venus morning star.
When Venus rises as an evening star, she has (hopefully) already learned how to love herself. She is now is concerned with the love for another. That’s why she appears in the sky AFTER the Sun has set (the sunset is a Libra symbol, by the way).
Venus is now interested in others. You were born with Venus as an evening star if Venus is after your Sun in your natal chart.
EXAMPLE: if you are a Virgo, and your Venus is in Libra or Scorpio, you are a Venus evening star. If you are a Virgo and your Venus is also in Virgo, Venus has to be after the Sun (e.g. Sun is at 10° Virgo, and Venus is at 20° Virgo) to be an evening star.
Venus: Self-Love And Selfless Love
We need both types of Venus in our life: self-love (Venus morning star) and selfless love (Venus evening star).
Your Venus natal phase tells you which type of love you were born to master in this lifetime.
Are you a Venus morning star? You then need to master self-love. You need to learn how to love yourself. Attention, narcissism is not self-love, it’s, in fact, a lack of self-love masked as self-love. True self-love does not need validation from the outside.
Are you a Venus evening star? You then need to master selfless love, the love for the other. This doesn’t mean you have to become a doormat and do whatever it takes to please the other. It simply means to love ‘the other’ for who they are.
No matter what your natal Venus phase is, Venus retrograde, or Venus’ metamorphosis from an evening star into a morning star, is a reminder that in order to fully embrace Venus, you need to explore both.
You cannot love the other if you don’t love yourself. And what is self-love alone, if it cannot be shared with another?
Venus retrograde is a promise that just like Inanna rose from the dead, your heart can rise too, into more and more love, with every Venus retrograde cycle.
David Hodgson pulls together his experience to understand experience.
One of the great enduring mysteries of science lies in the question What does consciousness do? Or more specifically, What if anything is achieved by subjective conscious experiences, such as visual and auditory experiences, conscious thoughts, and feelings such as pain and hunger, that is not achieved by physical brain processes unfolding in accordance with physical laws of nature?
Many scientists and philosophers would answer nothing. According to them, the physical world operates in accordance with the laws of physics, chemistry and biology, and is closed to being affected by anything non-physical. Thus, any effects that conscious experiences may have can only come about by virtue of physical brain processes that are associated with and perhaps constitute these experiences.
This physicalist approach, however, raises a question. If everything is achieved by physical processes operating in accordance with physical laws, why are some of these processes associated with subjective conscious experiences, when this association does precisely nothing? From an evolutionary viewpoint, this would not seem to make sense: the selection of consciousness through the survival and reproduction of conscious organisms strongly suggests that consciousness confers an advantage on an organism that has it.
A possible answer is that somehow conscious experiences are inevitably associated with certain advantageous physical processes, so that when these advantageous processes were selected in evolution, consciousness was selected with them. Just as, for example, a polar bear can’t have the useful warmth of its coat without its non-useful weight, we can’t have some kinds of useful operations carried out by brains without the non-useful conscious experiences.
However, nothing remotely plausible has ever been suggested as to why this should be so. Indeed, the best suggestions offered by physicalists as to why the brain processes associated with conscious experiences are advantageous, are to the effect that they carry out useful information-processing – which is just what can be done, without consciousness, by a computer. This has led some physicalists to suggest that consciousness is a kind of fiction, or alternatively that computers are (or with more processing power will become) conscious. But these suggestions are, I suggest, highly unlikely to be true. There are some scientists and philosophers who oppose the physicalist view, and who argue on evolutionary and other grounds that consciousness itself must have an advantageous role. Surprisingly, though, there is a dearth of suggestions from them too as to a plausible role for consciousness.
I want to offer a specific and straightforward proposal as to what the role of consciousness is:
Consciousness enables an organism to respond to circumstances grasped as wholes, not just to constituent features that can engage with laws or rules of computation.
To expand a little:
The evolutionary advantage of consciousness is that it enables an organism to determine and/or shape a response to circumstances facing it that has regard, not only to features that can engage with laws of nature and/or computational rules, but also to whole combinations of features that are particular and perhaps unique to the circumstances and cannot as wholes engage with laws or rules.
Subjectivity, Qualia and Unity
My suggested role takes account of three striking and puzzling features of conscious experiences: subjectivity, qualia and unity.
First, subjectivity. Conscious experiences are experiences had ‘from the inside’ by a conscious subject. They are not like objective features of the world, equally available for observation by anyone in a position to observe them. Other people may know that I am in pain, but only I feel my pain. Conscious experiences are part of a subject’s take on the world; and it is reasonable to think that these experiences contribute to the subject ’s response to the world.
Second, qualia. Conscious experiences have features or qualities that go beyond the physical processes that seem to cause them: the look of colours, the feel of pain, and so on. These features have been called qualia. For example, there seems to be nothing about the wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, or the physical brain processes caused by visually encountering them, that captures or explains the actual look of a blue sky. Although a computer can display blue on its screen, there is no reason to think a computer actually experiences the colour blue or knows what the colour blue looks like.
Third, unity. A conscious experience is a unity in the sense that many features are experienced all-at-once by the subject. This is particularly striking in the case of visual experiences, in which a subject is aware of many features of an observed scene, and generally grasps them all-at-once in a unified experience or ‘gestalt’. How this happens when different features such as shapes and colours are processed by different parts of the brain is itself a mystery, which has been called the binding problem of consciousness. Again, while a computer can process features of information it has by operations determined by computational rules, there is no reason to think that it can grasp combinations of features as whole gestalts.
Laws, Rules and Gestalts
I need to say a bit more about features that can engage with laws of nature and/or computational rules, and combinations of features that cannot as wholes engage with them.
It is characteristic of laws and rules that they apply generally over a range of circumstances. They must engage with types or classes of features that different circumstances have in common, or with variable quantities in the case of mathematical rules. So while laws and rules can apply to individual unique circumstances, they engage with features of these circumstances only in so far as each of these features is of a type or class, and/or is a variable quantity.
Circumstances encountered and perceived by living organisms do have constituent features that are common to different circumstances, and thus could be features that engage with laws or rules. Even simple qualia, had in common by different subjects or by the same subject at different times, could do so. However, each set of circumstances also has combinations of features that are not of a type or class but are particular and perhaps unique to that set of circumstances; and except to the extent that these combinations of features might be adequately represented as wholes in terms of types and mathematical variables, they cannot as wholes engage with laws or rules.
When a conscious organism such as a human being experiences some set of circumstances, features of what is experienced are combined into unified gestalts, such as visual experiences combining many features of an observed scene. I have argued in detail elsewhere that since these feature-rich experiences are combinations of qualia, they can’t be adequately represented in terms of types and mathematical variables; and since they are particular and perhaps unique combinations of features, they can ’t as wholes engage with laws or rules. My suggestion is that, although these gestalts cannot as wholes engage with laws or rules of any kind, they may plausibly as wholes make a contribution to our decisions, because we can respond to them.
There are of course unconscious computational processes of our brains that do engage with constituent features of what we experience (or with representations of them) in terms of types and mathematical variables. These processes are essential to our having conscious experiences at all, and are essential in other ways to our decisions and actions. But I suggest there is in addition, in our conscious decision-making and action, a contribution from our grasping whole combinations of features; and since this response can ’t be determined by laws or rules, it isn’t one that could be achieved by non-conscious information-processing.
My suggestion is that the capacity to respond in this way to particular and perhaps unique combinations of circumstances is advantageous, even though it must also be fallible because its reliability is not assured by any rules or laws. This advantage explains why consciousness has been promoted by evolutionary processes.
George Gershwin Gestalts
An example I sometimes give is that of George Gershwin composing his melody ‘The Man I Love’. This melody has both general and quantitative features in common with other melodies. These features, being general and quantitative, can engage with general rules, so that the melody could readily be identified by applying computational rules. No doubt such an appealing melody has constituent features that can push buttons in our emotional make-up that have been established by evolution and environment. But the way the melody sounds, and even the way some two- and four-bar chunks of it sound, is unique to this melody; and the experience of such a unique melody or chunk of melody, as a whole, is an example of what I mean by a gestalt that cannot engage with laws or rules.
When Gershwin was composing the melody, possibilities for how it should proceed must have been thrown up by unconscious processes. But he also must have consciously appraised these possibilities as he composed, to decide whether to adopt them, modify them or look for other possibilities. Ultimately he must have consciously appraised the melody itself, to decide whether to assent to it as his final composition or to refine it further. I suggest that in appraising the possibilities and the melody, Gershwin was responding to gestalts of the possibilities and of the melody, which because of their uniqueness and feature-richness could not engage as wholes with pre-existing rules of any kind.
The same argument applies with even greater force to the creation of ground-breaking works that defy existing aesthetic standards, such as Wagner ’s Tristan und Isolde or Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. The creation of works like these requires aesthetic judgments to be made by the creators, which must take account of whole gestalts that could not engage with pre-existing laws or rules of any kind.
I suggest that the argument also applies to human decision-making generally, whenever we take account of whole feature-rich gestalt experiences in shaping our decisions and actions.
Some Reasons
I can’t explain how we can respond to gestalts in ways not determined by rules – this would require a far greater understanding of consciousness than is available at present – but that we can do so is supported by the very fact that we do experience whole feature-rich gestalts ‘all-at-once’, and by many other reasons. Here are a few.
Any decision or action that can be determined by the operation of general rules on existing circumstances can be determined by computation, without consciousness: this seems obvious, and it is confirmed by Alan Turing’s arguments, and by the existence and performance of computers. Our brains do undoubtedly have a prodigious capacity for unconscious computations. Think for example of the computations necessary to give us three-dimensional vision, with stability of viewed scenes despite voluntary movements of head and eyes, or those necessary to enable us to balance and to catch balls. Though most of us can’t plug directly into this computing power, there are reports of people who have done so, not necessarily to their advantage: in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, for example, Oliver Sacks wrote about autistic twins who enjoyed exchanging multi-digit prime numbers. If optimal decisions could be made by computations alone, why do we have our clumsy, fallible conscious processes at all?
The fact is that conscious experiences are heavily involved in our decisions, particularly when we are faced with a novel situation requiring some significant decision or action. Much unconscious information processing seems to be finely tuned to support conscious experiences, in which currently important information is presented simply and vividly, in the manner of an executive summary prepared for a decision-maker in business or government. The computer scientist Marvin Minsky once dismissed consciousness as an imperfect summary of what is going on in the brain; but he failed to recognize that there must be an evolutionary advantage in having this summary. Surely, we have these executive summaries just because we can respond to them in ways not available to unconscious computation; that is, in ways not determined by laws or rules.
I contend that one important way in which we use and respond to gestalt experiences is in plausible reasoning. Most human reasoning is not algorithmic: that is, it does not (overtly at least) proceed in accordance with rules of logic, mathematics or probability, or any other rules that could be incorporated into a computer program. Rather, it is informal, plausible reasoning, in which the premisses or data do not entail the conclusions by virtue of applicable rules, but rather support them as a matter of reasonable judgment. Arguments of Hume, Popper and others, particularly as developed by the American philosopher Hilary Putnam, show that plausible reasoning cannot be fully explained in terms of rules for good reasoning, whether they be rules of logic or mathematics or probability or whatever.
Consistently with this, consciously held reasons for decisions and actions are often inconclusive. There is an apparent gap between reasons on the one hand and decisions and actions on the other. Hume said we always act in accordance with the preponderance of our desires. But that assumes that desires, like forces in Newtonian physics, are commensurable (i.e. are of types that can mix together), so that there is always a single ‘resultant’ desire that can direct our decisions and actions; whereas in truth there is no common scale on which (say) a feeling of hunger can be explicitly weighed against a feeling of obligation to carry out a promised task. If desires conflict, the outcome is not determined by any overt preponderance of one over the other (there can be no preponderance of incommensurables because they cannot be compared), but by plausible reasoning to a decision that takes account of their different characters. In this plausible reasoning we use and respond to gestalt experiences.
Of course plausible reasoning is fallible and, as Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky and others have shown, it is affected by unconscious biases. But plausible reasoning is indispensable, and biases can be addressed and their effect minimized only by careful conscious appreciation of them, that is, by plausible reasoning – certainly not by leaving it to the unconscious computational processes that are the source of the biases.
My proposal thus offers an explanation of why conscious experiences enable us to live more successfully than if our decisions and actions were determined by unconscious processes alone. It gives a function to the three most striking puzzles about conscious experiences: subjectivity, qualia and unity. And as I have argued elsewhere, it also opens the way to a robust account of free will and responsibility.
Conflict with Science?
It’s been put to me that my proposal is courageous, in the Yes Minister sense, in that by suggesting that the physical world is open to non-physical influences, it conflicts with well-established science. Well, it does conflict with Newtonian physics, as interpreted by Pierre Laplace. But science has moved on since the nineteenth century; and while quantum mechanics supports randomness rather than indeterministic choice, it plainly leaves it open that physical events may be affected by conscious experiences and choices.
These are large and difficult questions, and I cannot explore them here. What I do say is that the reasons supporting my proposal are strong, and the correct understanding of fundamental science is unclear. If conscious experiences are truly efficacious, as I suggest they must be, the reasons for thinking they have this efficacy only by virtue of physical processes and physical laws are not compelling. Thus my proposal is a plausible one, indeed so far as I’m aware the only plausible proposal there is for assigning a specific role for conscious experiences that could not be performed by unconscious processes.
David Hodgson is a Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. He is the author of Consequences of Utilitarianism (1967) and The Mind Matters (1991), both published by OUP, and of numerous philosophical articles, a selection of which can be found at users.tpg.com.au/raeda.
New York (CNN Business)Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley have successfully disembarked the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and entered the International Space Station.SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft docked at the space station at 10:16 a.m. ET Sunday morning after launching from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center Saturday and traveling 19 hours. After making initial contact with the ISS, Crew Dragon went through a series of steps to further mate the spacecraft with its port — including linking power and creating an air-locked seal — before the first of two hatches were opened.Behnken and Hurley are expected to remain on board the space station for one to three months, or for a maximum of 110 days.
NASA, SpaceX launch astronauts from US soil for the first time in a decadeOn Sunday morning, the spacecraft made a careful approach to the space station and then made a “soft capture” — meaning Crew Dragon made its first physical contact with its docking port at the International Space Station. Crew Dragon then made a “hard capture,” which involved using 12 latches to create an air-locked seal between Behnken and Hurley’s crew cabin and their entrance to the space station and linked up Crew Dragon’s power supply to the ISS.Sponsor content by CNN UnderscoredYour guide to the best nonstick pansA quality nonstick pan is a true kitchen essential; from stir-frys to burgers to omelettes, the stovetop staple basically does it all.
PHOTOS: SpaceX’s historic launchSpectators watch the SpaceX launch from a bridge in Titusville, Florida, on Saturday, May 30. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon capsule is carrying astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken toward the International Space Station.
Behnken and Hurley emerged, smiling, from the capsule around 1:15 pm ET. They were greeted by fellow NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, who were already on board the orbiting laboratory.close dialog
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine called the station from the space agency’s mission control center in Houston, Texas.”We are so, so proud of everything you’ve done for our country, and in fact, to inspire the world,” Bridenstine said.When asked about their 19-hour journey to the space station, Hurley said he “couldn’t be happier” about the performance of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.The astronauts were able to sleep for a few hours, share meals and use the on board toilet during their journey. “The Dragon was a slick vehicle, and we had good airflow, so we had an excellent, excellent evening,” Hurley said.
Crew Dragon has a name: Endeavour
Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley gave a tour of their Crew Dragon spacecraft using onboard cameras while the vehicle was making its way toward the International Space Station on Saturday evening.And they announced a name for the vehicle: Endeavour.NASA✔@NASA
Welcome aboard the @SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft!
88KTwitter Ads info and privacy18.3K people are talking about thisThe astronauts picked that name for a few reasons, Hurley said on NASA and SpaceX’s webcast. On one hand, the name honors the years-long endeavor that was returning human spaceflight to the United States after the Space Shuttle retired in 2011. And it honors the longtime friendship that Hurley and Behnken have shared, and their histories with NASA: Both astronauts began their spaceflight careers with missions aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. (That vehicle’s namesake was an 18th century ship commanded by British explorer James Cook — hence the British spelling of “Endeavour.”)
Special cargo: A glittery dinosaur
NASA and SpaceX already revealed that a couple of special artworks were aboard Crew Dragon with the astronauts. But livestream viewers spotted a small, sparkly dinosaur toy on board with Hurley and Behnken as well.
What to know about SpaceX’s historic Crew Dragon missionDuring their update from orbit on Saturday, the astronauts shared what that was all about: They both have young sons who are big fans of dinosaurs, and the astronauts allowed their kids to vote on which of their toys would be stowed away on this mission.The selection was a blue and pink, sequin-studded Apatosaurus.
What this milestone means
Crew Dragon and the astronauts have now made it through two major milestones — launch and docking — without encountering any major issues. That’s a huge win for SpaceX, which has been working toward this moment since the company was founded in 2002.It’s also a point of celebration for NASA, which made the controversial decision to ask the private sector to design vehicles for transportation to the ISS after the Space Shuttle program retired in 2011. NASA has long partnered with the private sector, but it had never before handed over design, development and testing of a human-rated spacecraft to a commercial company.After delays, development hiccups and some political roadblocks, a successful first launch of astronauts will mark a huge win for folks within the space agency who hope to continue using more extensive commercial contracts. That includes for NASA’s ambitions to put people on the moon in 2024.
Translators: Mike Zonta, Melissa Goodnight, Richard Branam, Hanz Bolen, Sarah Flynn
SENSE TESTIMONY: Anger and frustration from a history of lost lives and livelihoods cause riotous explosion of energy.
5th Step Conclusions:
1) Truth is the only cause and only effect of all action, always triumphant, the all knowing, all-finding present which includes the so-called past and the so-called future, infinite of mind and body, automatically inclusive of universal unearned and unearnable income/livelihood.
2) Truth is omnipresent constant balance omnipotent fulfilled beingness being all there is.
3) One Infinite Consciousness, is Being the miraculous Whole of all Life, and the limitless Ways of sustaining it — which is unfolding in evermore harmonious equipoise, and motivating the ecstatic expression of means.
4) Truth is the strongest feeling of excitement, totally, wholly, and completely satisfied, Being the only Thinker, the only Means of valuing value, this Divine erudite Consciousness Awareness androgynous Identity, worthy of explosive applause, Being Ergon the only activity
5) Essential Harmonious Source is known and True, of Sound Well Being in and of Each and Every Individuation and expression As the Complete and total Power of Being, the Cause of All There Is Instantaneously Universal, the Integrity that is Always Everywhere. —All One Essential Harmonious Source is known and Expressed. Everywhere.
Developed by Jacob L. Moreno, psychodrama includes elements of theater, often conducted on a stage, or a space that serves as a stage area, where props can be used. A psychodrama therapy group, under the direction of a licensed psychodramatist, reenacts real-life, past situations (or inner mental processes), acting them out in present time. Participants then have the opportunity to evaluate their behavior, reflect on how the past incident is getting played out in the present and more deeply understand particular situations in their lives.[2]
Psychodrama offers a creative way for an individual or group to explore and solve personal problems. It may be used in a variety of clinical and community-based settings in which other group members (audience) are invited to become therapeutic agents (stand-ins) to populate the scene of one client.
Besides benefits to the designated client, “side-benefits” may accrue to other group members, as they make relevant connections and insights to their own lives from the psychodrama of another.
A psychodrama is best conducted and produced by a person trained in the method, called a psychodrama director.[3]
In a session of psychodrama, one client of the group becomes the protagonist, and focuses on a particular, personal, emotionally problematic situation to enact on stage. A variety of scenes may be enacted, depicting, for example, memories of specific happenings in the client’s past, unfinished situations, inner dramas, fantasies, dreams, preparations for future risk-taking situations, or unrehearsed expressions of mental states in the here and now.[2] These scenes either approximate real-life situations or are externalizations of inner mental processes. Other members of the group may become auxiliaries and support the protagonist by playing other significant roles in the scene[2], or they may step in as a “double” who plays the role of the protagonist.
A core tenet of psychodrama is Moreno’s theory of “spontaneity-creativity”.[4] Moreno believed that the best way for an individual to respond creatively to a situation is through spontaneity, that is, through a readiness to improvise and respond in the moment.[5] By encouraging an individual to address a problem in a creative way, reacting spontaneously and based on impulse, they may begin to discover new solutions to problems in their lives and learn new roles they can inhabit within it.[4] Moreno’s focus on spontaneous action within the psychodrama was developed in his Theatre of Spontaneity, which he directed in Vienna in the early 1920s.[6] Disenchanted with the stagnancy he observed in conventional, scripted theatre, he found himself interested in the spontaneity required in improvisational work. He founded an improvisational troupe in the 1920s. This work in the theatre impacted the development of his psychodramatic theory.[5]
1of4Michael Franti has shifted from politics to positivity.Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle2of4Michael Franti and Sara Agah Franti sit with their son Taj Franti at their home in San Francisco in February.Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle3of4Michael Franti cradles his the feet of his 17-month-old son, Taj Franti, at their San Francisco home on Feb. 10.Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle
Michael Franti has toured the world for three decades playing socially conscious, politically charged music. But the San Francisco resident’s new album, set to drop June 19 in the middle of the most intense political campaign in a generation, is nearly politics-free.
That is by design, Franti told The Chronicle’s “It’s All Political” podcast. To him, it’s not all political anymore.
Instead, the longtime activist is appealing to our human commonality at a time when racist rhetoric is peaking, people are filling the streets protesting police brutality, and Americans reflexively retreat into their partisan camps instead of seeking compromise. The title of Franti’s new album reflects his mantra in this era when shades of gray have disappeared from public life: “Work Hard and Be Nice.”
“I think it’s important to do (political music) from time to time, but I also feel like it’s important to express the full rainbow of human emotion,” said Franti, 53. “What music helps us do is … unlock those feelings that are so often bottled up.
“Our goal in politics is not to get candidates elected,” he said. “Our goal in life is to get candidates elected who can then improve the quality of lives for people so that people can be happier.”
Franti said his attitude began to change around the time he recorded one of his most politically charged albums, 2006’s “Yell Fire!” written at the height of the Iraq War.
In the title track, Franti sings:
“They tellin’ you to never worry about the future
They tellin’ you to never worry about the torture
They tellin’ you that you’ll never see the horror
Spend it all today and we will bill you tomorrow
Three-piece suits and bank accounts in Bahamas
Wall Street crime will never send you to the slammer
Tell all the children in the arms of their mommas
The F-15 is a homicide bomber.”
Franti had traveled to Iraq 11 months after the war started, disturbed that he hadn’t heard more about its human toll in Baghdad, whose population of 5.4 million was roughly half the size of the Bay Area.
Shortly after Franti landed, an Iraqi family showed him where they hid in the basement of their home during U.S. bombing raids. The father described how they covered themselves with blankets as protection from the spraying shards of glass from their windows.
Franti was moved, imagining how he’d have to protect his three sons if his home was under attack. When he returned with his hosts to their living room, he played them “Bomb the World.” He wrote the antiwar song in 2003 as the Iraq War ramped up:
“We can chase down all our enemies
Bring them to their knees
We can bomb the world to pieces
But we can’t bomb it into peace.”
“I thought this family would be like, super moved and say, ‘Thank you for identifying with our struggle,’ ” Franti said. “But I was stunned when his face just soured.”
Franti recalled that the Iraqi man told him, “in very harsh tones, ‘How dare you come into my house and sing a song about peace when your country is actually bombing me?’”
The man told Franti that he wanted to hear “songs that make us laugh, dance, cry, sing, move and somehow move our hearts right now, because we are stuck in our home and we can’t do anything else but be right here. We need some relief.”
That is what Franti wants to provide now — some relief at a time when he hears an increasing amount of racism.
The Oakland-born Franti is of mixed race, the son of a white mother and a father who was African American and Native American. His mother put him up for adoption when he was very young, he says, because she feared her family would not accept him.
He was adopted by Charles Franti and Carole Wistl, a white couple, and he grew up in Davis, where Charles Franti was a professor of epidemiology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.
Back then, Franti recalls that the Republicans he encountered were “fiscally conservative, but they weren’t mean, and if they were racist, they generally kept it to themselves. And I’m not saying that Republicans are the only ones who are racist, because all of us have prejudices.”
Americans are less likely to keep their racist thoughts to themselves now, he said, as “the political dialogue had changed so much since Trump started running for office.” In November, the FBI reported that it had recorded the highest number of hate crimes based on prejudice in 16 years.
Franti said Trump is “giving voice to this kind of hatred has allowed people who maybe had those kind of feelings to now bring them out into the open. … And that’s why I feel like the title of the record became so important to me.”
Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Franti was scheduled to be on tour now with country star Kenny Chesney. That might seem like an unlikely pairing to Franti’s longtime fans, given that his music ranges from hip-hop to funk, soul and reggae and Chesney — who voted for Republican John McCain over Barack Obama in 2008 — is “is not political at all in his music,” Franti said.
But Franti said he and Chesney, who have become friends over the years, are primarily focused on bringing positivity and connection to the world. Franti hopes that when they do finally tour, their fan bases can intermingle and … connect.
“It hurts him as much as it hurts me to see our country have so much debate,” Franti said. “I don’t care who people vote for necessarily. Ultimately I’m concerned with the state of our country, and I hope that Trump doesn’t get re-elected. But every person has the right to choose whoever they want to vote for.
“But I don’t think it’s every person’s right to just sit behind their keyboard and be an a-hole to every single person they come across,” Franti said. “Whether you have the right to do that is not is not really the question to me. I feel like it’s morally wrong to just be mean to people for the sake of being mean.”
Science, like love, is a means to that transcendence, to that soaring experience of the oneness of being fully alive. The scientific approach to nature and my understanding of love are the same: Love asks us to get beyond the infantile projections of our personal hopes and fears, to embrace the other’s reality. This kind of unflinching love never stops daring to go deeper, to reach higher.
