Doing the Right Thing

This is sort of a sequel to the post Write One True Sentence and shares with that post a significant degree of ambiguity. So I will share with you the advice I would often give my students prior to a rather obtuse lecture: “Don’t worry if, at first, this lecture doesn't seem to make sense. Just keep listening with an open mind and it may eventually become clear.” So, with that proviso, let’s give it a shot.

I read in a recent edition ofThe Art Newspaper, that a a Swiss company was using AI to authenticate the paintings of Old Masters. In this case a previously authenticated 1505 portrait by Albrecht Druer. They train an AI app using hundreds of previously authenticated images and some examples of known forgeries. They would then show the app the image in question, the Druer portrait from 1505. The AI determined the image’s authenticity at about 82% certainty.

Interesting, but somewhat in conflict with a more “quasi-metaphysical” process for authenticating - or at least evaluating - one’s decisions and behavior drawn from an older, and less computer intensive, method for discovering art forgeries.

In this method, no doubt an older version of the AI concept, you take a high resolution black and white digital image of a known, authenticated image. Then you subject the suspected forgery to the same procedure, making sure that the suspect image is exactly the same size and resolution as the authenticated original.

What you now have are two images that are exactly the same size. Next you digitally superimpose the two images. The idea is that even the best forgeries are slightly flawed. They will miss a line here, a spacing there, flaws that are often missed in colored forgeries or forgeries in which tiny errors are missed for lack of size. By superimposing our two matched high resolution black and white images, these flaws are revealed. “Forgery detected! Danger! Will Robinson!” “Danger!” Neat, huh?

Okay, but now I’m going to get a bit - well, more than a bit - weird. So bear with me. The method of "life authentication" I am exploring is a version of what goes under the rubric of “content analysis” in university communication, English and related disciplines.  The first step is to turn one’s personal belief system into something that can be graphically represented. The sort of things we encounter most often in the sciences - graphs that represent elements present in some physical sample, peaks on a screen that show how much iron, or any other element there is the sample. Images that allow us to match finger prints, or DNA. Those are rather precise data points. But my proposed method rests on images of beliefs, attitudes, behavior, values; far more slippery data points.

Harder, but possible. There are lots of related studies out the in communication, psychology, education, etc. But what makes this a bit trickier is those studies, if they are worth their salt at all, are based on large groups of individuals from which generalizable conclusions can be drawn. X number of people favor fossil fuel power, Y favor geothermal, etc.

But that is not really our concern. We want to create a personalized template that represents our own personal beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors so we can hopefully make a stab at understanding how well we are doing in living up to our own expectations. These are very slippery concepts, asking us to play with questions like  “I believe it is mandatory to always tell the absolute truth, no matter its effect on others.” Or “I believe it is Ok to eat meat.”  Or “Killing somebody is self-defense is not murder,” “I should be free to put whatever I want into my body, no person has the right to interfere.” “I should always assist those in need.” Far more believe-centered, personal belief issues. Very different from elements in a meteorite sample stuff.  Not many sharp lines in these personal templates. ( A bit of a spoiler  -  here: we usually  cling to more than one template and we need to blend them.)

Ok, let’s talk templates. Where do they come from? They are, at least initially learned. First from the home into which we are born. There we learn the basics of language and behavior, and how to use language to elicit the behavior we desire. Do we obtain desired behavior - food, attention, privileges - by following the “rules of the home,” or by acting out until those in power give in? Pretty Pavlovian stuff. But eventually we move out into the wider world and encounter more formal templates. Usually schools with specific rules and expectations. Again pretty Pavlovian: spell the word this way, use this sentence structure, use these words, not those. 

But interestingly it is in these initial interactions with the wider world that we begin to encounter formal templates with cultural, moral, political and ethical implications. I still remember in the 50s, hand over heart, class rising to repeat the pledge of allegiance. No more questionable than long division, and easier to understand. I had a friend who went to Catholic school with even more templates to confront. What, we sometimes wondered, did a third grader need to confess? And did the guy behind the curtain really have a direct line to God who assessed the transgressions of every third grader in the world and assigned specific acts of penitence? We figured no, so I helped him make stuff up.

As we grew older the “one-size-fits-all” cultural templates of belief and behavior were beginning to rub up against the often confusing realities of living life. But life’s templates continue to multiply: home, school, religious affiliation, academic specialty, profession, ethnicity, gay, straight, bi-, vegan, carnivore, athletic team fan identity, republican, democrat, independent, Taylor Swift - pro or con? I know, I know, I have left your favorite identity template out. I apologize, but you get the idea. Templates that are chock full of “thou shalt” and “thou shalt nots;” seemingly black and white but are really so full of grey you could paint a herd of elephants.

Yet we really only have a couple of options here. Option 1, the easiest, inherited from the fable (fable ‘cause they don’t really do this) of the ostrich hiding their head in the sand to avoid anything they don’t want to think about; you become a fundamentalist and choose one template to be the one true template and follow all its demands. Any old template will do. An inerrant religious tome, Bible, Quran, Vedas, Tripitaka, the Mahayana Sutras. The party platform or unique beliefs of some political entity. The writings of some advocate of a particular template; Edgar Cayce, L. Ron  Hubbard, J. K. Rowling - it really doesn’t matter.

For the fundamentalist the important thing is that the texts or the beliefs of the prophet removes doubt and the necessity of personal thought or reflection. Nice work if you can get it, but be careful of the inevitable contradictions.

For myself, and I would guess for many of you, the more difficult task is the merging of the templates. For me it often feels like trying to work a jigsaw puzzle with no picture on the box or the pieces. It is an exercise in position, agreement and fit that really can only be figured out through experiencing life. You have to find, and fit together those pieces of experience that make a pleasing, coherent, justifiable - and, what the hell, - good, truthful, kind, humane, template for you.

Siddhartha went through many varied life experiences before finding enlightenment and becoming the Buddha. Enlightenment, wow, that is probably setting the bar a bit high, but it might not be asking too much for each of us to try for at least a glow in the fog. A glow that flickers a bit, sometimes may hide for a bit behind a deceptive cloud, but gradually comes into view again, a bit brighter, a tad more constant.

And how do we begin to build that more constant template, that more illuminative flame? Ah, patience, grasshopper! Or as Heinlein put it in his 1961 sci-fi novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, “Waiting is.” But to expand upon that a bit, it is not just a question of passive listening, it is listening and paying attention, listening and looking for patterns that point the way to a worthy life. I’m going to cheat a bit here since I have been trying to follow my own advice for a couple of decades now, sometimes successfully, sometimes with astounding failure - painful to myself and others.

 

But let me share a couple of “templates” that I have tried to blend.  Teaching media for 40 years it should not surprise you to learn that I draw some of these template from narratives drawn from the media. Now, lower that disdainful upper lip for a bit. It is true that for decades the “cultural influencers” of their day were deign to admit the narratives carried by flickering light into whatever canon they chose to adhere to. When growing up, we kept the TV in the basement. But why do you think the chorus in Greek tragedies would flutter their arms to presage the coming of a storm, and perhaps the arrival of the gods? Because they didn’t have classic stage lights to hide behind the proscenium for crying out loud.

Stage writers from Euripides, to Shakespeare, to Jane Cavendish brought significant narrative templates to our attention via media other than the printed page or the various pulpits of the sage in current vogue. So let us be open to some TV templates. Back in 1981 I wrote an article with two of my graduate students (in the Western Journal of Speed Communication with Lawrence Bernabo and Richard Hudson) titled Televisions New Humane  Collectivity. In that piece we asserted that:

“Analysis of the manifest content of Taxi, Barney Miller, Lou Grant, and M*A*S*H reveals three predominant fantasy themes: the realization of significant others, the alliance in action, and membership into personhood. From these three themes emerges a rhetorical vision, the new humane collectivity, which focuses on a meaningful and rewarding existence based on humane, sympathetic awareness of and concern for the group, the individuals who comprise the group, and the society which surrounds it.”

Or in real people-speak, “we should treat individuals kindly, and carry that sympathetic and kindly attitude into our behavior with all groups of people - friends, family, check-out clerks, wait staff, - etc. So that became one template by which I tried to live.

Eventually, over a number of decades, I continually tried to refine that into a cleaner, clearer set of guiding principles with which I could find my way in an increasingly adult life. The result was what I have come to call Distilled Harmony.

As I have written before it is comprised of four hierarchical tenets:

First tenet: Foster Harmony

Second tenet: Enable Beauty

Third tenet: Distill Complexity

Fourth tenet: Oppose Harm.

More recently I have come to the realization that the hierarchy is more flexible than I had previously imagined. One can envision the Distilled Harmony hierarchy as a simple pie chart like this:

[Please excuse these clumsey freehand drawings, which I cannot rotate 😟]:

But that would be wrong. A more realistic image would better resemble a round slightly under-inflated ballon that morphs shape as you squeeze it. Sort of like this:

You see, the various tenets shift situationally as we move through life. The was a picture of the path of the recent solar eclipse that might make this clearer. Let me see if I can find it.

There we go, I think. Hope it will paste to The Wall. Anyhow, as you look at the path of the eclipse, think about this: A person observing the eclipse in any one of those circles will see a different version of reality. It is the same underlying solar event, but a different perceptual reality.

Life is much the same. In the sketches above the small circle in the middle is us. But as we move along the path of our lives the dominance of the tenets shift. They will rarely shift dominance, but sometimes may. For example if we walk into a voting booth and know one candidate has a criminal record or manifests crude behavior toward women, then Opposing Harm may partner with Foster Harmony to influence our choice. Or if we find ourselves in the midst of a gorgeous fall forest, or awesome sunset, Enable Beauty may send us scurrying for our sketchpad or camera.

Different specific situations like that affect to some degree the semi-flexible tenets of Distilled Harmony, but each informs the "me" at the center and our search for a constant, somehow balanced, understanding and manifestation of the self.

And now an unavoidable, but related footnote, which I may explore further in a subsequent Wall called "I Love It When the Data Support My Biases."

On April 7th, the online version of New Scientist published an article with the following lead [and a very cool image That I will try to share]:

"The multiverse could be much, much bigger than we ever imagined

The multiverse could be infinitely bigger than we ever imagined, according to a new interpretation of quantum mechanics that describes realms upon realms of parallel universes created with every decision we make."

This is a modest extension of the normal definition of the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics which Britannica defines thus:

"Basically, many-worlds proposes the idea that the quantum system doesn't actually decide. Rather, that at every junction where large everyday stuff interacts with the quantum system, the timeline of history splits and both possibilities happen on different alternate branches."

The important difference lies in this phrase: "at every junction where large everyday stuff interacts with the quantum system, the timeline of history splits."

The difference in the New Scientist" story is that it isn't just large everyday stuff that splits the timeline of history, it is every decision that we make. While exploring a new city you turn left at an intersection instead of right. BAM - the timeline of history shifts and two worlds spiral off, in one - the one we are "conscious of - you follow the left hand world, in another more hidden world's version of reality, another you explores the right.

I love this many, many, many, many worlds reading of quantum mechanics for a couple of reasons. First, in it real live theoretical physicists voice an existential view I [with zero background in physics] have held for a long time.

Two, and most important it - in some way - forgives me for all the questionable decisions I have made in my life. For example:

• When I chose to go to graduate school in Michigan and become a university professor, another me went to California to become a professional actor.
• When I decided to marry one high school sweetheart, another me married the other high school sweetheart I had dated the previous night.
• When I decided to get my degree in communication, another me apprenticed with a practicing artist and became painter/sculptor.

It is not that I regret the choices that I have made in my conscious reality, it is that I often wondered about what my life would have been like had I chosen another path. This new reading of quantum mechanics says I did both.

And here is an interesting extension. Even if choices I made in my conscious reality did harm to others, in other sides of the split in history's timeline, I made the right choice, and am - in one view of existence - forgiven.