What am I?

I want to take time out from the current discussion to respond to Steven Den Beste’s latest post. (I’ll try to get back to it next week.) Steven asks, “What makes me what I am?”

What am I? That can be answered in many ways. I am a particular human being; I am this body. But is the entire body really part of the essential me? I don't consider myself to be different – or to have died – if I trim my fingernails or get my hair cut. If I suffered a grievous injury and had a limb amputated, I would still be me. If I received a heart transplant, I would still be me. (And the donor of that heart would still be dead.)

We consider quadriplegics and "basket cases" (quadruple amputees) to still be alive and to still be themselves. So that means my first answer isn't correct. I am not this body. I must only be part of it. Then which part? What am I?

These are troubling questions for mechanistic atheists like me. We think of humans as walking fires, as complex biological mechanisms which exhibit properties of life, thought and self consciousness powered by controlled release of chemical energy through oxidation. But close examination of our conception of those properties makes clear that we don't really fully understand any of them. For each we have little difficulty describing paradigmatic cases which we are certain have the property in question, but around that center the boundaries are fuzzy. We do not really know where the boundaries are; we may never really be able to say.

I would like to give my answer. I have solved this problem for myself in much the same way that Steven resolves the question, “Are viruses alive?” (Answer: It doesn’t matter, we know what viruses are, whether we call it life or not is beside the point.) Of course, I don’t have an answer to his explicit question. In fact, I will add to his troubling examples one from my own life: When I feel sick, or tired, I feel like a different person. My thoughts are different, my feelings are different, my experience of life is different. Am I really a different person? If I were to have a chronic disease, would I be a different person? I’ll tell you why my answer is no.

My answer to the question, “What makes me what I am?” is: my identity. So that doesn’t sound like a tautology, I will talk a bit about identity. My identity is what I identify with. People are concerned with the fate of the things they identify with in the same way that they are concerned with themselves. Therefore, in a very real way people are those things.

I identify with many things: my self, my family, my friends, my country, other countries, the world, nature, the universe, also abstract concepts: freedom, truth, justice, certain specific ideas, etc. When something “good” happens regarding one of these things, it makes me happy. When something bad happens, it makes me sad.

But more than this: I believe, deep within me, for no logical reason, that life has purpose. In particular my life has purpose. I have no idea what that purpose is, though I believe that pursuing my values and protecting what I believe to be important is the way to achieve it. I deeply identify with this unknown purpose, and since it is immortal, I feel, so am I.

I think that to some extent, all of us struggle with the idea that perhaps, after all, life really is purposeless. It is a depressing thought. At some point I crossed my own Rubicon, and though I do have my moments of doubt, in some holistic sense, I know that I’m immortal. I know it, because I no longer fear death. (At least, not in the terrible, existential way that I once did.)

Scientists like to think in terms of forces and properties, and give them names: gravity, friction, charge, entropy, etc. What shall we call the force/property of purposefulness? Let me suggest one: God.

Near the end of Steven’s post, he makes this remarkable statement:

I do not harbor any doubt about my atheism. But it cannot be denied that atheism is cold and uncomforting, and that there is a price to be paid for believing in it. An atheist must at all times live with the idea that in the end nothing we think or do is really very significant, and we may not really matter at all.

Steven’s behavior, and everything I’ve read in his posts since I discovered him a few months ago, seems to deny this belief. In fact, the very statement of this statement denies its statement. (Like the statement, “I always lie.”)

Steven includes a large number of links to previous posts of his; unfortunately, I don’t have time to read them today. Perhaps one of them contains a rebuttal to this post, if I find it, I will try respond next week.

Organic Organization – Synthetic Organization

The most efficient way to organize things is hierarchy. This applies to everything from your desk drawers to Linnaean taxonomy to the army to Ford Motors. You divide things, concepts, people, tasks into ever smaller units, at each step organizing as efficiently as possible, choosing your steps so as to maximize human ability (too big a step, and it will be hard for a person to organize it, too small a step and you’ll be wasting human potential).

I suspect that a lot of my readers will be cringing inside by the time they finish reading that paragraph. They imagine themselves living or working in such a framework, being a cog in a human machine. Somehow, they feel such an existence would rob them of their humanity. (Many such people are also ardent supporters of socialism – an ideology explicitly modeled on just this notion of efficiency. Go figure.)

Artists, on the other hand, are frequently almost anarchists, refusing to be tied down to any human organization, refusing to cooperate in any grand task that will inhibit their freedom – all in the name of creativity. There is no creativity without freedom.

Indeed, efficiency and creativity are opposing forces – the former eliminates freedom, while the latter requires it. But what do you do if you are in a creative business? You have to produce. You have to be efficient. You have to compete. The laws of the marketplace won’t stop for you. One answer is to compromise. In the business world there is a particular compromise that is known as focusing on your area of expertise. It means don’t try to be creative in areas that are not your expertise, just try to do a good job implementing what is known. Save your creative resources for the one area that is most important to your business.

This strategy is important for all businesses. But what do you if your area of expertise is in a constant state of flux? This is what I call high-tech – when the technology upon which your industry is based is changing rapidly. There was a time when the internal combustion engine was high-tech – this was the era of the founding of the motor companies – Ford Motors, General Motors, etc. Now the technology is well known and the focus of the industry has shifted from creativity to efficiency.

Today’s high-tech is software (not all software, though), bio-tech, and communications. (I’ve probably missed some…) In these industries you see a flattening of hierarchies. But if hierarchies are flattened (i.e. there is less hierarchy – hierarchy is less used) then how are these businesses organized? The answer: rules.

I can feel my readers cringing again. Rules! You’ve replaced the tyranny of hierarchy with the tyranny of rules! Well, not necessarily. If there is a rule that you have to stop your car at a red light, does that increase freedom or decrease it? Of course, it decreases your freedom to drive through red lights, but aggregate effect of everybody following this rule is that it increases your freedom to drive.

One of the amazing things about rule-based organization is that you see it everywhere. Look out the window at the nearest tree. Is it organized or disorganized? In fact, it is highly organized; its branches are arranged symmetrically so it won’t fall over, it gathers energy from the sun, and nutrients from the earth, it grows and reproduces. But a tree has no central nervous system. There is no boss giving orders that propagate down the hierarchy, telling it what to do. Instead, each cell is programmed with a set of rules that tell it what to do. And if you step close and look at it carefully, it loses its symmetry and its apparent organization. From up close it looks chaotic. But because each cell has the right rules, somehow a high level of order underlies the apparent chaos.

What can be said of a tree can be said also about the ecosystem as a whole. There the rules are simpler – survival, where each organism is free to follow that rule according to its own strategy. The result, however, is a system – an ecosystem – that has a very particular kind of organization. I call it Organic Organization. It’s opposite, the organization of hierarchies – of the assembly line, of armies, and of government – I call Synthetic Organization.

One of the most astounding examples of Organic Organization is the one you’re using right now to read this post: the Internet. The technology to build the Internet was around for something like 30 years before it took off. It took that long because the real innovation of the Internet was not its technology, but what software engineers call its architecture – the rules of the system. When the right rules were implemented, it took off. The Internet is based on four sets of rules: IP (Internet Protocol), TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), HTTP (Hypertext Transmission Protocol), and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). These protocols are carefully constructed to increase the freedom of their users. Of course, they decrease your freedom to communicate in the sense that you are not allowed to “say whatever you want”. You have to follow the rules, and sometimes it can be a real burden. But by following the rules, you can do great things never dreamt of before.

It is a sad fact (sad to the creative anarchist, that is) that there are many things that cannot be done by one person alone – that can only be done by groups. But there is a way to square this circle, to increase your freedom and creativity, while simultaneously becoming part of an organized group – a properly chosen set of rules, an Organic Organization.

UPDATE: I was supposed to answer the riddle of the previous post in this post. But I’ve written enough for now. I’ll have to push it off one more post. But maybe you can guess where I’m going…

Something strange about Israel

There’s something strange about Israel. Okay, there are a lot of strange things about Israel, but I want to talk about one thing that I sometimes see mentioned, but I’ve never seen analyzed.

By most accounts Israel is the third-largest high-tech center in the world. What’s so strange about that? After all, someplace has to be the third largest high-tech center! Well, I grew up in the second-largest high-tech center in the world – Boston, Massachusetts, and I worked there in high-tech for two and a half years before moving to Israel. Something like 90% of the people there working in high-tech are from outside of the Boston area (many from outside the US) who came to Boston specifically to work in high-tech. The rest (like me) were children of people who came to Boston for the same reason.

I’m sure that the same is true for Silicon Valley, and for the lesser high-tech centers in the US. But, though many people come to Israel from abroad, none of them come specifically to work in high-tech. (The majority are fleeing oppression in countries like Russia, Ethiopia, France…) The distance from Jerusalem to Haifa, which contains most of Israel’s population, is approximately the same as the distance from San Jose to San Francisco, its population is slightly less – about 5 million – about the same as Massachusetts.

How can it be that the people who happened to be here created the world’s third-largest high-tech center – larger than any tech center in Europe, for example, which can draw on a continent-size population of over 300 million people? Joseph Morgenstern suggests a few possible answers:

The answer is rooted in part in the tradition of intellectual curiosity and analysis, which is an aspect of Jewish culture. It is a tradition that emphasizes education and that has produced, out of all numerical proportion, outstanding scientists and inventors. This age-old reverence for education has found expression in the development of a good Israeli public school system and excellent universities and institutes of science and technology.

If that doesn’t satisfy you then there’s this:

Even more likely, the technological accomplishments may be a result of the innate stubbornness, resilience, and creative drive of a polyglot people. Because of the multi-national mix of the population, many of the researchers have brought with them a variety of experiences and points of view acquired in different parts of the world. All are joined together by the determination to create a country which will become strong in spite of a lack of natural resources and of hostility on the part of most of its neighbors. This need for national security has led to the development of new defense technologies.

Or how about this:

Ambition for a better quality of life and higher standards of living has led to the creation of an export-driven economy. And most Israelis are aware that the ability to sell and succeed in the international marketplace is dependent on their products being more innovative and better priced than those of the country's competitors.

I don’t believe any of it. Or rather, I’m willing to believe all of it, but I don’t think it explains the facts. Even taken together, it’s hard to explain why Israel has more high-tech activity than countries like England, France and Germany – countries that each have more than ten times Israel’s population, and higher per-capita GNP. Look at these statistics from my last post:

In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the US

Israel is ranked #2 in the world for VC funds right behind the US.

I think that Israeli culture is somehow particularly well suited to high-tech. How so? I hope to talk about in my next post.

Facts about Israel

From News of the day:

Facts about the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population.

In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the largest number of startup companies than any other country in the world, except the US (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech).

Israel is ranked #2 in the world for VC funds right behind the US.

Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita.

With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and start-ups, Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world (apart from the Silicon Valley).

The cell phone was developed in Israel by Motorola-Israel. Motorola built its largest development center worldwide in Israel.

Windows NT software was developed by Microsoft-Israel.

The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel.

AOL's instant message program was designed by an Israeli software company.

Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel.

More great news

Israeli Minister of Finance Netanyahu says:

If we want to achieve 4-5% growth in the near future, we absolutely cannot increase the rate of expenditure. We will not use additional tax receipts for increasing expenditure, rather we will use them for continued tax reduction. If available, we will direct further receipts toward reducing the deficit. In a process of accelerated growth, we will generate further growth through the reduction of taxes for the people of Israel. The engines for tremendous growth in the economy are tax reductions. This is the strongest way to generate growth. We reduced individuals' taxes, and we reduced value-added tax. However, the VAT rate remains too high and should be reduced. If the rate of growth will surprise us and beat expectations, we will reduce the income tax and corporate taxes.

Go for it!

UPDATE: Note the translator's error: If the rate of growth will surprise us and beat expectations... should be: If the rate of growth surprises us and beats expectations... The former is the way you say it in Hebrew. After living in Israel for a while it begins to sound normal, even to an English speaker.

Strive to be a man

Amritas posts about being an individual. He says:

Participating in government activities will not empower you. It may make you feel as if you are, but true empowerment can only come from within.

I think that this is actually a three-way choice. Here are two seemingly contradictory quotes of Rabbi Hillel, from Pirqey Avot:

I grew up surrounded by pseudo-individuals, sheep who pretended to be men by being anti-establishment. Of course, being “anti” is itself sheep-ish. Those who define themselves by what they are not are also letting someone else define them! Personally, I prefer an honest sheep to a fake man any time.

But Rabbi Hillel is saying more than this. He is saying that there is value in being part of a community – that you shouldn’t be “an individual” for its own sake, for the egotistical desire to “be a man”. This is a pseudo-individualism that is worth less than nothing. On the other hand, when there is a good reason to be an individual, when no one else is standing up for what’s right – it should be you.

We begin bombing in 5 minutes

From Wikipedia:

"My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

During a microphone check on August 11 1984, unaware that he was being broadcast.

Posted by David Boxenhorn at 12:02 AM  Permalink | Comments (0)
Trackback URL: http://blog.mu.nu/cgi/trackback.cgi/31327

Reagan in the Gulag

Natan Sharansky writes a moving account of the effect of Reagan’s words on the Soviet Gulag.

In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth – a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us.

At the time, I never imagined that three years later, I would be in the White House telling this story to the president. When he summoned some of his staff to hear what I had said, I understood that there had been much criticism of Reagan's decision to cast the struggle between the superpowers as a battle between good and evil. Well, Reagan was right and his critics were wrong.

This is a story that I hear over and over from people who were behind the Iron Curtain at the time. It is amazing that the state-controlled newspapers didn’t anticipate this reaction, and didn’t suppress the story. But of course, I’ve encountered this phenomenon many times – people who associate only with like-minded people are blind to the effect of their words on those who disagree with them.

Natan Sharansky has a special place in Israeli politics. He is, of course, highly respected as a hero – though his entry into politics resulted in a feeling of betrayal from those who disagree with him, mostly on the left. But he is not exactly a right-winger either. He has a genuinely nuanced view of things (not the false nuance of those attempting to deceive). He was against the Oslo accords from the beginning, not because he is against peace, but because he is against tyranny – he objected to the establishment of a Palestinian dictatorship. Somehow the peace-love-and-brotherhood left supported (and still supports) Arafat’s terrorist dictatorship. (It should be pointed out that Arafat terrorizes his subjects MUCH MORE than he terrorizes Israelis.) I agree with Sharansky – there will be no peace in the Middle East until it democratizes. If the Arabs were democratic, the ethnic conflicts in the region would be like those in Belgium or Canada. They wouldn’t go away, but they wouldn’t impact day-to-day life either.

I highly recommend Sharansky’s book, Fear No Evil, about his experience in the Soviet Gulag – how he stood up to the system, and manipulated it in order to survive. It is an excellent book. I, though, have a special fondness for it. I read it shortly after I came to Israel. In the epilogue, he himself describes coming to Israel. Throughout his years in prison, he kept himself alive through his vision of coming to Israel, and his vision of his wife. What was it like to finally arrive, and discover that Israel was a real country, and his wife a real person – each with their problems, far from perfect? Instead of fighting a battle on a cosmic scale – the battle between good and evil – he had to fight the trivial daily battles of ordinary life. He talks about it in the epilogue, and at a difficult time in my life, it gave me strength.

UPDATE: When Sharansky spoke of criticism of Reagan's decision, I think that he meant within the administration. Here’s Peter Robinson’s behind-the-scene account of the Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech.

The speech was circulated to the State Department and the NSC three weeks before it was to be delivered. For three weeks, State and the NSC fought the speech. They argued that it was crude. They claimed that it was unduly provocative. They asserted that the passage about the Wall amounted to a cruel gimmick, one that would unfairly raise Berliners' hopes. There were telephone calls, memoranda, and meetings. State and the NSC submitted their own alternative drafts--as best I recall, there were seven--one of them composed by Kornblum. In each, the call for Gorbachev to tear down the Wall was missing.

The week before the president's departure, the battle reached a pitch. Every time State or the NSC registered a new objection to the speech, Griscom summoned me to his office, where he had me tell him, one more time, why I was convinced State and the NSC were wrong and the speech, as I had written it, was right. (On one of these occasions, Colin Powell, then national security adviser, was waiting in Griscom's office for me. I held my ground as best I could.) Griscom was evidently waiting for an objection that he believed Ronald Reagan himself would find compelling. He never heard it. When the president departed for the Venice summit, he took with him the speech I had written.

UPDATE: John Hawkins dedicates a page to Ronald Reagan pictures and memories.

Ronald Wilson Reagan – February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004

Ronald Reagan is dead. He had a profound influence on my generation – children of the ‘70’s, the era of stagflagion and malaise. I was a few months shy of voting age when he was first elected President in 1980. I clearly remember the loathing directed toward him by my fellow students and professors – comments that were made off-hand, with the clear assumption that all thinking people would agree with them. But Reagan proved the critics wrong. For a man derided as in imbecile, he did some pretty smart things. He brought down the Soviet Union, he restored the US economy, and he made it respectable to fight creeping government encroachment on the liberty of the American people.

When the Lord calls me home, whenever that day may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future.

I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.

– Ronald Reagan, November 5, 1994

UPDATE: Toren Smith (via James Hudnall via Amritas) posts a great picture and a lot of great quotes.

Trackback from The Safety Valve, A great and decent man:

Ronald Reagan is gone. I will forever regret that (as I was not yet a citizen) I missed what is...