Science And Meaning–Does The Big Bang Matter?

A few days ago scientists at Harvard reported that they had observed gravitational waves consistent with the Big Bang Theory.  If the universe started with a massive explosion sending matter and energy out in all directions, then these waves would be the ‘smoking gun’ that scientists have looked for since Alan Guth predicted them 35 years ago.

These waves, however, are not just clear evidence that the Big Bang happened, but explain why it happened – how something could be created out of nothing.

Guth discovered what might have made the universe bang to begin with. A potential hitch in the presumed course of cosmic evolution could have infused space itself with a special energy that exerted a repulsive force, causing the universe to swell faster than the speed of light for a prodigiously violent instant. (Dennis Overbye, New York Times 3.24.14)

I have just now gotten around to reading the articles about the discovery, not because I was interested in this new cosmological discovery but because I wasn’t.   I have barely enough time to suss out what I am doing here let alone ponder how the whole kit-and-caboodle got started. 

As college sophomores we all banged on about being and nothingness, God and Infinity, and the space-time continuum, then went to Mory’s and forgot about it all.  Interest picked up a few years later when we saw Kubrick’s 2001 – A Space Odyssey.  The Big Bang with all its power had to have produced more than just Earth and human beings.  How arrogant and senseless was the assumption that we are alone.

We soon forgot about that argument as well.  Law school and Wall Street demanded all of our time; and in my case India was hard enough to decipher without complicating limited reason with cosmology. The Big Bang may have spit off the chunk of matter that we now live on, but my challenge was to fit India into my traditional, white-picket-fence, golf club and Ivy League world.

The Big Bang seemed remote and irrelevant. So did ornithology, ichthyology, and all other inquiries into the nature of how things worked. Only when scientists started tinkering around with human nature – what made us all tick and what was responsible for the surprising similarity of culture and behavior – did I lift my nose out of my curry and rice. It was beginning to look like human nature, unchanged for millennia because of hardwiring, was in for a retooling. Soon the advances in recombinant DNA research would enable genetic selection for all traits. Not only would we be able to create offspring who looked like Scarlett Johansson or ran like the wind; but we would be able to tinker with human nature itself – get rid of the nasty bits like the selfish gene and replace it with a more kind and considerate one.  Or borrow from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and create a fundamental human engine which was even more unstoppable and willful than they ever before.

At the same time that genetic research was moving into uncharted territory, Information Technology was exploding, and there was no doubt that a brain-computer interface would soon enable a completely virtual world.   The two discoveries together would revolutionize human nature and human society.  A visitor 1000 years in the future would be unable to make any sense out of old photographs of the 2000s.

Once I understood the dimensions of these radical discoveries and understood that once the train left the station there was no stopping it, I lost interest in the science behind them.  Occasionally an article would catch my eye – “British Scientists Improve on Crick”…”Think Like A Computer?”…”Human Cloning Within Our Lifetime?” – but they all corroborated the initial scientific/philosophical projection of fundamental genetic modification and virtuality.  After 10 million years, human beings were clearly ready for a new model. So I went back to the business of muddling through and trying to make sense out of my own life.  As Chekhov said in his short story Ward No. 6, the only reasons we are on earth is to search for understanding and to scorn vanity.

In that short story Chekhov debates the issue of stoicism and suffering.  Ragin has built his life on a stoic belief of random determinism.  The dice are rolled, the cards are dealt; and one could as easily end up a doctor as a peasant.  All people die regardless of wit, talent, or intelligence.  All people suffer, and there is no point in intervening to alleviate misery.  Ivan Dmitrich counters Ragin by saying that because Ragin never suffered, his stoicism will always be theoretical, academic, and therefore irrelevant. “You will howl when your finger is slammed in a door”, Ivan Dmitrich says.

This short story gets to the heart of the issue of scientific relevance.  How does knowing that my mind is hardwired and that my actions are predictable; or that my bloodstream flows with hormones and enzymes that regulate temper, self-control, and sexual urges make any difference at all?  Is the drama of Othello any more or less resonant because some strand of male DNA is programmed for jealousy? Or because some extra drip of testosterone drove him to believe the preposterous story that Cassio was bedding his wife? It doesn’t matter what internal mechanisms were propelling Othello to his doom.  A door got slammed on his finger and he howled.

There is no doubt that much of human nature is hardwired.  Some scientists have conjectured that jealousy is as much of a human survival instinct as food or sex.  It is a protective mechanism which assures the integrity of lineage.  Non-jealous men do not produce offspring.  Basic reflexes – flight, fear, shock – are certainly pre-programmed; and sexuality, temperament, and intelligence may be dealt to us in our genes. But whether or not we are products of nature or nurture, our finger still hurts when it is caught in the door.

I am not alone in my dismissal of scientific inquiry.  Forty percent of all Americans reject the theory of evolution, believe in aliens, and are convinced that Armageddon will occur in our time,  Part of this is because we are a deeply religious, Christian nation; and our belief in the absolute word of the Bible cannot be challenged. 

We as a nation are very divided on our attitudes towards science.  In addition to the profoundly religious, there are those of us with enough of a specialized background to be fascinated by the conundrums of number theory, theoretical physics, and neurology.  Science illuminates our lives whether or not it answers the persistent, niggling philosophical questions on our minds.

There are others who appreciate scientific inquiry and realize that modern nations are built on scientific principles and applications; and will always vote for more resources to keep us at the top of the class.  We are less interested in science as philosophy than as a practical economic engine.

Last but not least, there are the tens of millions of Americans who work two jobs, drive to work in a beater, flop down in front of the TV with a beer and a box of pizza, and fall asleep to American Idol.  They don’t even know what the Big Bang is let alone be excited by gravitational waves.

Of all these, I share the most with the last.  I have no time for science.  Although I lead an easy life compared to the door latch man on an assembly line at the Chevy plant in Gary, we both are here-and-now people.

There is an exhibit of Audubon’s original paintings and Havel’s prints at the New York Historical Society in New York.  Audubon had a remarkable eye, and his paintings depict not only an accurate record of the physical bird but depict something of its essence.  He captures each bird’s grace, strength, repose, aggressiveness, and vigilance. Audubon is an artist, and he has stylized each painting to express his own personal vision. 

There are now millions of birders in America, some of whom are searching for the spirit of Audubon, but others who are interested only in identifiable songs, habitat, markings, tail feathers, or coloring.  They are the amateur army deployed at the unwritten request of the ornithological generals who are less interested in how birds look but why they look that way. They are the anti-Audubons.

There was a recent exhibition of birds in classical Chinese paintings as compelling and moving as any of Audubon if not more.

There may be ornithology behind these paintings, but their meaning is derived from the vision of the artist.

I am pleased to know that there are gravitational waves pulsing evenly through the universe, and wonder what the look like or what they would feel like if you got caught in one; but as far as relevance, meaning, importance to my life or understanding of it? Zero.

Putin A Bully? Hardly - Just A Canny Political Master

Bullying is still news in the Style Section and on Op-Ed pages of the Washington Post; but years of professional hectoring have not changed the calculus of the playground where kids still learn how to deal with those stronger and those weaker.  Every adult has had to deal with some kind of childhood taunt.  All except my classmate, John Walters, who was perfect. John was gifted with extraordinary good looks, athletic ability, and brains; and somewhere along the way learned modesty.  Everybody loved him. 

Those of us with big noses, fat lips, unruly hair, pigeon-toes, or spindly legs picked on each other, but no one picked on John Walters because there was nothing to pick on.  We all wanted to be him – blonde, blue-eyed, flaxen hair, sculptured body, and absolutely irresistible to girls – but could only admire from afar his exploits on the football field, his prom dates, and his SAT scores.  John had been anointed, and he did what we expected from him – Yale, Navy Seals, Park Avenue, Martha’s Vineyard and an intelligent, successful, and beautiful wife.

The rest of us scrapped for our dinner. We figured out ways to deal with playground bullies and prep school taunts. Some of us, like Billy Blantyre, went to the mat with them.  Billy was our 9th grade hero when he tussled with the school bully. Billy came away bloodied, discombobulated and bruised but triumphant.  Others figured that their J.Press button-downs were not worth the effort and either kept their distance or paid the bully off. 

Bobby P was only the biggest school bully.  We in turn teased Needles Fogelman mercilessly.  Needles had been born tiny to tiny parents, and was lost in the forest of tall, athletic West Enders at Chapel Country Day.  He was Jewish, a Democrat, and smart - a terrible trifecta for a young adolescent; but he held his own, kept his head down when called for and up when it counted.  Either because of the taunts or despite them, Needles, aka Jacob Fogelman, went to Harvard, Harvard Law School and clerked for William O. Douglas.

I met up with Needles many years later, and asked him about his days at Chapel.  Did all the taunting bother him?.  No, he said, it did not.  His family was Jewish, his relatives were camp survivors, and life in the United States had been no picnic.  Picking on people was so normal that he did not hold it against us.

I remember an incident at boarding school when a classmate was being held down and given a pink belly by three seniors from down the hall.  He was always picked on because, like Needles, he was small, uncoordinated, and defiant.  While the beefy football players pinned him to the bed, they invited the rest of us to give poor Tim a whack.  Few declined.  They picked on an innocent, vulnerable, and completely defenseless hall-mate for no good reason except to look good in the eyes of the football players. 

I caught up with Tim at a Lefferts reunion, and of course asked him if he remembered the event.  He said he did, and although he still harbored some resentment against the football players who had made his life hell, his bad feelings were reserved for his supposed friends who had joined in the beating.  “The need to belong is a very corrosive force”, he said, excused himself, and went for another white wine.

Bullying is natural, normal, pervasive, and permanent.  Rather than try to expunge it from childhood and marginalize it through programs of sensitivity and diversity, school administrators, parents, and teachers should leave it alone.  Children learn from the raw, primal world of the playground.  They learn about courage, compassion, ignorance, status, friendship, and authority; and if they don’t learn hard lessons there, they will be unprepared for the adult jungle they are about to enter. 

Bullying is one thing, cruelty is another; and even before the anti-bullying fad, teachers were quick to step in when things got out of hand.  “Some children are just plain bad”, a second-grade teacher friend of mine once told me.  They may have good parents, live in a good neighborhood, and have all the right genes and advantages, but they just turn out cruel and twisted.  These children are trouble, she said, and no amount of school discipline was going to set them right.  Adult society would have to deal with them.

Bullying these days is applied to anyone who uses power forcefully in his own self-interest. I had a boss once who was called a bully because she hammered incompetent subordinates, insisted that they redo unsatisfactory work, and threatened them with dismissal unless they shaped up.  She was no bully.  She simply demanded from others the same high standards she had set for herself; and more importantly wanted her division to be at the top of the corporate performance charts every year.

Although Lyndon Johnson was President long before bullying became déclassé, the term is always applied to him a posteriori.

 

LBJ was no bully.  He simply knew how to use presidential power and his even more impressive personal power and unstoppable will to get what he wanted. Johnson was a master of compromise, and ‘bullying’ was just part of a larger strategy of compliment, concession, and retribution.  Yet he is always called a bully.

Reading Hilary Mantel’s wonderful two-part series about Thomas Cromwell and the court of Henry VIII, one quickly sees that the king and the imposing Cardinal Wolsey were determined men willing and able to use power for their own ends.  Few courtiers wanted to challenge either one of them for fear of being excommunicated or losing their heads.  For that matter most kings with unchallenged authority use it indiscriminately.  Why waste time and resources on kindness and compromise when you have divine right? 

Does that make them bullies? Hardly.  The arrogation of power comes naturally when its acquisition is unopposed. Even the benign and beloved Elizabeth I suffered fools badly and while her record at the chopping block is far more temperate than other English monarchs, you can be sure she threatened, frightened, intimidated, and berated like her more abusive colleagues.

The expansion of the term ‘bullying’ to include any kind of forceful, self-interested behavior is a product of ‘progressive’ liberalism, and a desire to see things as they should be rather than they are. Strong, defiant, and willful people who do not hesitate to use their power aggressively are disparagingly called bullies, while they are only acting as powerful, motivated people always do.  Nietzsche is hated among the ‘progressive’ community because he celebrated the exercise of will as the only validation of the individual.  Morality and ‘good and evil’ mattered not to him, and his heroes were Tamburlaine, Richard III, and Genghis Khan, bullies all.

One has only to take a cursory peek into the corporate offices of Wall Street, Houston, or Hollywood to see ‘bullying’ at its best.  Does anyone doubt that the investment banker smelling a deal and sensing weakness will not intimidate and threaten to get compliance? Or the movie mogul for whom hundreds of millions are at stake on movie rights?  Or the Texas oilman operating in a cutthroat business where energy desperados would rather shoot you than look at you?

Vladimir Putin is not a bully.  He did not bully Ukraine.  Yes, he has threatened them in the past by withholding gas supplies, loans, and economic agreements; but that was no different than any other national leader negotiating for the best deal possible for his country.  After more than twenty years of Western pushing, shoving, disparaging, demeaning, marginalizing, and ‘bullying’ Russia, Putin has shouted basta and with a big Fuck You took back what he and millions of Russians considered their Crimea. Without a doubt he took advantage of a smaller, weaker, poorer country at its weakest – Ukraine –but his show of force was in the face of Obama, the United States, and the European Union, not Ukraine; and the action was therefore not that of a bully.  It was an expression of the determined will of a powerful, canny leader willing to take on the big guys.

The entire debate about bullying is a symptom of America’s more serious debate about the use of force.  We have become risk averse, fearful of putting our soldiers in harm’s way or injuring innocent civilians.  We have apparently lost the indomitable will to win that we had in WWII when we firebombed Dresden, sent thousands of soldier up the beaches of Normandy to withering German machine gun fire, and blew up Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and thousands of ordinary citizens in a nuclear fireball.  To add a footnote to Clausewitz, if you decide to go to war, win it at any cost.

We are worried about being seen as the world’s bullies – a big, strong, military power blowing the little Taliban to smithereens or establishing brutal, decades long martial law in Iraq – but in our deference to inclusiveness and vain and idealistic notions of morality, we become the fat kid on the playground – easy to push around.

We have to admire Putin for his muscular, willful actions in Crimea.  He has been clear in his disdain for silly Western notions of ‘national sovereignty’, stating that as usual America is very myopic when it comes to history.  Ukraine is not one, indissoluble, sacred whole, but a fractious and disparate place – no different from Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, or any other nation/culture.  The West, ignorant to historical complexity, will always misread the intentions of savvy, smart, purposeful leaders like Putin.

America needs to start bullying more, not less.

Stoicism vs. Suffering–Chekhov’s Ward No. 6

Ward No. 6 is one of Anton Chekhov’s best and most unusual short stories.  It is a story of ideas and reprises familiar themes about time, will, action and inaction, and the place of the individual in society.  Whereas most of his short stories and plays are set in the Russian countryside, this one takes place within a mental institution.  A patient challenges the stoicism of the Chief Doctor and shakes the foundations of his belief.  The doctor has never suffered, says the patient, and therefore his convictions about the endless and repetitive cycles of life and history can only be academic, theoretical, and therefore meaningless. The doctor either descends into madness and is confined to the very ward over which he once had responsibility; or becomes a very sane victim of his inability to square vision with reality.

The Russian directors Alexander Goronovsky and Karen Shakhnazarov have made a compelling film about impending, growing, and finally complete madness; and yet have left open the possibility that it is only the most sane who are judged insane. 


The film is set within a cold, spare Soviet-era institution, classic with old wooden floors, linoleum, thickly-painted walls, dim lighting, lace-curtain windows, austere courtyards, outdated equipment, bathrobes, and lab coats. There is no music, only a few exterior shots, and little dialogue except that between the doctor and the patient.  The quiet adds to the surreal, frightening atmosphere of an inescapable physical and mental prison.



The story/film revolves around Chekhov’s principal conundrum – is progress possible? Or in a thousand years will only the superficial aspects of life have changed while the basic human instincts remain the same. Dr. Ragin is eloquent in his defense of Stoicism:

I often dream of intellectual people and conversation with them," he said suddenly, interrupting Mihail Averyanitch. "My father gave me an excellent education, but under the influence of the ideas of the sixties made me become a doctor. I believe if I had not obeyed him then, by now I should have been in the very center of the intellectual movement. Most likely I should have become a member of some university… Life is a vexatious trap; when a thinking man reaches maturity and attains to full consciousness he cannot help feeling that he is in a trap from which there is no escape. Indeed, he is summoned without his choice by fortuitous circumstances from non-existence into life . . what for? He tries to find out the meaning and object of his existence; he is told nothing, or he is told absurdities; he knocks and it is not opened to him; death comes to him--also without his choice.

Every choice, says Ragin, is a non-choice – meaningless in a world defined by accidental birth and inevitable death.  A cozy room by a fire is equal to a prison cell, he reasons, because the randomness which produced both has no inherent meaning or value. The external world has no purpose, no future, and no meaning; and the only valid expression of humanity is the untroubled acceptance of this reality.  There are only two admirable qualities of Man – the search for understanding and a scorn for vanity.  “The truly wise man is surprised by nothing”, says Ragin.

Ragin wonders why Man has been created at all.  What is the use of a man with reason, spirit, soul, inventiveness, and insight only to be turned into clay at the end of his short life? Those who cling to immortality by believing in reincarnation or a mystical redistribution of human life into plants, rocks, air, and clay are just as ignorant and foolishly hopeful as those who believe in Heaven and Hell.
Ragin contends that if Ivan Dmitrich, the patient with whom Ragin converses, manages to escape from the asylum, he will be surely caught, returned to the institution, incarcerated in a civil prison, or at best consigned to a life of poverty and want.  What’s the difference?



The issue of suffering is the point which causes Ragin to doubt himself.  At first he takes a Stoic view of suffering.  All men suffer, he reasons, and all suffering ends in death.  What is the point of alleviating suffering or delaying death?

What is gained if some shop-keeper or clerk lives an extra five or ten years? If the aim of medicine is by drugs to alleviate suffering, the question forces itself on one: why alleviate it? In the first place, they say that suffering leads man to perfection; and in the second, if mankind really learns to alleviate its sufferings with pills and drops, it will completely abandon religion and philosophy, in which it has hitherto found not merely protection from all sorts of trouble, but even happiness.

Pushkin suffered terrible agonies before his death, poor Heine lay paralyzed for several years; why, then, should not some Dr. Ragin or anyone else be ill, since their lives had nothing of importance in them, and would have been entirely empty and like the life of an amoeba except for suffering?

His patient, Ivan Dmitrich, challenges him more directly.

In fact, you have seen nothing of life, you know absolutely nothing of it, and are only theoretically acquainted with reality; you despise suffering and are surprised at nothing for a very simple reason: vanity of vanities, the external and the internal, contempt for life, for suffering and for death, comprehension, true happiness--that's the philosophy that suits the Russian sluggard best. You see a peasant beating his wife, for instance. Why interfere? Let him beat her, they will both die sooner or later, anyway; and, besides, he who beats injures by his blows, not the person he is beating, but himself…

Pain is the idea of pain, and besides 'there is no living in this world without illness; we shall all die, and so, go away, woman, don't hinder me from thinking and drinking vodka.' A young man asks advice, what he is to do, how he is to live; anyone else would think before answering, but you have got the answer ready: strive for 'comprehension' or for true happiness. [You say that] there is no difference at all between this ward and a warm, snug study. A convenient philosophy. You can do nothing, and your conscience is clear, and you feel you are wise. . . .

No, sir, it is not philosophy, it's not thinking, it's not breadth of vision, but laziness, fakirism, drowsy stupefaction. Yes," cried Ivan Dmitrich, getting angry again, "you despise suffering, but I'll be bound if you pinch your finger in the door you will howl at the top of your voice."

Shakespeare in many ways was a Stoic. He was convinced that the Grand Mechanism of history would turn perpetually, fueled and driven by human nature which never changes.  Although the events of history might be distinct and superficially unique, they will all be expressions of the natural human instinct for self-preservation.  Palace coups, intrigues, fights for accession, territory, status, and power are all expressions of this ineluctable human drive to acquire, secure, defend, and expand territory.   The world will never get any better, and in a thousand years will be characterized by the same venality and human folly as it always as been. 



Chekhov, at least in the words of Ragin and Tuzenbach in The Three Sisters, shared the same opinion.  Chekhov was clearly conflicted, and presented contrary views.  Vershinin in The Three Sisters, for example, believes that through work and commitment to the betterment of society, the future will indeed be better than the present.


Dr. Astrov (Uncle Vanya) despite his desperation about being forgotten – that the insignificance of life is no better demonstrated than by the hundreds of millions of dead, forgotten men – is an optimist, and feels that as custodian of Russian forests and woods, he will leave an important legacy for future generations.  Actions do matter, he feels, and although he cannot predict the future and how it will be qualitatively different from the present, he senses that preservation is more important than destruction.

Shakespeare and Chekhov, at least in the voices of Tuzenbach and Ragin, have history on their side.  There is nothing in history which suggests that human beings are anything but self-interested, expansionist, and territorial.  Individuals from commoners to kings, from children to aged adults; and societies from families to tribes, regions, and nations all behave in exactly the same ways.  The thundering hooves of the armies of Genghis Khan marauding and massacring their way across Europe and Asia are no different from American tanks, Russian armor, and North Korean missiles today.

Many of today’s thinkers, like Ragin and Shakespeare, view suffering, penury, and inequality as by-products of the Grand Mechanism no different from pleasure, wealth, and privilege.  While they might feel sorrow or compassion, they remain uninvolved, distant if not remote; and their only perceived purpose in life – again like Ragin – is to understand how the Grand Mechanism works.

As an inmate himself Ragin’s views are challenged.  At first he tries to apply his theoretical philosophy to his own condition; and maintains his conviction that life in an asylum is no different than in a cozy parlor – it is the quality of the interior mind which defines human value.  Very early on, however, doubt creeps in:

“No matter..." thought Andrey Yefimitch, wrapping himself in his dressing-gown in a shamefaced way and feeling that he looked like a convict in his new costume. "It's no matter. . . . It does not matter whether it's a dress-coat or a uniform or this dressing-gown."

But how about his watch? And the notebook that was in the side-pocket? And his cigarettes? Where had Nikita taken his clothes? Now perhaps to the day of his death he would not put on trousers, a waistcoat, and high boots. It was all somehow strange and even incomprehensible at first. Andrey Yefimitch was even now convinced that there was no difference between his landlady's house and Ward No. 6, that everything in this world was nonsense and vanity of vanities. And yet his hands were trembling, his feet were cold, and he was filled with dread at the thought that soon Ivan Dmitritch would get up and see that he was in a dressing-gown. He got up and walked across the room and sat down again.

No matter how hard he tries, Ragin cannot keep his mind off his own well-being and particular individual fate.  He had already begun to suffer, and although, as Ivan Dmitrich points out, he will be unceremoniously dragged out from the ward feet first by peasants when he dies - a confirmation of the meaninglessness and insignificance of life – he feels the cold of his coming death, and he is afraid.



Ragin has not suffered, he says, and therefore is in no position to expound the theories of Marcus Aurelius.  Suffering, says Ivan Dmitrich, will immediately dispel any intellectual convictions about determinism. 


Yet there is much more to be said. Christian philosophers have suggested that evil exists to tempt us, and only through suffering can one achieve spiritual enlightenment.  As importantly suffering exists for us to alleviate it – to gain favor in God’s eyes thanks to our compassion and Christian values.
Philosophers for centuries have wondered how a good and beneficent God could create evil.  Using some fancy philosophical footwork, Augustine said that there is no such thing as evil, just the ‘absence of good’.  We should not ignore suffering say these early Christians, but embrace it.  Stoics and Existentialists never agreed and like Ragin espoused an all-encompassing, deterministic view of the world.

Is turning a blind eye to suffering on the grounds of its perpetuity somehow wrong or even immoral? Does suffering automatically negate philosophical theory?  If Ragin howls when his finger is caught in a slammed door, does that mean that he has instinctively, obviously, and correctly jettisoned Stoicism?

The progressive and inevitable demise of Ragin is painful to watch.  The movie, like the institution in which it is set, is cold, unfeeling, and hostile.  Only the ideas and the debate between Ragin and Ivan Dmitrich are alive.