HUMANS ARE NOT MACHINES
The idea of a “body of work” rather than a “best-selling book” fits with the contemporary understanding of what a human being is. Far from the “man” who composed an object of study, now we propose an evolved and cumulative mammal supporting a brain that uses the entire body to perceive and interpret the world in an ever-changing torrent of moving systems. Individuals are capable of sharing minds and creating cultural systems that can act in unity.
There is no more belief in the split between body and soul or rationality and emotion or between science and humanities. Life after death is no longer a premise or concern. There is no confidence in the persistence of our species or of the earth as we know it. It is a terrifying time and many people react to the terror with rage, in the old mammal strategy of hoping to jar something loose.
In an article called “The Truth About Your Brain”, Deepak Chopra, MD, takes a different approach, quietly thinking through our situation with careful premises, as follow. He is aiming specifically at those who cling to the idea of mechanism as the key metaphor. He challenges the following ideas:
1. Biologically speaking, humans are not a special act of creation. We’re a twig on the tree of evolution.
2. Subjective experiences are basically an illusion. A camera attached to a computer can determine that grass is green, so there is no need to resort to this mysterious thing known as subjectivity. Knowing that grass is green is just another computation.
3. People don’t actually have inner feelings. Feelings are just one part of the illusion that we are conscious.
4. The brain builds up models to explain reality, but some of these models are incorrect. The model behind consciousness is one of the worst of these.
5. Like a computer, the brain stores and processes bits of information. This the basic operation we mistake for mind. Mind is a fiction. Information is real.
https://www.deepakchopra.com/articles/the-truth-about-your-brain-youll-be-surprised/ On his website, in books, and in articles, Chopra persists in his message without making much of a dent. Why are people so attached to the idea of being “organic machines”?
1. We aren’t quite finished with the industrial revolution. Once we got onto the idea that we could make machines to do our work, that it was absorbing to make machines (less so to fix them when they broke), that simple machines could develop into miraculous technology, that using machines for power instead of animals meant relief from the nagging of suffering creatures, and that machines could be “owned”, the hook was in.
2. The even older idea of “logic” and “reason” go back to the male white leisure classes on public squares in Greece and Rome. It is a feature of hegemony — even serving as a “legitimate” attack on unworthy kings — and a misogynist principle of oppressing women. The cold reason of generals and presidents can legitimize the atomic bomb and the denial of help in pandemics. The idea of humans as machines excuses this.
3. If we are machines, then healing is just a matter of adjusting gears or fluids and maybe replacing parts. The idea of mental involvement is silly.
4. Much of what happens in our shared lives amounts to the eruption of our cumulative and deep past animal heritage, our rage, our transgression, our lust, and so on. Best to deny and suppress that by sticking to the idea of logic and reason.
5. Machines can be controlled. Control is crucial. We must control everything, even ourselves. Being out of control, even in the sense of hedonic euphoria is a path to destruction.
6. Electronics are not quite machines but not quite human, since they are electromagnetic like ourselves, but if they are machines, then we are as well. Lurking in this issue is the possibility that computers may come alive and oppose us, control US.
7. Machines/technology/electronics have so expanded our perceptions and revealed so much that we had no idea existed, challenging our sense of belonging at all, that at least if we think of ourselves as also machines we can fit in.
8. At some level we can’t help being very angry that our parents raised us to believe we were beloved and precious, that the world was our garden, and that humans were different. Now that we discover that’s just nursery tales, we’ll never believe those faulty humans again. We will be clever, alert and rejecting as a machine.
9. Machine metaphors and computer metaphors dominate our thinking. We think in terms of Newtonian levers when discussing economics and computerized data when describing people.
10. Humans are more hydraulic than metallic but most of us don’t have much knowledge of how hydraulic machines work. We know we can work with metallic components, like people with prosthetic arms, and even with computer components like the many ways to affect a screen by thinking. We know that a lie detector can “see” our hydraulic features like blood pressure, sweat, or heart rate. But we don’t really think about all that stuff in our daily life. Much of what is exquisitely human is delegated to experts, even our emotional lives.
11. Skills are the products of experience, interaction with the surroundings. Machines, esp. computers, can learn from experience but are limited in their interactions. They can compose poetry, play chess, create 3-d objects, but they don’t eat pizza.
12. Humans have their machinery component but they are far too complex and dynamic to be compared even to a computer, which has no “haptic” aspect — that is, hands to feel and manipulate the world, to reach out, to clasp, to sock in the kisser when insulted. Machines don’t get insulted.
A human is a body of work that creates bodies of work and cooperates with other humans to go to the moon.
