Understanding Life

To achieve an understanding of life, one will have to be educated to some degree. The minimal requirements will be mastery of reading, writing, and arithmatic. Some will achieve this by the fifth year of school, some will have to complete high school, some college. Advanced degrees are only useful for occupational qualification.
The first requirement is to define what is meant by the title. Understanding of life occurs when the individual constructs a mental model of the universe that is sufficiently close to the reality. Perfection isn't to be expected. Many things about the universe will remain unknown at death. A close approximation however, is achievable now and has always been. Technology has provided our generation with advantages not available to our ancestors and that allows us to understand things like the formation of the solar system and possible sources of the universe. This is interesting but not crucial. We are now in a position to describe where life came from in an objective sense, which is very satisfying, but also not crucial.
The first problem in this undertaking is the realization that, common sense and advice to the contrary not withstanding, nothing crucial to it is beyond the ability of rational understanding. Some things are unknowable, events in another universe, if there is such a thing for instance, or what we may experience when we die, but these questions contribute little if anything to the understanding of life. Once we kill or attend a funeral, we know what we need to know about death. Another aspect of this problem is the sense that the task is beyond any reasonable effort in life. It is not, but large scale understanding is restricted to rationalists and a highly developed sense of the significance and meaning of objectivity is required.
Subjective approaches, like astrology or religion may have their own value but not in the pursuit of an understanding of life. The only available method, because of the tremendous complexity of the project is to approach understanding by studying causality.
Why should this effort be undertaken? Those that do it will have their own reasons. There is no general utility in it and no barrier to the successful prosecution of the individual life obstructs those uninterested.
To understand life it is necessary to study widely but to avoid wasting time in pursuits that have no ability to increase that understanding. Most fields of study impact the understanding of life in some way, but some do it only slightly and spending an inordinate amount of time in these areas will lead nowhere and limit the effort applied to this study. The pursuit of money for example, may teach one a lot in the beginning about the general notion of economics, which is important. But after that generalization is understood, further exploration of profit is profitless in this effort.
The second problem is the avoidance of bigotry which has the effect of blocking pathways into understanding. The most important of these bigotry's is fundamentalist religion. Committing oneself to the view that symbolism is literal fact or to the notion that, since God created the world, everything is already understood, effectively blocks the path to understanding. Other bigotry's also defeat understanding. Superiority is the greatest bigotry after religion. Any sort of belief in superiority will have the effect of limiting understanding. That is because superiority is only relative, it doesn't exist at the scales of understanding required to understand life. This means that belief in biological, sexual, national, educational, ideological, and religious superiority's must be discarded. This is called chauvinism after the French soldier in Bonaparte's army with an unreasoning belief in the French military.
The most useful fields of study and their contributions follow. Keep in mind that the goal is not to become an expert. Expertise goes way beyond what is needed to understand life, it makes one biased. If one supports oneself in a field, his understanding of it has gone so far that he will have to make an effort to avoid field or specialty chauvinism.
Psychology and most usefully, Jungian psychology. This is important because the student must first eliminate as far as possible limitations to understanding caused by previous errors in understanding adopted at a naive stage of his or her own development. Jungian psychology provides one with an understanding of the tool of understanding by describing its structure. Armed with this knowledge one immediately grasps what is possible and how it can be achieved.
Reading psychological texts is insufficient to this crucial study. One also has to do field work so that comparative data can be obtained and to allow the development of the skill of psychological analysis. Since amateurs cannot practice, the best source of material for the development of this skill is the arts. Fiction and biographies are extremely useful. Other fields of artistic endeavor are also valuable.
Ideology is the next most crucial area of understanding. This is because we all pursue an ideology without necessarily knowing it. We are set on this path by our parents and we require some method for understanding it objectively. The answer is to study the subject of ideology as a generality. Once the general attributes of ideologies are understood, we can identify our own ideological biases and identify those with another ideological orientation and their reasons for identification with it. By ideology we mean feminism, the study of feminine values and masculinism, the study of masculine values.
Religion which is a natural outgrowth of the study of ideology. Religion is best understood as an implementation of an ideology. Beware of becoming a member of a religion, since this can result in religious chauvinism. Comparative religion is much more useful.
Economics provides one with a grasp of the mechanics of life in a closed system. One in which every exchange must be compensated. There is an economics of every kind of interaction from sex to war.
This much is sufficient to achieve a highly accurate understanding of life and one that has always been available. Because of technology we can now use its tools to go further.
Biology and particularly Darwinism. The study of this field arising from Darwin's Origin of Species, allows us to grasp how life develops on our planet. A study of archeology helps in this process.
Astronomy allows us to grasp where the earth came from and how the universe is organized. A study of geology is also useful.
Physics allows one to grasp the scientific method and to refine his understanding of objectivity.
Mathematics provides an understanding of the language of science and an appreciation of the uses of precision. It is also a reflection of the closed system in which we exist, which is the reason for the importance of the equation concept.
Chemistry and particularly organic chemistry allows one to grasp the structure of matter and why life has chosen to exploit the carbon molecule.
This much will allow one to understand life as well as the best minds were able until recent times. New tools are now arriving that allow one to go beyond that.
DNA is a field that promises to teach us how organisms are actually programmed for life. DNA refers to strands of carbon molecules defining in the sense of a program the nature of the cell in which it resides.
Computer Science or programming allows us to appreciate the significance of DNA.
Gaianism is the study of life on earth when considering it as a single organism. This is mainly a question of definition, but this definition is one of the most crucial and accurate definition is at the bottom of any useful philosophy.
A thorough grasp of these fields at the level of the amateur is sufficient to the needs of any individual wishing to understand life. Every tool available to pursue this goal is currently on the internet. So, for the first time in history, any individual wishing to achieve understanding of life with access to the internet can do it. Understanding of life does require that one live life since subjective understanding must proceed at the same rate as objective understanding, otherwise the value is lost. So, the project cannot be expected to reach fruition until the age of fifty or so, but that just means that it will be the most satisfying and long lasting hobby of all.
Crucial life experiences are marriage and raising children. One must grasp the differences between the sexes which will be hard to achieve without the experience of marriage. An understanding, both subjective and objective, of reproduction is a necessity.
A bibliography designed to achieve understanding of life follows. This bibliography is designed for sequential use. Most of these books are available on the internet or from the internet bookstore, Amazon.com.
1. Memorys, Dreams, and Reflections by Carl Jung. This is Dr. Jung's autobiography and provides a good introduction to his approach to psychology. If this book doesn't affect the reader, the approach to understanding provided here may not be suitable. A Jung site.
2. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche by Carl Jung. This is a detailed exposition on human mental organization. The most important essay in this book is Jung's Complex Theory. The most important insight to bring away from the study of this book is the difference between consciousness and awareness.
3. Millennium by Joseph J. Schiller describes the ideological spectrum and its implications. No other exposition on this topic is available as far as the author has been able to determine. This is because we have been immersed in Christianity up until recently and didn't understand that there were two sides to the ideological coin. Of course, there are two sides to every coin. That is the nature of the universe we live in.
4. The Bible is crucial to the understanding of western masculinist religion.
5. Psychology and Religion: West and East by Jung provides a description of eastern religion through the eyes of a westerner and therefore is more easily grasped than the source books.
6. Tao Te Ching provides a look at one aspect of eastern religion.
7. Bhagavad-Gita provides another look at eastern religion.
8. The Wealth of Nations Any standard freshman economics course will provide all that is necessary to the understanding of this field.
9. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin provides the crucial understanding of how the various species arise and special insights like "natural selection".
10. Astronomy Picture of the Day provides all that is necessary to an adequate understanding of the cosmos.
11. A study of the lives of Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton will provide an adequate understanding of physics.
12. History of Mathematics provides insight into the language of science.
13. Organic Chemistry This site provides an understanding of the carbon atom which presupposes a sufficient introduction to chemistry including an understanding of the periodic chart of elements and the structure of atoms and molecules. These can be acquired by taking Chemistry 101-2.
14. Recombinant DNA by James D. Watson explains all that is needed about DNA.
15. Computer Science can be understood by amateurs by buying a personal computer and learning to program it. The programming language, Gnu C is available on the internet at no cost.
16. Gaia can be understood by reading Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth by James Lovelock, the scientist responsible for this concept. In my view his approach is too limited so I also recommend reading what I have written on this subject.
Any of these subjects can be searched for with a tool like Yahoo on the internet and probably sufficient information exists there to avoid buying any books. The one exception to this rule would be the books by Jung. The reason for this is that Jung has always been disfavored by the scientific community because he treats subjects like religion, astrology, and alchemy seriously. Dr. Jung's books are available as part of the Bollingen Series from Princeton University Press.
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There is an obvious need for humans to pursue an understanding of life. Perhaps, after the struggle to obtain the necessities of life, more energy is devoted to this issue than any other. Even in entertainment, people like best those efforts that supply insight into this question.
On the rational side of this effort, within the scientific community, there is an historic tendency to avoid dealing with or characterizing awareness and its effect on life. The reason for this tendency is the recognition that preoccupation with God delayed and interfered with science and that awareness is related in some way to God. The examples of Galileo and Copernicus are frequently cited.
As a result, it is to be expected that the Gaia Hypothesis will be resisted because it will be seen by the scientific community as the replacement of one god with another which suggests a return to pius blindness. Even persecution of those that wish to reveal what they conceive of as the truth. Dr. Lovelock, in his book introducing the hypothesis spends a good deal of time pointing out that there is no need to postulate awareness in the Gaia entity for it to be a useful explanatory principle.
There are scientific problems with awareness. It is hard to measure with instruments. It is hard to define. None the less, it is there, and is in fact the creator of science itself. So, ignoring it may be useful under some circumstances to simplify the field of inquiry, but, no final understanding of life will arise without taking it into account. Even Darwin, one of the premier scientists of all time, implicitly took it into account. His concept, "natural selection", describes biology as being controlled by females choosing amongst males. No choosing can occur without awareness of the choices. As one observes the intricate patterns and colors occurring in the natural world, one must conclude that the feminine choosers must be aware of the attributes of beauty. Things like symmetry. It is true that camouflage might arise without any impact by awareness, but it is hard to imagine that awareness isn't one of the causes of elaborations like those that decorate the peacock.
I propose the following definitions. There is a great deal of contention regarding the definition of life. A simple definition that appears to me to distinguish the living from the non living is aware matter. How can that be demonstrated? It is obvious at scales approximating our own but isn't so obvious at microscopic levels. I would say that intentional movement is sufficient to define awareness. Viruses demonstrate intentional movement and they are probably near the simplest form of life on the planet. In considering the question of what gives rise to awareness, I believe the simplest assumption that can be made is that it is an attribute of certain, as yet undefined, complex carbon molecules.
This makes clear the importance of the Gaia Hypothesis. The main problem with Darwin's theory is the unlikelihood of humans. Many scientists contend that, were history started over, on the basis of the Darwinist model, it is highly unlikely that humans would arise. Far too many unlikely choices have been demonstrated to have occurred and are essential to the production of humans out of the biological substrate. For the religious this demonstrates the hand of God. Unfortunately, direct intervention by God is impossible to demonstrate scientifically. Gaia as the instrument of God is much more easily dealt with. An aware Gaia looks very much like the creator of the various species that inhabit our planet. If Gaia had a need for humans, because of their unique attributes, then she would be capable of bringing them into existence.
I propose that a possible need of Gaia that could have induced her to devise human consciousness would be the recycling of carbon molecules. I think it impossible to imagine any method for retrieving oil from deep underground and devising a means of placing it into the atmosphere in the absence of humans. That the uniqueness of humans, the one thing that separates them from other species is their capacity for objective thought. Objective thought is a function of consciousness which is also, apparently, unique to humanity. I define consciousness as that intensity of thought that produces a memory. I think it likely that consciousness becomes possible when the ratio of brain weight to body weight becomes sufficiently large.
I can readily imagine that consciousness arose fortuitously, but that when it did arise, the utility of it was not lost on Gaia.
There are a number of implications of this theory that may or may not be palatable to the reader. The most important of these is the implication that we are not masters of our destiny, but rather are doing, in our own way to be sure, what we are required to do by Gaia. How then are Gaia's commands communicated to us? I would say via feelings which I conclude emanate from our cells and particularly our DNA. One of the requirements that Gaia has faced is the need to make life sufficiently attractive that individual organisms would be sufficiently motivated to continue it. This might well produce a need for some degree of individual freedom. Too much freedom or too little are equally uncomfortable. We don't wish to be hermits and we also don't wish to be cogs. We wish to interact with our peers and also to be capable of providing inspirational insights in the pursuit of Gaia's goals. Vast numbers of us are constantly investigating every cranny of existence searching for new advantages in the constant struggle for survival. I am writing this document with that exact motivation.
The attraction of this theory is its provision of non conflicting domains for God, Gaia, and Darwin. Gaia is God's instrument. Darwin is Gaia's instrument. Gaia's motives are apparent. She wishes to survive. God's motives remain inscrutable.