User talk:Glenn Baker

Sophie Wilder  17:12, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Glenn Baker (talk) 16:22, 8 September 2013 (UTC)--16:22, 8 September 2013 (UTC)Glenn Baker (talk)

The Growth of Self Awareness
With self awareness comes self-judgment and all that goes to make up human society. Just when did prehistoric man become aware of himself in the world ? We will never know the answer to that question but we can be sure it was not a sudden awakening. We cannot say it started with the tribal instinct, for many animals live in tribes for all sorts of reasons. The conscience was born around this time and men began to think before they acted. Concepts of right and wrong came into being and man began to judge himself and others around him. This awareness was in conflict with the law of survival of the fittest and in this region of time man began to move on a new path and evolve in a new way. He was still animal but his conscience was slowly contesting his instinctive way of life. Now the battle for supremacy begins in earnest and we trace the crazy outcome in human history. Sometimes men act like gods full of self sacrifice preaching the brotherhood of man. At other time like devils full of crime and debauchery committing worse excesses than any animal unknowingly ever did. Where will this end? The short answer is we don't know. The destructive instinctive side, driven by greed and now greatly empowered with scientific knowledge, may bring about total self destruction or a new dark-age. Given time the reflective conscience may overcome the animal in man and all humans will be raised to a higher plane of moral existence.

'Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.' Immanuel Kant.


 * Interesting. Are you aware of the work of Julian Jaynes? Do you know of the writings of Levi-Strauss... and also the discoveries of evolutionary biology/psychology.. from Darwin to Dawkins to Pinker and Tooby/Cosmides? The idea that consciousness is free won't? The definition of moral law, deviant behaviour and medicalisation... whereby sin becomes a crime and turns into a disease? The short answer is that we do know - but it requires effort to understand. Of course the issue is that when our scientific knowledge overtakes our evolutionary instincts then it is possible that all intelligent/scientific beings in the universe self destruct. As E.O Wilson once stated .. give baboons nuclear weapons and self destruction is inevitable. So you raise good questions but you seem unware of 'progress' made in this field over the past 100 years... good luck! 82.2.75.224 (talk) 16:36, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Reality
Reality is elusive: it's there, and yet it's not there, it's touchable yet untouchable. Putting on my scientific glasses and looking around the real world receds into the nebulous world of atoms and electrons, chemical elements and complex organic molecules. If I stare hard and focus small I hit the world of quarks and other magical particles where quantum mechanics rules the roost. Luckily for me the poet comes to the rescue, he at least is not deluded, he strikes straight at reality. He views the world from a different perspective. 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever.' The truth at last, no more questing and questioning, the poet has answered the conundrum he has looked, seen reality and then translated it into a simple perfect statement. Perhaps I should stamp on those scientific glasses. Stop my ears to all this black hole hocus pocus and live with the artists, musicians and poets.

Poetry
Futility by Wilfred Owen
 * Move him into the sun -
 * Gently its touch awoke him once,
 * At home, whispering of fields unsown.
 * Always it woke him, even in France,
 * Until this morning and this snow.
 * If anything might rouse him now
 * The kind old sun will know.
 * Think how it wakes the seeds, -
 * Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
 * Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
 * Full-nerved - still warm - too hard to stir?
 * Was it for this the clay grew tall?
 * - O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
 * To break earth's sleep at all?

Was it for this the clay grew tall ? Its certainly a line that will fill a thousand desperate situations but more than this it hints to me that Wilfred Owen believed in Darwin. To my mind this is re-enforced by the next two marvelous lines. A question asked by human beings never asked by science what made fatuous sunbeams toil? The scientists believe the sun triggered life but Wilfred Owen asks why? If only I had never been born what is the point of it all? where is it all going? Is it really the kind old sun? or the heartless stirrer of life born to suffer and die? Woke once the clays of a cold star ---magnificent but even the sun cannot perform miracles. We must often be reminded the sun that giver of all life is totally inanimate. It does not direct what happens under its eternal eye anymore than anything else directs evolution. It unfolds itself pleasantly or unpleasantly, quickly or infinitesimally slowly. 'The mills of God grind slowly yet they grind exceeding small.' But we ( poor progeny) are saddled with conscious thought and find it difficult not to see a directing mind behind ordered happenings.

The Nature of Nature
There are many stories of man battling with nature: overcoming a tempestuous sea, struggling in blizzards., deserts, almost dying of starvation, that we could be forgiven for believing that nature is malevolent and sets out to destroy us. Many old religious beliefs required sacrifices to placate nature and make her smile upon mans effort's. Perhaps the worst truth that we can learn is that Nature is not living and is oblivious of mans efforts. It does not set out to destroy or assist him and has no will of its own. The universe is not our friend or our enemy it is simply the place where we have our existence.

If but some vengeful god would call to me
 * From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
 * Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
 * That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"


 * Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
 * Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
 * Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
 * Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.


 * But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
 * And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
 * --Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
 * And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. ..
 * These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
 * Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

This great poem puts my thoughts into words far better than I ever could.