Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Joseph Wood Krutch: Where to draw the line. . .

Joseph Wood Krutch
The Twelve Seasons


Joseph Wood Krutch poses an interesting question, one which I had never really directly asked myself but had only thought briefly about it and then put it off for the future.

Krutch had just given a visitor the opportunity to look at a drop of water through his microscope.  After viewing the various critters swimming around in the drop, the visitor asked if they were real.  Krutch feels that the question really had a deeper meaning which the visitor was unable to express:


. . .whether or not acceptance of the microcosm as "real" means an obligation to expand still further the limits of that fellowship of living creatures which man has tended more and more to acknowledge.  We, or at least many of us, no long treat horses and dogs and cats ruthlessly.  We accept to some extent their right to live and to escape unnecessary suffering.  But where does our fellowship and our responsibility draw the line?    Most would probably agree that the refusal, recommended by the poet, to step wantonly upon even a worm is carrying things pretty far.  "We are all in this together";  does that include the paramecium too?  But if, to use Donne's now almost too familiar metaphor, a man is not an island but part of a continent, and if (to go one step farther) that continent is the continent, not merely of mankind, but of all living things; if, in a word, we feel even now an impulse to rescue a squirrel from a cat, shall we also come in time to turn away in horror when the hydra clasps a water flea?  If not, then at what point do we call a halt?  Am I being "sentimental" when I rescue the squirrel, or am I being "brutal" when I stop on the caterpillar?


-- Joseph Wood Krutch --
from "July" in The Twelve Seasons



I don't have any answers myself,  but I guess I'm prejudiced or biased in favor of furry mammals, and also consider whales, dolphins, and all of our mammalian sea cousins as within the limits of that fellowship of living creatures. Feathered creatures are also within that fellowship.    But, the others that share this planet?
Life is rare in the universe or so it seems, so, shouldn't all forms be equally valued?  





15 comments:

  1. But drawing the line here, there, or elsewhere could interfere with a human being's ability to live. After all, for example, how (or what) does one eat? Where shall we draw the line? Why?

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  2. R.T.,

    Are you saying that no line should be drawn? That we should avoid killing insects too? Disease-bearing insects like mosquitoes?

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    1. I don't know, Fred. Is Krutch suggesting where the line be drawn? If we would kill a mosquito because of its threat to our survival, do we have license to kill anything or anyone if that killing is essential to our survival. I believe I have more questions than answers, and I certainly have no answer to your question or Krutch's provocation. I confess to feeling a bit guilty now and then in the midst of my chicken salad sandwich (even as I finish it) but not at all guilty about the tomato-lettuce-and-cucumber salad (even if the carrot may have screamed when pulled from the ground). What does that say about rationalization and line-drawing.

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    2. R.T.,

      I think that's what Krutch is saying: there are no easy answers.

      I don't know--what does it say about "rationalization and line-drawing?"

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  3. that's what the Jains think(a Hindu sect that believes all life is sacred, and they go to extraordinary lengths to avoid even stepping on ants...). then again, i've heard it said that the only viable form of life on earth is viruses... personally, as you might guess, i think that all life, including us, is made of the same elements and is equally "there"... meaning that everything is constituted of the same basic chemicals and governed by the same physical laws. consciousness, or self-awareness is an illusion created and added to at birth by the effect of sensory input on brain cells, which organize the data into "comprehensible" scenarios which are organized in a temporal fashion to enable the survival of the individual in the world it finds itself in... over years these scenarios accumulate into what we know as awareness, but are actually just overlays of scenarios lasting during the formative years and after, and resulting in what is known as memory... if that makes any sense to anyone. except me, that is....

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  4. Mudpuddle,

    I fear you've lost me, right at the point you bring in illusion. If there is no self or ego or core, then what is being affected by what you call illusions? How do you know this since everything is an illusion? Is your belief that all is illusion also an illusion, or is that somehow superior to all other forms of knowledge?

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    1. no, it's just simpler than that... all we know about the world outside of ourselves is what we get through our six senses... when we're born our computer brain begins sorting the sensory data and uses it to construct memories in the process of learning about the outside world; over time those memories and the constant additions that accumulate with aging begin to distinguish between what is us and what is other... when we think of ourselves, we do so with that background of memory that is so everpresent that we start to deal with outside events and occurrences from our own places of experience, and that evolves into what we interpret as consciousness (sort of the brain looking at itself); hence, our sense of self grows stronger because it's a successful way of dealing with the world and it assumes the master role, as it were, in separating us from everything else... so that's what i mean when i say consciousness doesn't really exist; it's actually just the result of physics and chemistry as occurring in the universe insofar as we know it.... as i said earlier, this occurred to me one day while walking out to the barn; i can't honestly say i am fanatic about it; i don't think it's in human nature to really believe something like that; mainly, i just think it's an interesting premise, and one that fits the available data as known to me better than anything else...

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  5. Mudpuddle,

    What is it that learns to distinguish between the outside world and us? What is it that accesses memory and uses this background of memory?

    I really don't understand because I see you as saying that there's a sense of the self which really doesn't exist--it's all an illusion.

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  6. if i was a zen master - which i'm not, of course - i would just say "mu"... but as i'm just old ignorant mudpuddle, i'll try to define terms a bit better, which also i may not be able to do... the "illusion" part enters the picture when people think of themselves as individuals; as a singular being who touches the world around them through their senses: hearing, eyesight, touch, smell, etc. in order for the sensory data to make sense to the brain, it has to be processed as information; so that it's not just a mishmash of pictures with no temporal orientation... what i said above was to the effect that this processing is a learned behavior beginning with birth: the nascent brain gradually separates out the sensory data it receives and uses it to parse out it's surrounding environment, while, at the same time, learning to function in that environment... so layers of association are built up as the baby grows that enable it to deal with the outside... memories accrue which aid in the development of understanding, and allow communication with others and the manipulation of the world outside... maybe the main point here is, that all this is occurring inside the skull; it's not related at all to the outside world; what's happening out there is limited by the nature of brain physiology as applied to the sensory input. two things are important here: our senses can't deliver a totally accurate picture of the outside world as it is; and, the passage of time means that whatever understanding we derive is out of date - we never can sense things as they are, because environmental parameters have changed while we were, or are, sensing them...(it's been recently established by experiment that the differential time gap between what happens in the "real" world and our awareness of that, is about .0005 seconds).... so. since what happens inside us has no real connection with reality (other than the partial picture given to us by our senses), some say that "consciousness" is an illusion... personally, i don't think it's a complete illusion, as we do manage to function somehow in the world; but i also believe that things that are invented inside our skulls, like philosophy, scholasticism, religion, prejudices of all sorts, and a whole raft of other brain-generated conceptualizations, even when communicated to and from other brains, have not solid place in the real world. science measures things; that's basically all it does; ideas about how the universe works derive from these measurements; and that is all we can really learn about what is occurring in the universe around us; but even science can't really approach totality when it comes to grasping how the universe actually works... granted, we're finding out more all the time by studying the quanta universe, but practical experimental support of these discoveries deriving from those studies must never be regarded as total fact. that's why ignorance is important; it allows room for mistakes; nothing is ever completely known; only suppositions that have been established over long periods of experimentation can be used as foundational truths; and, as i've indicated, even they are not absolute... i see i've gone on for way too long, beating what may seem like a dead horse, but possibly there's some clarity hidden in there... somewhere... a somewhat limited comparative example: if a person learns a musical instrument, as he or she practices, they become more accomplished over time, such that the initial data learned becomes automatic later in the mastery of the instrument; in time, with effort, music can be performed; but this doesn't mean that the musician is also a master of painting, or geology, or writing... what we learn over a lifetime is ours, but it is not others, and it may not bear resemblance to anything "real"... enough...

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  7. Mudpuddle,

    That's always been my problem with the claim that all reality is illusion. How do we function and survive?

    The other problem is that there is no core or self or ego. If so, what is being affected by the illusions and what decides that reality is an illusion. There must be something that exists over time to gather information leading to these conclusions--unless these conclusions of the lack of a self and the illusory nature of reality are themselves illusions?

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  8. i think (my understanding is limited, of course) is that reality is not an illusion, but our perception, based on the information fed to our brains by our senses, is... the inside of one's head has it's own little world and doesn't necessarily correspond to what going on outside of it... how to put it more clearly... the universe and the planet were here a long time before humans were and the only knowledge we have about them is acquired through our senses: vision, hearing, odor, touch: these functions don't convey to us what is actually there, outside of our heads; we know that because of the efforts of science, mainly; through the process of measuring what we can detect, we've found that certain phenomena are true so far as we can tell: gravity, atoms, LaGrange points, etc. but research has also revealed that there's a lot that we don't know, and only intuit. our memories are often faulty, we see in a limited vibrational range, ditto with hearing, and the other senses. and we really don't know what time is; it seems to pass faster at some times than others; as i said above, the brain is late by a very little bit in telling us what is actually happening out side of ourselves... so the totality of all this is that we're not sensing what actually is around us very accurately... hence the illusion reference... what my long comment(sorry about that) above was about, was trying in a desultory way to explain what i thought was actually happening in the brain as it grew from birth and how it oriented itself in enabling a process to cope with what is occurring around it... how a baby gradually learns to behave in the world is very interesting and informative: how it learns what it's senses are telling and it and how to react to that information in learning to feed itself, interact with others, etc. in the process of all this learning behavior, and experiencing how the outside reacts to it's demands, moods, etc., a sense of self-awareness develops. along with aging, memories and increased ability to manage all the different body parts lead to an increased ability to maneuver and interconnect the various parts of the brain: the autonomic nervous system blends with the aware, "now" part of the brain, to form a sense of self... so what i'm saying is that this is not true "consciousness", but is instead just the way in which the brain has developed; that animals, of which humanity is one, are chemical collections of molecules that, in obeying the basic laws of physics and chemistry, behave in certain ways... i must stress that there is no "proof" of this; it's just an idea that occurred to me, and that seems to me to answer a whole bunch of questions about what "life" and "humanity" is all about...

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  9. Mudpuddle,

    "our perception, based on the information fed to our brains by our senses, is (an illusion)... the inside of one's head has it's own little world and doesn't necessarily correspond to what going on outside of it.."


    We keep going around and around on this same issue. If our perceptions are illusions and do not correspond to reality, then how do we survive? Secondly, if our perceptions are illusions, how do we know this?

    Not true consciousness? What is true consciousness

    How does our consciousness differ from "true consciousness"?

    What evidence supports this, keeping in mind your comments that what goes on inside our heads is mostly illusion.

    I think we are going nowhere with this discussion. Can we just agree to disagree, that you and I have differing illusions (as you would argue) or a different way of seeing things (as I would say)?

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  10. sure; don't mean to rattle on so much; i'm poor at making myself clear, i know from previous experience. and there's no evidence for any of it, it's all just surmising... tx for putting up with me for a while, anyway...

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    1. Mudpuddle,

      The problem is not your clarity: I understood what you were saying. The problem is that we have two different ways of thinking, and while we probably understand the others POV, we can't agree with some of the others basic tenets.

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