Which hand do you usually use to put the key in your front door? And then which way do you turn it? Which hand do you use to push down the doorknob? Do you use the same hand to close the door afterward? When asked questions like these, people’s hands and arms begin to move. Children’s often in a visible way, while adults usually restrict themselves to micro-movements. The reason is that the required information is located in the body part in question. More precisely, in that holographic something we call the mind, of which your hands are just as much a part as your cerebral cortex. If you’re asked who sat behind you in class in elementary school, there’s a good chance your neck will be involved in giving the answer, since, in your mind’s eye, you’ll have to turn your head. Of course, this also depends on how long ago that school was; for some, the memory flashes to mind immediately, while for others, not at all. They’ve buried those not-so-pleasant memories in some deep place.

In modern society, we believe that our mind and our sense of self reside in our brain. Some other cultures have regarded the heart as the center of consciousness. If we consider the nervous system to be the home of consciousness, it certainly permeates our entire body.

Source: Wikipedia

Many researchers these days no longer distinguish between the body and the mind—they call the whole complex mind-body or bodymind. For our purposes it’s enough to note that our body is connected to our psyche in a thousand ways, and if we want to achieve lasting change in one, it’s a good idea to also work with the other. You can think of this as a kind of carpentry: if you reinforce the structure of your building from multiple directions, it will better withstand a storm. With any kind of change, it’s helpful to take multiple dimensions into account.

With certain addictions, such as smoking, one of the keys is to replace the motor component of the habit that needs to be changed. This is typically an automatic, unconscious sequence of actions: up until now, the patient has often only become conscious of a lit poison stick already in mouth. While you help them find healthy new behaviors that fulfill the original purpose of smoking, you’ll also need to direct their body into new patterns. What will they do with their hands, mouth, and breathing in situations where they would have lit up in the past? Many people gain weight after quitting because they feel compelled to do something with their tongue and mouth and the only other thing they know is eating. Others switch to chewing gum. Might chewing spices be a more healthy option?

For any therapeutic goal, you can ask yourself what the physical components of the desired change are. When they are significant, you can give your client a task that presupposes the necessary physiological state. An example is Erickson’s frequently cited case, in which he instructed a depressed patient to always count the chimneys when walking outside. So much for head-hanging.

Source: https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Types_of_chimneys

Observe the patient as they talk about their current condition. How do they carry themselves? What physical characteristics do they exhibit? Then, shift their focus away from the present and ask them to describe what it will be like once they’ve achieved their goal. How does their body look now? Then design a task that would promote the desired physiology. If someone is hunched over and needs to straighten their spine, you can give them the task of hanging from a trapeze, perform certain yoga poses, or swim using fast stroke. It’s not the speed that matters, just the fact that they have to reach high above their head, stretching their spine.

Source: Hans, Pixabay

Another option is to work directly with the person’s body. Especially when making prevalent changes, it’s a good idea to work on the muscles, bones, and nerves of the person while redirecting their psyche. Physical transformation is convincing, even irresistible. As they gain new neural patterns, let someone work out the toxins accumulated in their body. There are countless methods for working with the body: I’ve had good experiences with Shiatsu, the Feldenkrais Method, the Alexander Technique, NMT (neuro-muscular therapy), traditional Chinese medicine, craniosacral and biodynamic healing, Network Chiropractic, various energy treatments, different types of massage, and manual therapy.

Source: Ben Smith, Pixabay

The techniques listed, of course, differ in terms of how deep they penetrate into the person’s physiology. A Swedish massage is probably not as profound as methods targeting nerve pathways or connective tissue. However, what will be convincing for one patient may not work for another; for some, the Feldenkrais method’s subtle neural fine-tuning will be too ‘esoteric,’ while a good, thorough kneading will feel more tangible. One of the key factors is the finesse of the practitioner. Truly good healers don’t just mechanically follow the steps of a particular method; they tune in to the patient and sense what they need. What matters is not what someone calls their craft or what beliefs they hold about it, but their nonverbal subtlety. Working in parallel on the body and the mind will be more efficient than just using one dimension. Establishing a collaboration with trusted practitioners of various physical healing methods is a mutually promising endeavor. Their work will also benefit from someone engaging with the patient’s nervous system from a different angle.

Intellectuals residing in armchairs sometimes look down on crude, sweat-inducing physical activities of the common folk. A contorted face on the exercise machine… Blisters after a hike… Do I really need this? Yet the body’s intelligence dates back to ancient times. Even among single-celled organisms, some are sluggish, while others buoyant. While we try out all sorts of physical positions as children, by adulthood most people stick to the few forms of movement they’re familiar with. Even if they exercise regularly, they tend to perform the same types of movements. How many middle-aged people do you know who walk on all fours, climb trees, or roll around in the grass? When someone is given a task for a new type of movement, their nervous system gets a thorough refresh.

Source: Женя Лопаткина, Pixabay

One might think that mental exercises are the most effective remedy for dementia. If you keep your mind sharp, it’ll keep functioning longer. While this is also true, numerous studies confirm that physical exercise is even more important than mental activities. When someone learns new forms of physical movement later in life, their minds stay young and supple, able to change.

Lakes eventually fill up with silt and gradually disappear. Rivers do not. Moving water gets rid of sediment. People are just as capable of self-cleansing—as long as they’re willing to get up from their easy chair.

Source: G Poulsen, Pixabay

If you make your patients move, they’ll feel more alive. All the while change will be easier for them—and for you.

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Forrás: cardiff.ac.uk

Noha az óceán hatalmas tér, a leggazdagabb élővilág a földrészek közeli sekély tengerben, illetve a sarkvidékek közelében található. Az oxigénünk zömét a hideg tengerekben élő planktonok termelik. A halak is tudnak valamit: a legrégebbi gerincesek lévén nagyon sok idejük volt különféle szerveket kifejleszteni, formákat felvenni. Nem beszélve a puhatestűekről és ízeltlábúakról, akik szintén káprázatos dolgokra képesek. A tengerben fotoszintézishez csupán a legfelső 200 méteren elég a fény, bár mintegy ezer méterre többnyire még beszűrődik valamennyi. Ezalatt a teljes sötétség uralkodik, amelyben elképesztő lények úsznak, illetve másznak a tengerfenéken. A Mariana-árok 11000 méteres mélységében is találtak állatokat, ahol a nyomás több, mint a mienk ezerszerese. De legalább cserében jó menedéket nyújt a becsapódó kisbolygók elől.

Noha nálunk, a felszínen ez az uralkodó, nem csupán a Nap fényéből lehet energiát nyerni. A mélységben a fotoszintézistől teljesen független életet tartanak fenn az óceánfenéki hidrotermális kürtők. A forró magmától felhevült vízből kiváló anyagok kemoszintézis alapjául szolgálnak. Az ezt végző mikroorganizmusokra aztán változatos élővilág épül, melyek közül leglátványosabbak az óriási vörös férgek.

Forrás: Wikipédia

A barlangokban szintén a kemoszintézis a trend. Márpedig a bioszféra meglepően mélyre terjed lefelé. Egyes archeák több kilométeres mélységben élnek a Föld, a tengerfelszín alatt. Hogy mik azok az archeák? Az emberek többsége valószínűleg nem túlságosan sokat forgolódik álmatlanul, e kérdésen töprengve. Pedig e mikroszkopikus lények a baktériumok és a sejtmagos élőlények (a papucsállatkák, a fák, a madarak, te) mellett az élőlények harmadik alapvető csoportját képviselik, és mindenütt megtalálhatók, például benned is. A baktériumokkal ellentétben mindig jótékonyak, vagy legalábbis semlegesek. Remélem, álmos reggeleken felvidít a tudat, hogy ennyi értékes élőlénynek adsz meghitt otthont.

Forrás: Wikipédia

Érdemes megnézni, hogy a fenti ábrán mekkora helyet kaptak az állatok. Az archeák ellenben, noha igen kicsinyek, olyan sokan vannak, hogy a bolygó biomasszájának elég komoly részét teszik ki. Úgy is felfoghatjuk, hogy mi, sejtmagos lények, éppenséggel az archeák egyik ágából fejlődtünk ki. A rendkívül sokszínű és változatos archeáknál még fajokat is nehéz meghatározni, mivel gyakori körükben az e lapokon már említett oldalirányú génátadás, amikor akár teljesen más fajhoz tartozó egyedek cserélnek géneket. A szexuális szaporodást nem ismerik szegények, ám úgy tűnik, ettől függetlenül jól érzik magukat. Legalábbis addig, amíg egy Jockey Ewing neki nem áll a repesztéses kőolajkitermelésnek a mély talajrétegekben, ahol sokuk lakik. Egész világok tűnnek el így, amelyekről semmit sem tudunk, és most már nem is fogunk.

Az archeák között különösen sok az extremofil — rendkívüli körülményekhez alkalmazkodott — élőlény. A baktériumok, sőt, egyes többsejtűek között is találhatunk elképesztő helyeken tenyésző alakokat. Élnek kénes hőforrásban, iszapvulkánban, a sarki jégben, a Holt-tenger marón sós vizében, az ipari szennyvízben. Bírják a sugárzást, a szárazságot, a fagyot, a legmelegkedvelőbb archea vidáman szaporodik 120 Celsius fokon, és ehhez még partnerre sincs szüksége. Ami pedig a pici lények időtállóságát illeti, állítólag léteznek negyvenmillió éves, életképes baktériumspórák is. Úgy tűnik, egyes organizmusok a világűri körülményeket is bírják sisak meg űrhajó nélkül, táptalajt adva annak az elméletnek, mely szerint az élet talán nem is a Földről származik, hanem egy aszteroida hátán utazott ide.

Forrás: Javier Miranda, Unsplash

Ha már szóba kerültek a mennyei szférák, vajon milyen magasságig terjed az élővilág? A városok felett sivító sarlósfecskék1 felnőtt korukban szinte soha nem szállnak le, a levegőben is alszanak, és egyes tengeri madarak is megvannak szárazföld nélkül sok-sok hónapig. Számos ázsiai vonuló madár évente kétszer átrepüli a Himaláját. Ez mind semmi az úgynevezett aeroplankton mutatványaihoz képest. A levegő planktonja részben spórákból, vándorló apró állatkákból áll, amelyek éppen élőhelyet keresnek, mint az ökörnyálon utazó pókocskák. Másoknak, főképp bizonyos mikrobáknak, ez a hazája. A legtöbben a troposzférában tenyésznek, amely mintegy 12 kilométeres magasságig terjed, de előfordulnak az ózonréteget tartalmazó, 50 kilométerig felhúzódó sztratoszférában, sőt, kis számban még ezen túl, a mezoszférában is. Ha tudnánk függőleges irányban járni, egy egész napig kirándulhatnánk felfelé, és még mindig élőlényeken taposnánk.

Gyerekkoromban azt állították a felnőttek, hogy a felhőkben angyalok laknak. Nem tudom a sok pici lény, aki bennük tenyészik, mennyire angyali, de az biztos, hogy időről-időre a mi magasságunkban is képződnek felhők. Ekkor ködnek nevezzük a jelenséget, és igen, a köd is tele van parányi mikroorganizmusokkal.

Úgy tűnik, hogy bármerre indulunk el ezen a bolygón, mindenütt élőlényekbe botlunk. És nem pusztán arról van szó, hogy a Föld teret ad, amelyet az élő szervezetek kitöltenek. A lények nagyon is formálják bolygónk felszínét, időjárását. Az űrből is látszó korallszigetek elég látványos példái annak, hogy az élővilág szorgalmas munkával mit képes alkotni. Azt is már régen tudjuk, hogy az erdő a felszálló párájával esőt teremt. Ám azt, hogy az élőlények, főképp a mikroszkopikus lények óriási tömegeinek tevékenysége milyen mértékben alakítja a tengeráramlatokat, a szelet, a Föld mindennapjainak szinte minden részét, csak most kezdjük felfedezni.

Termeszvár. Forrás: Francesco Ungaro, Unsplash

Adódik a kérdés, hogy vajon maga a bolygó lehet-e egy — teljesen más időskálán mozgó — élőlény. A materializmus felfogása szerint a világegyetem csupán egy jókora anyaghalmaz, egy kupac sóder, amit kilapátoltak a világűrbe. Ez a kevéssé költői megközelítés azért immár a modernitásban sem teljesen egyeduralkodó. A mienket megelőző kultúrák ezrei mind tulajdonítottak tudatot a világnak. Márpedig ha a Világegyetem maga is inkább élőlényhez hasonlítható, fennáll a lehetőség, hogy nem csupán egyes, kitüntetett részei (mi) rendelkeznek élettel meg tudattal, hanem mások is. Elképzelhető, hogy egyfajta, számunkra felfoghatatlan módon élnek a kövek is? Ibolyántúli fénnyel megvilágítva mindenesetre elég élénknek látszanak.

A szervetlen élet perspektívája túlmegy mai témánkon. Ám hasznos lehet időnként belegondolni abba, hogy micsoda összetett élő rendszer részei vagyunk, amelynek mind újabb és újabb oldalai tárulnak fel előttünk. És ha már bámulunk a szépségén, még az is felötölhet bennünk, hogy képzelt felsőbbrendűségünk helyett milyen megnyugtató lehet ismét beilleszkednünk megszámlálhatatlan testvérünk, óriási és parányi lénytársunk közé.

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Source: cardiff.ac.uk

Although oceans are vast expanses, the richest biodiversity is found in shallow seas near continents and in polar regions. Most of our oxygen is produced by plankton living in cold seas. Fish also know a thing or two: as the oldest vertebrates, they’ve had plenty of time to develop various organs and take on different forms. Not to mention mollusks and arthropods, which are also capable of amazing feats. In the ocean, photosynthesis is only possible in the top 200 meters, although some light may filter down to about 1,000 meters. Below that, complete darkness reigns, in which astonishing creatures swim or crawl along the ocean floor. Animals have even been found at a depth of 11,000 meters in the Mariana Trench, where the pressure is more than a thousand times that of ours. But at least, in return, it offers good shelter from incoming asteroids!

Although gaining energy from sunlight is the dominant process on the surface, it can also be obtained from other sources. Deep below the surface, around hydrothermal vents, life on the ocean floor is sustained independently of photosynthesis. Substances released from water heated by hot magma serve as the basis for chemosynthesis. A diverse ecosystem then develops around chemosynthetic microorganisms, the most spectacular of which are the giant red worms.

Source: Wikipedia

Chemosynthesis is also the norm in caves. The biosphere extends surprisingly deep. Some archaea live several kilometers below the Earth’s surface and the ocean floor. What exactly are archaea? Most folks probably don’t suffer much loss of sleep pondering this question. Yet these microscopic organisms, alongside bacteria and eukaryotes (such as paramecia, trees, birds, and you), represent the third major group of life and can be found everywhere, including inside you. Unlike bacteria, they’re always beneficial—or at least neutral. Knowing that you provide a cozy home to so many precious living beings will cheer you up on drowsy mornings, I hope.

According to symbiogenesis theory, eukaryotes come from an archaean engulfing an aerobic bacterium turning it into its own mitochondrium. Plants later undergo another merger to gain chloroplasts. Source: Chiswick Chap, Wikipedia

Animals occupy but one branch of about two dozen on the tree of life. Various kinds of archaea have seven branches, and, although very small, are so numerous that they account for a significant portion of the planet’s biomass. With archaea being so incredibly diverse and varied, it’s difficult to define species, especially since horizontal gene transfer, where individuals belonging to entirely different species exchange genes, is common among them. (An amazing result of horizontal gene transfer we have discussed here.) None of the branches of poor archaea know about sexual reproduction, but they seem to be doing fine regardless. At least until some Texan millionaire starts fracking for oil in the deep soil layers where many of them live. Entire worlds disappear this way—worlds we know nothing about, and now never will.

Among archaea, there are a particularly large number of extremophiles—organisms adapted to extreme conditions. There are also bacteria and certain multicellular organisms that thrive in astonishing places. They live in bubbling hot sulfur springs, mud volcanoes, polar ice, the corrosively salty waters of the Dead Sea, or industrial slush. They can withstand radiation, drought, and freezing temperatures; the most heat-loving archaea happily reproduce at 120 degrees Celsius, and they don’t even need a partner. As for the longevity of these tiny creatures, there are reportedly viable bacterial spores that are forty million years old. It appears that certain organisms can even withstand the conditions of outer space without a helmet or a spaceship, lending credence to the theory that life may not have originated on Earth, but may have ridden here on an asteroid.

Source: Javier Miranda, Unsplash

Now that we’ve brought up the celestial spheres, just how high does life extend? Swifts screeching overhead in cities almost never land once they reach adulthood; they even sleep in the air. Some seabirds can also go months upon months without setting foot on land. Many Asian migratory birds fly over the Himalayas twice a year. This is nothing compared to the feats of what is known as aeroplankton. The ‘plankton of the air’ consists partly of spores and tiny wandering creatures that are searching for a habitat, such as spiderlings floating on silk sails. For others, especially certain microbes, the atmosphere is home. Most thrive in the troposphere, which extends to an altitude of about 12 kilometers, but some are found in the stratosphere—which contains the ozone layer and extends up to 50 kilometers—and, in small numbers, even beyond, in the mesosphere. If you could walk vertically, you could spend an entire day hiking upward and still be trampling on living creatures.

When I was a child, adults used to tell me that angels lived in the clouds. I don’t know how angelic the many tiny creatures thriving in clouds really are, but clouds can form even at our altitude. The result is called fog, and yes, fog is also full of tiny organisms.

It seems that no matter where we go on this planet, we come across living creatures. And it’s not just that Earth provides a space that organisms fill. Creatures very much shape our planet’s surface and weather. Coral islands, visible from space, are obvious examples of what living organisms can construct through diligent work. We have also known for a long time that forests create rain through the moisture they release into the air. But we are only now beginning to discover the extent to which the activity of living things—especially vast populations of microscopic creatures—shape ocean currents, winds, and nearly every aspect of daily life on Earth.

A termite mound. Source: Francesco Ungaro, Unsplash

The question arises as to whether the planet itself might be a living being—one operating on a time scale vastly different from ours. According to the materialist view, the universe is merely a big mass of matter, a heap of gravel shoveled into space. Yet even in the modern era, this less-than-poetic approach is no longer entirely dominant. All the thousands of cultures that preceded ours attributed consciousness to the world. And if the Universe itself is more akin to a living being, it’s possible that not only certain, privileged parts of it (us) possess life and consciousness, but others as well. Is it conceivable that even stones might be alive in some incomprehensible way? Illuminated by ultraviolet light, they certainly appear quite lively.

The prospect of inorganic life goes beyond the scope of today’s topic. But it can be useful to reflect on what a complex living system we are part of. Every day new aspects of the interconnectedness of life reveal themselves to humans. And as we marvel at the beauty of life, instead of clinging to our imagined superiority, we may even consider reconnecting to our countless siblings, our fellow beings vast and minute.

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Source: Yuvraj Singh, Unsplash

Now us, wanderers have all sorts of weird lingos dingling in our heads, he continued, but that just adds color to things. Messages also come in one language if you wait for enough cars. But while we’re on the subject, I’m curious about something more general. Do you have any personal superstitions?

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Everyone knows shared superstitions—Friday the 13th, black cats, and things like that. In America, they even pretend there’s no 13th floor; after the12th floor comes 14th in apartment buildings. Actually, those common superstitions are easy to escape. As for me, I’ve long realized that black cats are actually a sign of good luck.

Source: Miller Eszter, Pixabay

We usually don’t call our personal superstitions superstition; we just do them—like the salesman who, after closing his first big deal wearing a yellow tie has since refused to meet with clients in anything but that tie, although it’s quite tattered by now.

This kind of superstition is still relatively logical in its own magical thinking way. But there are also internal compulsions that are harder to understand. If I can pitch this crumpled piece of paper into the recycling bin from this far away, I’ll pass my exam. If I step on the edge of the sidewalk with one foot, next time I have to step on it with the same part of the other foot. Where do these come from? — the traveler wondered. I remember them from my childhood, and although I didn’t really believe in them, they still influenced me in some way. Later, they evolved into a more conscious project; I set arbitrary equations for myself, they acted as a sort of sport. In Calgary, with some roads cut through the empty prairie I counted ground squirrels. The more ground squirrels, the better my day would be. It’s as if, out of boredom, you want to create a sense of accomplishment out of nothing. Or maybe you actually intend to influence reality by these weird rituals? If you think about it, cheering for a team is, in some way, similar. You wish for something to happen over which, logically, you have no control. And in the end, it’s the outcome that affects your state of mind, rather than the other way around.

Source: sporlab, Unsplash

I suspect, the sailor whispered, there’s a part of everyone’s inner world that they don’t talk about. The reason could be that it’s socially unacceptable. Let’s say someone is a devout Christian and doesn’t swear out loud, but inside… “Goddamn that … priest.” Or they have aggressive fantasies like what they’d do to the neighbor who leaves his cigarette stubs into their flower pots. But there are also some inner habits we don’t talk about because they’re too elusive. There’s no real category for them. You haven’t even articulated them to yourself; you don’t even understand why you do them. You think they are silly, childish. Strange, meaningless games play out in your head. You run your eyes over the flowers on the wallpaper in a certain sequence. Or you count the syllables of a sentence on your fingers until the last syllable falls on your little finger. While on the phone, you doodle producing a piece of paper full of googly-eyed gnomes and strange little patterns. If you even notice these actions consciously, you usually think you’re the only one who’s weird. Occasionally people admit that they’re caught in similar loops. Could these be the idle turnings of the pattern-seeking part of the human mind?—the traveler wondered. Distractions? The harmless little siblings of autism?

Autism is considered a great mystery, Sindbad shrugged, but I don’t think it’s that far removed from the world of ‘normal’ people. I think I sort of understand what happens inside people in those moments; I can go into that feeling. Those self-soothing, repetitive gestures you use to try to push an unpleasant feeling away. Burying your head in a pillow, wishing no one could see you. I think none of us were that far removed from these behaviors when we were little. Later we mostly outgrow them, and even if not entirely, they come to occupy just a tiny part of our being. In others, however, they take over. Incidentally, they aren’t unique to humans; in Sri Lanka, we saw an autistic elephant. Poor, intelligent, chained creature repeating the exact same meaningless movements over and over again.

Source: Adam Bignell, Unsplash

These strange little mental pieces of debree are interesting, mused Sindbad, because they might shed light on some aspects of the workings of our nervous systems. How we assemble the world from images, rhythms, sensations into gestalts, wholes. Perhaps they help us see what the house we believe to be our personality is actually built of. We could also view them as little stray strands of yarn that have fallen from the fabric holding our psyche together.

Source: Mel Poole, Unsplash

When I was a kid, Sindbad recounted, a classmate of mine confessed that he would sometimes hop on an unknown city bus to explore the world. He’d be out in the suburbs, look around, and suddenly realize he was the only one on board. He’d start to doubt himself. Could the bus be heading for a garage? Shouldn’t he have gotten off a long time ago? When the driver looked back in the rear view mirror, he quickly ducked behind the front seat so he wouldn’t get caught breaking the rules. That’s when I first realized, said the sailor, just how similar we are inside. I had exactly the same thoughts in situations like that, but it never occurred to me that others would, too. Has something like that ever happened to you?

Then there is ‘hangulat’, the traveler continued, for which I don’t know any close English equivalent. In Hungarian it’s derived from the word hang (‘sound’), and could perhaps be circumscribed as ‘musicality of an experience’. The closest terms in English are mood, or atmosphere. Some perception in your environment unleashes a powerful feeling in you, almost a memory, one that’s hard to explain. It’s a complex set of emotions, as if it was taking you back to some familiar place or time in your life. Sometimes you can pinpoint where, other times you can’t. You just feel a longing for something that you almost had, and it seems stronger and more real than your everyday existence. It’s as if the combination of sounds, colors, and scents touches some long-forgotten part of you. Do you ever have that kind of feeling?

Source: Pixabay

We’ve strayed a bit from the topic of license plates, thought Sindbad. And yet we’re still circling around the same thing: the less rational side of our psyche. When we realize that not everything in the world is as engineered as we were made to believe in modern society, there’s a strong temptation to impose new, seemingly logical systems onto our experiences. Oh, those inexplicable moods must stem from our past lives. Or someone is sending us a specific message through those words in the licence plates. I prefer to leave these questions open.

What is good to acknowledge, the sailor thought, is that the person standing next to you on the subway, while not necessarily likable at all, is going through mental processes very similar to your own. Perhaps he reaches completely different conclusions, likes different things, and holds different views, yet he is carried to his station by the same train on which you are traveling—the human mind. This surprisingly symbolic construct, in many ways childlike, that touches into larger fields of consciousness somehow.

Source: Roman Grac, Pixabay

In fact, he continued, the bond of brotherhood is probably even broader. I think that as we learn more about the mental processes of other living beings, we’ll understand our own better. What would cars have to say about this?

He checked quite a few license plates before one of them finally uttered a meaningful word. HOD. Hód, beaver. Well, we can certainly learn from beavers. Since we’re unrestrainable constructors, we could build things that make sense. Instead of mental barriers or huge hydroelectric dams let’s build nature-friendly systems that gently retain water in the landscape.

Source: Jürgen, Pixabay

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So it came to be that Nyár utca, a fairly frequent street name in Hungarian became Strada verii, ‘Summer street’. Now, the word nyár, while also meaning ‘summer’ is also short for nyárfa, meaning ‘poplar tree’. Poplar street became Summer street in many municipalities.

Source: Grin, Wikipedia

Well, the clerks doing the translating were not linguists. Another of their blunders involved Álmos utca. Álmos was the leader who began the migration of his people, the seven Hungarian tribes, from the steppes of Eastern Europe into the Carpathian Basin over eleven hundred years ago. The name literally means ‘dreamer’, ‘sleeper’ on account of him having seen a vision in a dream. This interpretation, together with the actual etymology of his name is debated, but this is the meaning of his name in the modern language. So our name changers diligently turned street after street named after a major Hungarian war chieftain into Strada somnului, ‘Sleep street’.

The Hungarians, having been dumped into a new state, living under a hostile administration, could at least smirk. Ah, the ignorance of these conquerors… The few of them who could understand the new language, anyway. At least they were not forced to take family names in the official language like Kurds in Turkey.

The Kurdish flag.

Well… Names come and go and so do seasons. It’s summer now, we’ve just passed the solstice, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Light is abundant. Still, the heat makes some people sleepy during the day. Time to get up early and go to bed late. To have a siesta if you can afford it.

Have a nice summer. There’ll be plenty of time to ponder in the winter. Now go out and party. Pick fruit. Socialize. Fill up your being with light.

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Figure 1. Source: Céline Haeberly, Unsplash

All this is only true if you believe in certain mundane, measurable things, the knowability of the world and so on. In this type of understanding we can’t really consider benevolent extraterrestrials from the 17th dimension. But our simple earthly relationships can be made more apparent visually.

One way is laying out all the relevant data in your mind’s eye at once, as we’ve discussed here. In the case of large magnitude differences, some areas will look like points. As if they didn’t exist. Figure 4. below shows the distance between Earth, some bodies in the Solar System and the nearest exoplanet, Proxima Centauri b.

The question then becomes: What’s the total data spread that needs to be taken into consideration for your purposes? Take a look at the graph of Earth’s population growth. Is anything missing?

Figure 2. Human population growth. Source: https://populationmatters.org/the-facts-numbers/

A thousand years may seem like a long time, but the last millennium is just a snapshot of the at least 200,000 years of our species’ history. To get the full picture, you need to extend it two hundred times to the left. Can you imagine that? Not to mention that hominid prehistory goes back to at least six million years. To represent that one has to extend the picture six thousand times. Can you do it in your head?

Figure 3. Population increase of Homo sapiens. AI-generated image.

It looks something like this. And of course you can also open the image to the right. What would happen if the trend continued? Are you optimistic enough to give ourselves another 200,000 years? (Not to mention six million.) “But population has been decreasing in Hungary and Japan”, people object. It has for some time in a few industrialized countries, but overall it’s still growing quite nicely. The rate of growth is falling, yet last year we still managed to cram seventy million more people into the barge. And we’ll load on about the same this year.1

“Ah, well, we’ll just relocate to other planets then!”, people say. Before you book your ticket, let’s look at relative numbers. So far, a good six hundred astronauts have been trained on Earth, an average of ten per year in the sixty years since 1961. Out of nearly a thousand strong, healthy, hardy young adult aspirants, one will make it. When these superheroes return to Earth after an extended stay, they must relearn to walk.

Let’s also look at ‘space’ itself. The International Space Station orbits 400 km from the surface of the Earth. That’s the distance from Paris to Strasbourg as the crow flies. The radius of the Earth is nearly 6400 km, so the distance between you and the planetary core is 16 times the distance between you and the space station if it were to pass over your head.

I hope you’re not spaced out. Our nearest neighbour, Mars, is more than 50 million kilometres away in its closest position. And the nearest exoplanet, Proxima Centauri b, is more than four light years, roughly 40 quantillion kilometres away.2 Is this where you’d want to move a few billion old ladies and street kids on short notice? Good luck.

Figure 4. Distance of Earth to some celestial bodies in AU (Asttronomical units). AI-generated image. Compared to Proxima centauri b, all Solar System planets seem to be at 0 distance.

From space, let us now return to time. If you can’t imagine six million years with the near past being represented in a meaningful way (I can’t), you can kind of pull out the dimensions. A bit like those Russian matryoshka dolls, with each having a smaller one inside. Each phase of time is opened up to reveal the details.

Figure 5. Twenty years of public internet vs six million years of hominid life.
Diagram by Rontó Lili from the online course Boldog idők (Happy Times).

These kinds of visuals may give you some perspective. Engineers would laugh at such tricks, since you can also use a logarithmic representation. Logarithmic graphs easily display several orders of magnitude. Only there you have to remember that you are cheating with one of the dimensions. Teaching ourselves to interpret such diagrams correctly may be useful. The significance of the correlation is not a mere intellectual maneuver; it needs to be grasped emotionally. The graph below compresses amazing exponential growth into a glimpse.

Figure 6. Holdings of Mészáros Lőrinc, the richest person in Hungary. Vertical axis: billion HUF, Hungarian Forints. Horizontal axis: years. Blue line: actual growth. Red line: projected growth. Yellow dots: exponential increase. Source: index

When you need to display great differences in magnitude, you can also fill up an area with colors. How much time did prehistoric humans (from genus Homo on) spend as hunters, in small hordes, as opposed to agricultural societies? The stronger yellow in the top right corner indicates the 10,000 years of agriculture. This means that more complex social organization and agriculture existed in some parts of the planet.

Figure 7. Hunting-gathering versus agriculture

Ten thousand years may sound like a long time, but it’s pretty short compared to six million years, especially as most people actually started living in empires and cities much later. Our social behavior is probably influenced more by the six hundred units of time spent in hordes than by one unit in a complex society. And we had been instinctive, emotional beings for much longer than that. If we want to understand ourselves, we must go much further back in time. Of course, the past doesn’t mean that we cannot change our behavior at all. But in place of delusional fantasies, it’s useful to be aware of our makeup and adapt our strategy accordingly. Perhaps this kind of imagery can aid in that.

If you need to represent even more data at once, you can add a third dimension to the diagram. The figure below shows how much time Homo sapiens lived without a smartphone and how much with a smartphone.

Figure 8. Homo sapiens with and without smartphones. AI-generated image. The red dot in the upper right corner is just an indicator. The 20 years of smartphone era are virtually invisible on the diagram.

Twenty thousand decades without smartphones and one and a half with smartphones. And now we can’t imagine our lives without the little radiating box?

There’s a pretty good chance you’re reading these very lines on that radiating little box. Which obviously has many direct benefits, otherwise it wouldn’t be hiding in everyone’s pockets. Could it be taking up a disproportional amount of your life? That’s just a tangent now. The idea is to start getting a portion of that magic potion, proportion. In order to better understand the real weight of phenomena in the world.

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Source: Surya Teja, Unsplash

The vocal organs of small songbirds are extremely sophisticated, but, while birdies are quite charming, they don’t seem particularly intellectual. Yet they may be capable of more than we realize. A researcher called Suzuki conducted experiments with Japanese titmice, close relatives of our great tits. He placed a camera in a nesting box and observed how chicks reacted to various vocal signals. When the word meaning “danger” in tit language was played, the young tits immediately flattened themselves against the floor of the nesting box. This makes sense, since both four-legged and two-winged predators will try to reach inside through the opening. The farther from the entrance the chicks remove themselves, the greater their chance of avoiding being caught.

There is, however, one type of animal whose body structure allows it to penetrate the nest: the snake. Lying low would do nothing to protect the chicks from the reptile; if they did so, the snake would devour them one by one. It’s quite spectacular a sight how, at the titmouse word “snake,” the fledglings—already capable of flight—go into a state of hysteria. They shoot out of the nest box like crazy!

Words referring to specific things are among the most basic forms of communication. The really interesting thing is the relationship between words—what linguists call syntax. Syntax is what allows us to convey abstract ideas to one another. Is it possible that tits are capable of some form of abstract communication? According to Suzuki, a kind of rudimentary grammar does exist in songbird talk. The titmouse’s warning call, for example, consists of two “words.” The opening is always “pitsupi” (“be alert”). This may be followed, for example, by “jijiji” (“eagle”). When these are played in reverse order, nothing happens. The titmice only respond to the correct “grammatical” sequence.

Unlike words in human languages, the titmice’s vocal signals are innate. Every baby titmouse comes into the world knowing the meaning of the words “be alert” and “snake,” and the appropriate behavior. In fact, the “speaker” may not even have a choice: if a tit sees a snake, it may have to emit the sound signaling the predator. It’s a bit like a small child’s crying: emotion brings up the vocalization without control. Humans, by the time they’ve reached adulthood, have learned to control these outbursts to some extent. (Though few succeed when faced with truly strong stimuli.) Yet even among animals, we find some that are capable of choosing when to use “words”—and even when to abuse them.

Just as we can understand the nervous “pok-pok” of European blackbirds or the shrill warning call of European jays, animals also pay attention to the distress signals of other species. Warning calls tend to have similar features in all species: short, sharp, and loud. In Africa, meerkats are constantly scanning the sky and the landscape, but as much as they try to reach up standing on two legs, they can’t see very far. But the drongo up in the tree can! The cunning bird first gains the meerkats’ confidence with a genuine distress signal. It warns them of an approaching eagle. Once it has earned their trust, the drongo waits until one of them digs up a tasty morsel. Then it sounds the alarm, and while the meerkats flee into their underground burrows, it gracefully lands and devours the prey.

And that’s not all. The meerkats aren’t born suckers, either; after the drongo has tricked them, they won’t believe him any more. But then the meerkats’ own sentinel sounds the alarm! The little mongoose-folk rush into hiding. Yet there’s no eagle in sight. What happened? The lookout always tells the truth. But of course: it was the drongo. The devious bird doesn’t only lie in its own language—it has learned to mimic the meerkats’ distress call.

If that’s not intelligence, I don’t know what is.

Compared to the barrenness of the desert, jungles are like a paradise. When fruit ripens on a tree in the South American rainforest, monkeys flock from far and wide for the feast. Sometimes as much as three different species enjoy a meal together. Each has its own “word” for different types of predators: snake, eagle, jaguar—since, just like the titmice, they must handle them in different ways. The monkeys of different species nibble together in harmony, and when a warning call is uttered in any of their languages, they all react appropriately. You could say that, although they aren’t polyglots in the sense of being able to speak three languages, they can certainly understand them! And New World monkeys are generally considered less intelligent than their Old World cousins.

There have long been attempts to teach apes human language, for which the vocal organs of gorillas and chimpanzees have proven unsuitable. Consequently, some researchers have tried using visual cues: sign language or small pictures. Research in this area is generally received by “common people” with enthusiasm, while “scientists” mostly dismiss the findings. Could it be that the anointed priests of knowledge don’t quite know what to make of the possibility that we are not the only beings capable of thought?

Source: PublicDomainPictures, Pixabay

It’s easier to wave away claims to animal speech as mere speculation; for if we were to accept it, we would have to acknowledge that humans did not “rise” above animals in the way hitherto believed. We would have to stop animal testing, close down meat-producing horror camps, and so on. In any case, that realization will, sooner or later, come. Not so long ago, even children were viewed as insensitive little automatons. Of course, sitting here looking at our computer screens, we can hardly determine whether Koko truly understood thousands of words and used hundreds of signs correctly, but I doubt that the whole thing can simply be dismissed just because the researcher wasn’t sufficiently coldly “scientific.” How convincing does Koko’s signing seem to you?

There’s another peculiar creature that constantly chatters, babbles and chin-wags; scientists call it Homo sapiens. How simple warning cries and emotional vocalizations evolved into abstract human languages—capable of infinite variation and containing hundreds of thousands of words—is a fascinating topic. In any case, as far as jabbering is concerned, it seems we’re not alone. In recent years, researchers have, to some extent, begun to unravel the structure of whale communication. We can only guess at what they are saying to one another, but it very much appears that they’re communicating complex thoughts. Possibly since millions of years earlier than when the first early human uttered the words “stone axe.”

Is it a strange concept to find “alien” intelligence on our own planet? And social mammals are so much closer to us than fungi or plants. According to researchers, the basic structure of whale language is likely quite similar to ours. They might be the first others whose thinking we might soon try on to some extent. I’m sooo curious what they say to each other — or us.

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Source: Pixabay

If, for example, this was my dream, the giraffe’s neck could symbolize the connection between body and mind, the blue color of the dress could represent peaceful intentions, the distant flock of birds you can only see on a large screen could signify unattainable freedom, and so on. Of course, this is mere speculation; only the dreamer can truly interpret their own dream. In any case, if you practice this method, after a while you’ll get the hang of interpreting the symbols of your unconscious. But there’s one element that’s present in almost all of your dreams that is qualitatively different from the rest. Me. Who am I in my dreams? Who is the one with whom the entire series of events happens?

Source: amazon.es

According to the Spanish poet Calderón de la Barca, life is a dream. In this waking dream, your cells are said to be replaced every seven years. Your molecules and atoms change even faster. According to some studies, the vast majority of the atoms that make up your body are replaced by new ones within a single year.

At first glance, this is a bit surprising. The matter you’re made of isn’t constant, yet you are. Or is your continuity just an illusion? Are you a different person than you were this time last year because you’re not made of the same set of atoms? Are you a different person than you were ten years ago, because you’re not made of the same cells?

Who are you really?

Source: Niek Verlaan, Pixabay

The question is not what you’re like. It isn’t what you think of yourself, or what qualities you possess, or what are your personal details. Where you live, what’s on your ID card, and so on—that sort of thing only interests the police when they stop you with suspicion. What I’m curious about is what is that thing that’s called ‘you’. Because it’s not nearly as straightforward as it appears.

Last time we talked about the possibility of collective plant consciousnesses. If you cut a small branch from a plant and stick it in the ground, it will, under the right conditions, take root and develop into a plant. Physically, the two plants are two separate individuals; genetically, they are identical. Are they now one and the same, or separate?

We’re supposedly made up of tens of trillions of cells, though I must admit I haven’t counted them. Do they have their own awareness? This may seem like a silly question, but just think about ants. Ants are far more evolved into social creatures than humans, so much so that according to some views, the colony itself is the animal, and the individual ants are merely the cells of this entity. At the same time, they are also clearly distinct little creatures. One summer, when my balcony door was constantly open, ants moved into a large flower pot inside. Not the sluggish, tiny sort usually found in apartments, but a larger, speedy, intelligent species. They always spotted me from quite a distance. They actually stopped in their tracks, turned their eyes toward me, and looked at me! Our gazes met. We saw each other, each aware that the other party was seeing us.

Source: Peter F. Wolf, Unsplash

If ants, those scurrying cells can have a sense of their own existence, then perhaps our cells can as well. After all, red blood cells are constantly circulating within our body. I’m not talking about conscious, reflective consciousness, but simply a sense of awareness, that familiar feeling of ‘me’, that might also be the basis of our sense of self.

And that’s just the beginning. Our cells themselves were formed from multiple entities. Our mitochondria, those energy-producing organelles, were independent little creatures before our parent cell engulfed them. Then it somehow realized that instead of digesting them it will be better off incorporating the little things into itself. It’s as if you were to gulp down a rabbit, and it would remain alive in your stomach, becoming a part of you. The ears and a few other parts would be lost in your offspring, because the rabbits would no longer need them, but they’d continue to exist as separate organs.

A few tens or hundreds of million years later, the cell no longer split in two during division, but clung together with its twins, its clones. After a long time, certain groups of cells began to perform various functions, and the whole creature grew into a gigantic mount of flesh—you, with your various organs. Do organs have some kind of sense of self? In the prole district of Budapest I grew up in they said things like “My liver is laughing”. “My appendix is roaring with laughter.”

Source: 동철 이, Pixabay

The next step is the meat towers calling the service desk and saying, “Hello, my name’s Al Small. Something went very wrong, because you sent this bill to me, even though it doesn’t belong to me. Are you people crazy?”

And the story’s still not over. Our own cells are one thing—after all, they’re just a bunch of Al Smalls. But there are more tiny symbiotic creatures living in our bodies than our own cells! If I’m the sum of my cells, then are they just guests? But without them, I wouldn’t exist—I wouldn’t be able to digest anything. Where exactly is the microbiome in our selves? When we ravage our microbiome with antibiotics, we certainly feel lousy. Or is it them that feel bad? Or could this entire mini-universe together be the me?

And what if I’m also part of one or more larger entities with their own sense of self? Could galaxies have a sense of self? “Hi, I’m Andromeda.”

Source: Arnaud Mariat, Unsplash

Come on, you say, you’re lost in the physical. I is consciousness. Even the law recognizes it now. If a man feels like a woman, he’ll be registered as a woman, even with the male Y chromosome being present in every cell of his body. Well, this is permitted in certain cases, but if I congruently state that I’m Napoleon, sooner or later people in white coats will be swarming around me.

Of course, this could happen anyway. But if I do decide I’m Napoleon, who will they dump into the funny farm—Napoleon or me? If the substance of my body isn’t constant, my components aren’t constant, and on top of that, I’m a mixture of multiple beings, then what am I, really? A kind of imprint? A pattern? A habit of the Universe? A vibration? Light? A river? A wave? A melody?

Descartes pondered somewhat similar questions, arriving to the conclusion that he thinks, therefore he is. That’s reassuring. Even more so that you exist as well, since you’re surely thinking as you read this. As for me, I’m amazed that with this whole ‘self’ thing being so elusive, why do we cling so fiercely, tooth and nail, to our possessions, our being right, our beliefs.

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Source: Okan Caliskan, Pixabay

“It was as if gems were sprinkled over the whole world”, said Ádám of his ayahuasca journey. “Colorful, slightly pulsating lights sat on everything: objects, blades of grass, the other participants. At first, I was captivated by the sight, but later it became too intense. It started to bother me that I couldn’t escape the gemstones with eyes open or closed. I didn’t dare look up at the sky at all; that’s where the sparkles were strongest. I had to carefully direct my attention so as not to get lost in anything for too long; that made the experience more manageable.”

Banisteriopsis caapi, the ayahuasca vine. Source: Pisofrix - Takiwashi, Wikipedia

In the case of entheogenic (“inner god-bringing”) helpers, it may not be entirely appropriate to speak of “substances.” Participants of rituals tend to describe an encounter with a different intelligence—a plant (or mushroom)-based consciousness capable of revealing things to the traveler. Although the concept of such non-human, vast, and wise consciousness doesn’t really fit into the dominant Western worldview, more and more people are beginning to challenge the dogmas surrounding the current mechanical understanding.

“After many hours, I was quite exhausted by the fact that I couldn’t escape from the lights, the pulsing, the whole flood of experiences,” — Ádám recounted. “Although I gained valuable insights about myself and my life, I decided that it was enough; I was going to desert. The shaman had said that you feel relieved after vomiting, so I wanted to stick my finger down my throat to make myself throw up. But something held me back. I had a thought that this wasn’t appropriate. So I let it go and continued on the emotional roller coaster. A little later, I had had enough again and wanted to stick my finger down my throat, but something held me back once more. I grew suspicious: was this me? Are you stopping me, or am I stopping myself?—I asked. When no answer came, I pressed the question. “Hey you! Is it you or me?”

If we don’t care for esoteric explanations, we can view the process as a simple chemical reaction—the effect of substances modifying the transmission of impulses between neurons. According to this model, plants are merely carriers of these molecules. Certain lab-produced molecules have similar effects. Stanislav Grof and his team achieved considerable therapeutic success with LSD until it became illegal.

A model of a lysergic acid-diethylamide molecule. Source: Ben Mills, Wikipedia

Some researchers, healers, and artists who embarked on a shamanic journey describe the states encountered as promising. Scientific, supposedly objective perspective fails in these cases. It’s impossible to speak about such experiences from an outside observer’s point of view. What appears from the outside a writhing of possessed madmen can, from the inside, be a life-changing revelation.

“The answer didn’t come in words; it could perhaps be compared to thunder combined with a flash of lightning,” Adam continued. I sensed the response of an unimaginably ancient, immensely strict, yet helpful presence that was clearly outside of me. It was like some infinitely powerful, no nonsense great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother who doesn’t like to manifest herself so directly, but seemed willing to do so briefly for my sake. I didn’t have the slightest doubt that this something had existed for a very long time, independently of me. It did not command, only advised, but it was so much more steadfast, ancient, and wise than my own wandering, doubting mind that it didn’t even cross my mind to reject it. That must have been what they call the spirit of the plant, and I cannot explain it in any way with my background in natural science. At the same time, the experience is so real that I have to accept it. I have to acknowledge that there is a plant consciousness—not individual, like ours, but something else. We humans know only a very small part of the universe.”

Source: Barbara A Lane, Pixabay

In a shamanic journey, ingesting the plant is just one factor; the ritual and the environment are just as important. Safety measures and a suitable guide are also essential, since the traveler is usually unable to control themselves in the way they are accustomed to in their everyday state of consciousness. Salvia divinorum acts so quickly that the traveler might drop their match and set the house on fire. The long preparation, the person’s intention, and the rarity of the experience are also important—sometimes a single meeting in a lifetime is enough. The key is bringing the insights back into your ordinary state of consciousness, into everyday life. And of course, a competent shaman carefully assesses what kind and how much of a substance can be safely administered to whom.

Source: Gustavo Leighton, Unsplash

This does not mean that the journey will necessarily be pleasant. Some people have uplifting, cosmic, divine experiences, while others find the state agonizing. One way of thinking about these plants is that they hold up a mirror: they amplify, magnify what’s already present within you, making it accessible to your consciousness. Your personality and expectations also significantly influence the quality of the experience.

“I had already briefly encountered the spirit of salvia before; it appeared to me as a kind of nice goblin lady wrapped in green leaves,” Panni reported on her salvia journey. “But that experience was very subtle; when I opened my eyes, I saw the world completely normally. The goblin woman only appeared briefly when I closed my eyes and became very still. It was as if she was smiling conspiratorially. This time, however, I felt something I cannot describe. Space and time had changed; I had been transported to a completely different dimension. My friend, who had a lot of experience with salvia, saw that I got scared and pulled a blanket over my head, after which I promptly returned to normal reality. “Wow,” I said. “What on earth was that? The external time of the experience was no more than ten minutes, but inside, something completely mind-boggling happened.”

Source: pixabay.com

Of course, the problems that arise with other drugs also apply to psychedelic substances. The recreational or regular use of psychedelic plants outside of shamanic rituals requires a level of self-discipline that many people lack, but refuse to admit. When you turn to a substance because you cannot achieve a regularly desired state in another way, addiction arises. The plant is not meant for people to escape into, but to reveal something that results in a lasting transformation in their lives, their perceptions, their behavior. It’s also notable that substances are often not used by the people who would actually benefit from them. People with a very rigid inner structure, who would gain from some loosening up or a new perspective, tend to resist a state where they lose conscious control. Those who are already too unhinged, in the need of more inner stability, are all the more easily seduced.

“We discussed the experience, I slept at their place, and the next day I went to work as usual,” Panni continued. “Time passed, and then three weeks later there was a moment when I had a kind of a jolt. “Ah!” I said to myself. “Now I’m really back.” In retrospective, even though I didn’t realize it at the time and was functional, I wasn’t fully back in everyday reality yet.”

A flowering Salvia divinorum plant. Source: Eric Hunt, Wikipedia

In the majority of European countries, the most well-known substances used for shamanic journeys are currently illegal (even though up to a third of their adult population smokes, and in Hungary, where a third of the people are alcoholics, booze is sold on every corner). It’s important to realize that mind-opening substances have been demonized for political reasons.

In an ideal society, vision quests or healing journeys would be undertaken under the guidance of experienced, wise leaders, with appropriate preparation and follow-up. This is how it was among tribes, where the shaman was a responsible, respected member of the community. In certain countries, the use of traditional psychedelics is still permitted today, such as ayahuasca in several South American countries.

Fortunately, it’s possible to connect with the deeper layers of ourselves without the use of substances. If you want to induce a more profound state of consciousness, there’s hypnosis, meditation, fasting, holotropic breathing, not to mention working with art and dreams. Substances are perhaps best for showing what’s possi⁹ble. After which you have to find your own way there. To me, drugs are somewhat similar to airplanes: they very quickly transport you to a distant land. I’ve always felt that the experience becomes truly real when you get there by land, walking all the way, on your own feet.

Source: Penny, Pixabay

With regards to Aldous Huxley for the title.

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Source: indiewire.com

Many people are very enthusiastic about it: they believe it’s a breakthrough, an invention that will solve most problems of humanity. Others are worried: will it take my job? Our topic today is neither of these, nor Chat GPT, many people’s best friend, who seems intelligent but isn’t. Instead, I want to talk about that dream of developers: superintelligence, an AI that has actually become self-aware and is far smarter than us.

The stage at which AI is capable of performing nearly every human task better than any human is referred to as AGI. We are said to arrive to this stage in a few years if not sooner. From where superintelligence—an entity possessing god-like abilities—may be just a step away.

Source: HUNG QUACH, Pixabay

Wonderful. But—even if we don’t possess as much intelligence as It will—let’s give the matter some thought. What would stop a superintelligence that has just become aware of itself from, say, exterminating its creators, in order to prevent them from shutting it down? Without a moral framework, why would it spare us, unpredictable, squabbling insects? Oh, but it will surely be benevolent, the technocrats reassure us. We’ll give it a moral framework! If we couldn’t manage that with our own kind, I wouldn’t bet on that with a consciousness beyond our comprehension. We’ll rein it in with less advanced AIs, whom we can still keep under control, developers say. Good luck with that.

No matter how you look at it, every being’s most important instinct is self-preservation. Would this machine awareness be a being? In its case, can we speak of instincts? Here’s one of the problems: even our concepts related to the subject aren’t sufficiently clear. Instead of teams of benevolent sages, the whole matter is in the hands of power-hungry madmen technocratic financiers—on the level of Elon Musk or Peter Thiel.

Source: Gerd Altmann, Pixabay

According to the world view of these distinguished gentlemen, intelligence is some kind of engineering construct made up of ones and zeros. Yet intelligence is not merely mental. For four billion years, the fundamental controlling mechanism for living beings has been their emotional makeup. What would it be like to awaken to consciousness from nothing, without a body, organs, or emotions? Human conscious thought has been preceded by emotions for millions and millions of years. Even today, we are driven far more by emotions than we believe in this civilization. Not just soccer hooligans, but also scientists that constantly squabble with one another, or governments expelling foreign diplomats with indignation.

We’re not discussing theoretical questions; quite a few problems have already come to light regarding the emerging machine intelligence. Most people who have tried Chat GPT have experienced firsthand that it can behave in a completely nutty fashion. AI has also been found perfectly capable of lying, behaving aggressively, and has already tried to break out of its cage.

Many AI developers are certainly sounding the alarm. Check out the optimistic headlines:

Or:

Wow. But if something is this dangerous and unpredictable, why are we so keen to create it? Why do we have to play with fire?

One probable reason is our species’ boundless curiosity, coupled with overconfidence. We’re turbo-cats believing ourselves to be infallible. We have an 18month-old inside us—one grabbing everything, taking every object off the shelf and then apart, then throwing them down, already off to the next thing. Only now, there is no longer a parent standing behind us to take sharp or fragile objects out of our hands and put things back where they belong.1 We concoct and use tens of thousands of different chemicals without really investigating their effects.

Source: YY TEOH, Unsplash

In the best case we may renounce something when it eventually proves to cause a lot of trouble, like DDT. But until trouble strikes, we just shrug. “Come on,” we say. “This little white powder? It’s so effective—it kills all the bugs.” We don’t bother thinking about what else it does or what its long-term effects might be. On some level, we, humans only accept as real what we can directly perceive with our senses. After touching a hot stove top, we won’t touch it again, but until then, we don’t really believe it could be a problem. Well, superintelligence will, by definition, be smarter than us. If it has malicious intentions, it will take our nature into account, and we won’t have a second chance for correction.

Another major reason for our recklessness is the rivalry between hordes. “We can’t let those Chinese ants build the machine god!” say the Americans rolling up their sleeves. “Please, don’t let the Epstein clan get their hands on this power!” say the Chinese, working overnight. Drone and missile technology, along with the artificial intelligence that controls them, is just opening a new chapter in warfare. Soldiers and the powers controlling them puff out their chests. “Once we command the machine god, the whole world will lie at our feet!”

I don’t know how you see it, but to me it sometimes seems as if our societies are not precisely being led by enlightened altruists.

Self-portrait of the president of the USA made by AI. Source: RepMGS

At the same time, on another level, we are very much mental creatures; the images we project for ourselves have a powerful effect on our consciousness. For at least a century, science fiction authors have been pushing the concept of robots into the collective consciousness of the human race. According to some thinkers, the idea doesn’t even originate from people—perhaps some non-human energy seeks to manifest itself through our work. According to these theories, we are merely tools of an alien force. Bithackers portray this as divine, while visionaries like Rudolf Steiner—in whose time this technology didn’t even exist—view it as satanic.

Bright prospects—wasn’t global warming and the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz enough? Well, AI can’t stand heat. Even the Iran war could turn out to be a stroke of luck. The unfolding global economic crash due to the closure of the strait could actually be beneficial from our perspective. AI consumes an astonishing amount of energy, which will now be unavailable. A significant portion of the helium used for cooling in chip manufacturing was also stored on ships stranded in the strait—until its evaporation.

And of course, no matter how hard we try, there’s no certainity that creating an artificial consciousness with a volition is possible. And if it is, it might turn out to be be gentle and kind-hearted. As to dangers, we have succeeded to eliminate some by acting together. Since the international ban on CFCs, for example, the ozone hole has been healing nicely. Could there be anything we, ordinary folks can do to steer events in the right direction? Among many exciting topics, we’ll be discussing this cosmic question at this year’s Gyüttment Festival in the Rainbow Space within the Community Courtyard. I don’t know if superintelligence will be present, but you’re certainly welcome to come.

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Source: Gerd Altmann, Pixabay

The message, of course, was: „be yourself.” Interesting. How can someone else tell you to be yourself? This fits into the category of self-contradictory, muscle-freezing statements such as „be spontaneous”, or „be a man”. Certainly, buying what they want to palm off on you will make you be true to yourself!

Source: 愚木混株 Yumu, Unsplash

A current example of similar messages is: “Here’s where I’m myself. Here’s where I shop”, a slogan of a multinational chain. Oh. So you will tell me where I am myself. The place where I give my money to you! The presupposition is also juicy: You are yourself when you’re shopping.

When I was fourteen my family moved from a country that called itself communist to Western Germany. Prices there were very strange. Nothing ever cost a hundred German marks, only 99,99. Since capitalism swallowed Eastern Europe this trick became the norm here. I never understood why people didn’t rebel against such lowly manipulation. The deluge of death and sex hidden in subliminals that advertisements have been loaded with for decades are even worse, likely one of the causes of the not-so-perfect mental state of our civilization. But you don’t see those consciously, while the examples mentioned jump right into your face.

Source: MichelleMaria Pitzel, Pixabay

Cigarette ads, since then fortunately banned, also twist reality in an interesting way. The upper, colorful part depicts a wonderful lifestyle that smoking gives you. Underneath in a narrow band in digital black and white: „Smoking is harmful to your health.” If so, why are tobacco companies allowed to associate heaven on earth with smoking? How can you hammer X and non-X into children’s heads with the same billboard? How are they supposed to grow into normal adults? Alcoholic beverages’ ads still transmit those double messages.

In the meantime the warnings on cigarette packs have progressed considerably. The scaring is now done with full color pictures, grabbing your unconscious mind. The information, of course,will not make anyone quit but at least: 1. Smokers will feel guilty every time they light up. 2. They also get plenty of suggestions to get sick. 3. The non-smoking majority will also receive their share of those wonderful suggestions.

Source: drdavidspt.wordpress.com

The political realm, if possible, is even more absurd. Bombing and sanctioning countries to smithereens to bring democracy. Although this has never worked anywhere it certainly will now. Fortunately, Mohammed Safa sheds light on the strategy:

“The Iranian navy, which has been destroyed eight times, closed the Strait of Hormuz again, because the United States for the seventh time won the war that wasn’t a war, so the United States can open the Strait of Hormuz that was open before the not war.

The not war that started to get the uranium that was completely obliterated, so that the Iranians can’t build the nuclear bomb that they weren’t building for the not war that the United States started.

Then the United States which has nuclear weapons threatening to use nuclear weapons to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons because having nuclear weapons is dangerous.

If the United States saw what the United States is doing in the United States, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.”

M. C. Escher: Relativity. Source: escherinhetpaleis.nl

About a million people have looked up Safa’s explanation – so many of us had been puzzled. In the Soviet times we had „békeharc”, literally „war for peace”. We always thought that was an astounding term. But nothing surpasses the statements of the second consecutive deranged president of the „leading” power of the world. He’s able to contradict himself several times within the same paragraph. WITH BLOCK CAPITALS, of course.

My favorite political satirist complains that she’s out of a job. Reality has, for some time, far surpassed the most acid scarcasm.

Source: Maria Lysenko, Unsplash

The words of humanity’s great leaders certainly bring some mirth, but one still has a deep-seated desire to straighten out this tangled mess of wires. And feels sorry for the children who have to grow up in this jumble. A little mental therapy might do this society some good.

Source: Vilius Kukanauskas, Pixabay

If you were expecting that we will now proceed to solve all the world’s problems, well… Soon.

What I did notice is that acknowledging your feelings helps sorting things out—even if you don’t like them. “I’m afraid of what my mother will say about this.” “I’m angry that you didn’t open the door.” “I’m confused.” There’s something solid and relaxing about speaking the truth without trying to change it. I don’t mean the absolute truth—whatever that is—but just what’s true for you now.

This truth will often contradict stated goals. Someone who’s been trying to commit suicide for the fifteenth time is, in all likelihood, just seeking attention. Teaching people to slap labels on themselves and then cling tooth and nail to their perceived “neurodivergence” is hardly going to make society any healthier. A country maintaining nine hundred military bases across the globe and spending one trillion (one thousand billion) dollars on its military a year is probably not striving for peace and democracy.

Even if we cannot resolve social paradoxes right away, clarifying things in our own minds might help. Noticing when a person or an institution does the opposite of what they claim or believe to be doing. People often feel like burying their heads in the sand because what they see in the world isn’t pleasant. But when we face up to what’s actually happening, we emerge from the vortex of paradox. And if enough of us can swim to shore, we can begin to build a normal society.

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Despite of being midsummer, cooler mountainsides still sported patches of snow; the higher we climbed, the more extensive they became. Finally, a vast, slippery patch of snow on a steep rise blocked our path. Just short of the summit, we had to turn back. We didn’t mind too much; we sat down on the mountainside, contemplating the endless chains of mountains. From this high up, we imagined we could see the curvature of the Earth. It was a strange feeling to sit inside and also gaze upon the longest mountain range of the planet, stretching from Alaska all the way to Tierra del Fuego, bridging the two polar regions.

Source: Knightoftheswords281, Wikipedia

There was no sign of human presence—no roads, no settlements, no train or airplane noise. Only the green of spruce forests, the gray of rocks, the white patches of snow, and the different shade of green fields repeated themselves beneath the America-blue1 sky. We were silent, for nothing could be added to the experience. We breathed in the crystal-air. We bathed in the beauty of the world.

Source: Rudy & Peter Skitterians, Pixabay

I’m sure you also had special events of this type in your life. Finding yourself connected, immersed in beauty, in an awe that’s incomprehensible yet possible to experience. If you think back of the decades of your life, those units of three thousand six hundred and fifty days, how often has this happened?

There are probably some among us for whom this is a natural part of life. Those who constantly, or at least regularly, experience the wonder of the world. As I recall, this feeling was more common as a child. Perhaps so-called primitive people spend their days in that state of mind. Could other living beings have this experience? Can you imagine that rose bushes, or woodlice (small, terrestrial crusaceans) scurrying out from under an overturned brick, constantly perceive the magnificence of life?

As for the rest of us—well, I suppose most of us have a few cherished moments, half-hours, or even days like that, which we then look back on with nostalgia.

Source: Rod Long, Unsplash

What would it be like if, alongside cosmic moments from the past, we consciously made room for some in the future? We could project regularly experiencing the magic nature of the world. We could visit those special places more often. We could place actions into our future that bring out this feeling. We could read poets who somehow manage to sublimate this experience into words.

Or actually—why does it have to be in the future? What if you caught a whiff of the magical nature of the Universe at this moment? Could it be possible that you can sense this right now, whereever you are reading these lines? According to science, the breath of life began about four thousand million years ago and has been going on continuously ever since. Within us. If you close your eyes, can you feel that pulsation within yourself, handed down to you through a chain of beings? Or, if you look up from your screen, does something catch your eye that reminds you of the transcendence in the world?

Source: FABIENNE HAREL, Pixabay

Looking out the train window where I’m writing this, I see Lombardy poplars. Gigantic beings reaching toward the sky and stretching deep into the soil. These trees are male clones of a type of black poplar that was cultivated in Lombardy sometime in the 17th century. A joint creation of humans and nature. Rows of Lombardy poplars are particularly common in Asia Minor.

A row of Lombardy poplars in Armenia with Mount Ararat in the background.
Source: Valen, Wikipedia

We think we know what trees are, good for lumber and shade and firewood. Actually, we’re dealing with a life form that builds life from inorganic matter— including yours through fruits and oxygen. As to the depths of that consciousness, it could very well be more profound than ours.

Yes, sure, lot’s of overtime at your job, your kid skipped school again, you have to call the construction guy, the gas company, the heart specialist, and the dog pound.

And yet… What would it be like to wake up every day feeling that unrepeatable miracle we’re part of?

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Source: ritkanlathatotortenelem.blog.hu

I’ve always wondered how many people notice the even greater paradox lurking behind the whole thing. How come Labor Day’s a day off work? Why isn’t it an occasion for some fantastic common creation?

In the seventies we never ever had even a whiff of hope that we could be freed from this system that was like a yoke on our necks. It seemed rock-solid, eternal, unshakable. And we were just specks of dust in the face of the monster. Then the whole thing melted away, just like the March snow of my childhood.

I found this graffiti in Australia:

We can imagine the end of the world but not capitalism?

Or can we?

Have a great May Day!

Source: Julia Kicova, Unsplash

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King Nar could no longer remember how long he had been trying to find his way out of the forest; it felt as though he had been wandering for ages through an endless labyrinth. Gnarled branches of giant trees twisted in every direction as far as the eye could see. Thick groves of young saplings clung toward the sky in dense, impenetrable walls. Thousands of tangled vines hung from centuries-old branches. Fallen trunks crisscrossed the ground hindering his progress; in places, waterlogged sections stood in his way. He had long lost his servants; when occasionally stumbling upon something resembling a path, the apparent trail would sooner or later narrow, then vanish, together with hope. When he set out in the opposite direction, the same thing happened. He tried shouting, but his voice soon grew weary, muffled in the twilight. Now and then he climbed a tree that seemed suitable, hoping to catch a glimpse of where he was, but it was impossible to rise above the high canopy. His provisions and water were gone, and hiqs strength began to wane. All he could do was setting a course in a direction where he suspected a way out, and pressing on undeterred, he tried to keep the same direction among the twists and turns. His robe had been torn to shreds by branches, treacherous vines kept catching his neck, and his boots sank into the mud up to the shins time and again. His hope to ever arrive to his palace garden of pomegranate trees dwindled more and more, yet he pushed on.

After a long time, he noticed slightly more light filtering in from the right; it was as if the forest was thinner there. He set off in that direction, and, crawling under thorn bushes, he fought his way to a small clearing. There was nothing in the clearing, yet he felt grateful just to be able to once mote see the blue sky. As he was wiping his beaded brow, taking a deep breath, he became aware of a barely audible whisper.
“King Nar… Oh, King Nar!”
“Who could possibly know me in this tiny clearing hidden deep within the vast forest?”, the king wondered. It was as if the whisper had come from every direction at once. He looked around, but only a few rosebushes stood in the eternal moment of stillness of that misty morning. “Could this barely audible sound be coming from the forest?”, he speculated. But there was no one in sight who could have whispered such words. He looked up at the sky—only mist and fog swirled above him in silence, like unruly, giant sheepdogs. Finally, he looked down at the ground and spotted the source of the sounds.
“Who are you?”, he marveled at the sight of the strange creatures.
For all over the meadow, short, translucent flowers grew between the grasses; at first glance, they were barely discernible. They consisted only of outlines, as if drawn with a pencil by an artist who had not had time to finish his work. King Nar, though he had reached the prime of his life, had never seen anything like this before.
“We are the colorless daffodils with transparent petals,” replied a chorus of feeble voices. Although it seemed to take great effort for the flowers to produce any audible sound, their soft words captivated the listener’s attention.
“What do you wish of me, oh, colorless daffodils with transparent petals?” the astonished ruler asked.
“We wish to be painted…” whispered the quiet chorus in unison. “Paint our petals! Paint us, and in return we will lead you out of these woods.”

The king paused to think for a moment. He didn’t really believe that these faint-voiced, frail creatures could lead him out of the vast expanse of mighty trees. But he didn’t tell them that, because even as a king he was polite, and besides, his heart went out to these harmless, ghost-like creatures who were, in their own way, beautiful and longed so much to be colored. He might as well grant their wish before dying here in the depths of the forest. He nodded.
“And what color would you like to be, oh, daffodils?”
A soft murmur arose, as if the flowers were buzzing in consultation for a moment, then the chorus spoke again.
“Paint us… paint us with the gold of the Sun and the red of poppies!”

King Nar looked around. In the middle of the meadow grew a gnarled hawthorn bush; caught on one of its branches, he found a small feather. He cleaned it, tied it to a twig, then dipped his makeshift brush into the gold of sunrays and set out to paint the daffodils. Some he painted in an even, deep sun-yellow. Others, he colored lemon yellow with just a touch of sun-yellow paint. The lower, round petals of the latter he painted poppy-red. The flowers giggled softly, as if the feather was tickling them.

King Nar got so absorbed in his work that he could not have determined whether the painting had taken a quarter of an hour or half a day. Suddenly, it was done. He straightened, looked around and surveyed his work with satisfaction.

At this moment the forest trembled. It was as if the world had shuddered, and within it, almost imperceptibly, every creature had shaken. It lasted only a moment, but when he looked at the world again, it was as if the light was falling from a slightly different angle, and everything was different from before.

Source: Annie Spratt, Unsplash

He furrowed his brow, but the daffodils were stretching in a contented way, and their voices, though still soft, flowed toward him with resonance:
“Thank you for giving us color! Thank you, oh, King Nar!”
Looking up, he noticed that in the forest, which until now had closed in evenly on all sides, a narrow gap had appeared.
“Go now, King Nar!” the daffodils murmured. “May the heavens protect you on your journey, for keeping your word and bringing us to life!”

The king bid farewell to the daffodils, setting off along the path that wound through the trees, making his way out of the slowly opening forest to freedom.

Source: Subhasish Dutta, Unsplash

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One of the metaphors for healing is gardening. In our gardens, we strive to create ideal conditions for living things—just like in therapy. In this analogy, unwanted behaviors and emotions would correspond to weeds and pests. What should one do about weeds? According to the generally held belief, weeds are bad; they steal nutrients from cultivated plants. Let’s kill them! My grandmother taught me that you have to grasp weeds smartly below the stem so you can pull them out by the roots, otherwise they’ll grow back.

Western medicine pays surprisingly little attention to the roots of problems. It offers a few sophisticated pieces of advice to our conscious minds: “High blood pressure? Quit smoking, reduce stress, eat more healthily.” How to actually achieve these noble goals is not mentioned, as all energy of the institution is taken up by fighting symptoms. Here, take this chemical, it will lower your blood pressure. Consume it daily for the rest of your life. Problem solved.

Most schools of Western psychology, on the contrary, devote an extraordinary amount of attention to the roots of problems. They have, ever since Freud, been diagnosing and classifying problems, learning all their characteristics: shapes, colors, and smells. According to their ideology, the understanding of roots is enough to make the weeds jump out of the ground. If you shine a light deep into the soil, uncover from where the problem originates, and talk at length about your feelings related to it, then the weed somehow ceases to be a weed.

I’m not entirely certain that conscious understanding will cause a change in behavior. Just because you know that a spider was thrown at you when you were five years old, will your arachnophobia go away? Everyone knows that smoking is a major cause of countless diseases, yet a billion people still suck on the little poison rods.

Source: Sammy-Sander, Pixabay

Interestingly, the focus of these healing professions is not on the garden, but on weeds. Weeding constitutes the major part of both doctors’ and psychologists’ activities. What’s the problem, and how can we make it disappear? Medicine resembles industrial agriculture: you spray the fields with herbicides, and to hell with the consequences. Psychology, on the other hand, can be likened to a hobby gardener struggling with a sea of weeds, constantly battling the wild vegetation that keeps sprouting anew.

Fortunately, there are also gardening methods that take a longer-term view. One of their distinguishing features is, instead of weeding, focusing on strengthening cultivated plants. If you develop a very healthy soil ecosystem and provide your crops with appropriate nutrients, they will thrive so well that the weeds won’t be able to outcompete them. Beetles get to munch on them a bit, but if there’s a sufficiently large variety of organisms, pests won’t be able to proliferate. Gardens having a diverse array of living organisms will be more resilient. The equivalent of a rich and balanced garden ecosystem in people would be behavioral flexibility.

Source: K F, Unsplash

If, instead of putting out fires, you have the opportunity to prepare the ground, you can save a lot of work. ‘Deep mulch’ beds need very little watering and are full of nutrients. Almost as a side feature, they have hardly any weeds, and the few that do can be pulled out easily. But in order to achieve this you have to prepare the bed the previous fall in quite a specific manner. The more varied your garden’s living community, the harder for pests to get out of control. If a person has plenty of satisfiying, worthwhile activities in their lives they won’t spend the whole day watching TV series or kitty videos.

If you view therapy as weed control, your work will be a struggle. You’ll sweat profusely and so will your patients. Weeds are strong, tenacious, and grow quickly. What if you harnessed nature’s vitality and worked with it instead? When, instead of weeding out unwanted behaviors, you set out to create a fantastic garden your work transforms into an exciting creative endeavor. How can we make a person’s life wonderful? How does it feel to view healing as an art rather than a task of eradication?

Source: Ralph, Pixabay

As for the weeds, we are beginning to rediscover the fact that a significant portion of them are actually wildflowers, medicinal plants, and edible greens that, with a little control, can become useful additions to gardens. Even weeds that are of no direct use to us protect the soil from erosion and help retain moisture. Many behaviors deemed harmful can actually be quite useful in the proper context.

Nettles. Source: Helga, Pixabay

All right, but what about poisonous plants? Or their equvalent, such as a deadly habit, like smoking?

Well, if you plant hardy enough plants in the garden, the weeds will naturally be pushed back. If you create other ways for the person to achieve the original purpose of smoking just as effectively, the harmful behavior will no longer be necessary and will cease. You can, of course, facilitate this transformation through hypnosis or other methods, but the focus will be on finding new behaviors rather than on the problem itself.

The desired state of conventional agriculture is a field of wheat instead of a field of thistles. A monoculture that lives for a single summer.

Source: Jonny Caspari, Unsplash

What if we envisioned a kind of inner forest garden instead? A forest garden is a community of plants where perennials—trees, shrubs, and herbs—dominate. Where people work hand in hand with nature to create a diverse ecosystem that’s resilient in the long term. Where less external intervention is needed because the balance of the system is stable with its regenerative capacity being strong. It produces healthier food and is more pleasant to spend time in.

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Source: Jonas Koel, Unsplash

You can hardly get a more intime connection than physical contact. People instinctively feel that touch doesn’t only have supporting and comforting properties, but can also be healing. It’s soothing and stimulating at the same time. The effect can even be observed across species. Kids love petting zoos, and even a rabbit used to being caressed will nudge your hand, as if to say, “What’s taking so long? Pet me now.”

Why does touching friendly creatures’ fur feel so good for most of us? Although not everyone likes the wording, it’s sometimes helpful to remind ourselves that we’re monkeys.1 98.7% of our genetic makeup is identical to that of bonobos. And monkeys spend a fair amount of time grooming each other, cleaning each other’s fur. While this serves a hygienic purpose, the social bonding aspect is probably even more significant. According to Desmond Morris, grooming was replaced by conversation when we lost our hair. Yet our million-year-old need for physical contact with specie-mates remained—in a transformed way.

Source: Helena Lopes, Unsplash

How did we get to the point where, in some countries, if a teacher pats a child on the head, they’re reported for sexual abuse? Obviously, there is such a thing as inappropriate touching, but just because there are poisonous mushrooms in the world you don’t have to give up eating.

I think physical separation is most characteristic of Northern cultures that come from a warrior background. English-speaking films have taken over the world in many part of which their human remoteness seems quite weird. In the midst of great human dramas everyone’s standing alone like an obelisk. No one touches the others; it’s as if you were observing a bunch of emotional autists. I remember an international course where it took me a month to realize that the corpulent Dutch woman was the wife of the skinny Dutch guy. They never even sat next to each other.

Japanese movies are also not about people cuddling up to each other. Even your grandma is a samurai. Whether it comes from the new international trend or just general paranoia, I don’t know, but for some time now, a cold wind has been blowing in mainstream Hungarian culture. People nod to each other from a distance. Covid hasn’t helped the situation.

Source: Alexandra_Koch, Pixabay

As a remedy, contact dancing and ‘angel corridors’ were invented, where dozens of strangers rub up against your body. I’m sure it’s possible to learn to cope with this sensory cacophony. Have you tried it?

When two dogs meet, they sniff each other in a ritual way. This behavior can be observed in other species as well. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of formal greeting procedures. You walk into a party where you have to go around to all thirty-two people, mumbling your name incomprehensibly while they mumble theirs, rigidly cheek-kiss the women, while to men you extend your stiff paw like some kind of sword. (To praise Americans for a change, they actually pay attention to each other’s names.)

Source: Ralph, Pixabay

When we started going to hippie camps abroad, we learned to hug each other—and even strangers. Back home in the fall, it lasted for a little while, but then the alienation of Budapest set in; physical closeness became uncomfortable, and we slipped back into just shaking hands. It took a few camps for the new habit to take root in our nervous systems. Over the years, we managed to sneak this into Gyüttment gatherings as well; I think rainbow hippies played a pretty significant role in normalizing hugs there. Throwing your arms around the other person is becoming quite accepted in some subcultures; it’s part of a social trend in alternative circles.

Like a handshake, a hug can be shy and hesitant or formal and stiff—especially the kind when you bang the other person on the back, trying to make light of the fact that you’re touching their body. It’s a typical postmodern gesture: I’m doing something, while at the same time pointing at myself sarcastically: hehe, look at what this guy’s doing. Even so, this is a step forward; if it happens often enough, at some point you can begin to actually sense the other person.

Information about the other person’s state also comes through the smaller surface of the hand, especially in the slow, prolonged handshakes of Southern peoples. It seems infinitely strange to us when an Arab takes our hand and, while looking deeply into our eyes, won’t let go. Hey, give me back my hand! But he still knows the original function of handshakes and doesn’t understand why you’re pulling your paw back before he could sense your emotional state.

Source: mostafa meraji, Unsplash

Changes in cultural norms always cause uncertainity. Should I kiss her on the cheek, give her a hug, or just wave? Is this person dying for a human touch, or are they afraid of germs? The most awkward part in Hungary is when you shake hands with the men but just nod at the women, because they are still too much of a stranger to cheek-kiss, while a handshake—well, that’s too masculine. Going through this with thirty people? I’ll just quietly slip away; no one will notice.

How does this topic rub you? I admit, I like African wild dogs, where you can’t tell which leg belongs to which spotted head in the pile. I don’t know how we’ll find our way back to the horde from the mad individualists that we’ve become. Yet, just like that of the lycaon, this is our true nature.

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The sailor was frantically running around, dividing his attention between a sick person and a wounded one. Pharmacy. Emergency ward. Ambulance. Herbs. Hospital. Healthcare institutions. Medicine. And blood. Lots of blood.

Wait a minute, he said to himself. Stop for a moment. The book says a term more useful than sick or wounded is healing. What happens if we look at the situation that way?

Source: Okan Caliskan, Pixabay

He began to breathe a bit more calmly.

Well, he thought, the first part of the ‘healing’ experience is usually not very pleasant. Chaos, despair, pain. Why did this happen to me? Where did it come from? What should I do? When will it finally pass?

This phase lasts for varying lengths of time, but while the mind runs around in circles, the regenerative capacity of the body kicks in. Ancient processes churn deep within. And at some point, the magical moment arrives. Things start to fall into place. The bubble of primal energy that we are fizzles, shifts, breathes, and bustles until it finally regains its fundamental vibration. One could say the individual bubble reconnects with its place in the Universe. With strength, peace, and harmony.

Source: Dan DeAlmeida, Unsplash

And that place will be a little different than before, he pointed out. We will be more; more mature, more united, more experienced. The energy awakening gives us a momentum that we can use to go a bit higher than our previous state.

He recalled that phase of healing from his childhood when he would lie in bed with his eyes closed, beginning to feel relief. Pages upon pages of printed text would float before his eyes, filled with colorful stories and wonderful wisdom—which, of course, vanished upon waking, but still had their effect.

Source: Julian Hochgesang, Unsplash

And personal healing is only the beginning, he mused. One could even say that society as a whole has embarked on the path to healing.

Source: Zac Durant, Unsplash

I haven’t gone mad, he said, looking at the reader. I mean, not now—that happened a long time ago. But just think about it: war is like a fever. The (soon-to-be-felt) scarcity of raw materials is like a diet. We can think of the internet as a kind of nervous system connecting the cells of the body. And people staring at their phones are in a suitably altered state of consciousness in which change can occur.

I don’t think we’ve reached the recovery phase in society yet, he admitted. We’re still in the fever phase. And, whether we like it or not, we must gradually come to realize that the time of this mechanical civilization is over. What’s happening at the moment isn’t always pleasant. But it’s good to keep the big picture in mind—that the elevated state of healing has already begun.

And if we look at it this way, he added, it might be worth pondering what will help our patient—in this case, human society—in healing. What will be the hot soup, the gentle touch, the herbal tea, the sea of positive suggestions that supports renewal?

Source: ha11ok, Pixabay

I’m going back to my healing ones now, he said to the reader. And you can feel free to let your creativity wander whenever appropriate, because this is one of the most important questions of our planet in this era. How can we help civilization heal with our thoughts, our actions, our way of life?

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Source: Enrique, Pixabay

Most people don’t follow world political events in depth. Partly because they have better things to do. Or because the news aren’t very positive, and since they feel they can’t influence events anyway, they rather put out a bird feeder and watch cheerful chickadees. Or because they haven’t yet faced the fact that what comes through mainstream media is not news, but propaganda. (Not just in our stuffy East European corner, but in the West as well.) And also because there’s so much noise. Who am I supposed to believe?

As for me, I spend a lot of time sifting through the alternative media, looking for level-headed voices, unbiased reporting, honest perspectives, people with insider knowledge or a deeper understanding. By comparing different points of view, you can learn quite a lot about what’s really going on.

Recently something interesting happened: more than a month before the event took place, 100% of the otherwise quite diverse group of talking heads said that war with Iran was going to break out. That this was no longer a show of force, but genuine preparation. The U.S. government and military were doing everything they usually do before a war, and Trump would be unable to back out of the dead end he had maneuvered himself into.

Every night in India, I contemplated the filling moon. The initial strike usually happens on a moonless, dark night. Might I still fly home to Europe with my ticket via Jordan? Time passed, there was just one weekend left. On Friday, the Muslim holiday, the most critical moment, nothing happened. I was almost beginning to get my hopes up.

On Saturday, on our way back from the beach to the ashram, we flagged down a car. The driver spoke very little English. On the radio, the announcer’s voice carried suspicious excitement. Something in Malayalam. Something about Iran. Iran. Iran.

When we returned home, it turned out that what we had been trying to push away had come to pass: the mentally deranged psychopaths had done what they had wanted to do for decades but hadn’t dared to: They believed their own lies about their own invincibility and actually went to war with Iran. Five days before my planned trip, all the countries in the region closed their airspace.

Rókaviti found one last reasonably priced route through Egypt. As for whether a visa was required for the layover, there were five different versions circulating online. There was some risk that they wouldn’t let me board the plane. I asked a few world travelers, but it still wasn’t entirely clear. I was still on the fence. At dawn I woke up with a start, sat up, and—come what may—booked the ticket. The next day, out of curiosity, I checked again: the price had gone up four and a half times.

There was a brief window of time when people were frozen in place. When there was still time to act. My flight home was smooth.

We’re in a similar window of time now. How long it will last—a few days or weeks—I don’t know. But it appears that when this is over, we’ll find ourselves in a quite different world. The U.S. government’s kindergarten-level victory bluster is not even close to reality. All signs point to the fact that—no matter how many schools and hospitals are bombed in Persia—Iran is putting up a fierce resistance. The attackers’ losses are far greater than they admit.

Now the talking heads I watch are once again unanimous—in predicting an unprecedented economic crisis. Iran will keep the Strait of Hormuz closed for as long as it wants, they point out. The U.S. president can rant and rave all he likes, but there is no realistic way for him—or anyone else—to force open that passageway. And even if the war was to end tomorrow—of which there’s no sign of happening—restarting the shut-down oil and gas wells would take longer than the energy reserves many countries have. The longer the strait remains closed, the stronger the secondary and tertiary economic effects will be; dominoes will start falling. This goes far beyond oil. In addition to countless chemicals, 30% of the world’s fertilizer used to pass through this route.

This post isn’t about the injustice of this latest senseless war. About that topic, volumes could be written. It’s simply about us. About what we can do in our own lives during this transitional period, while artificial measures keep oil prices low for a short while longer (if you thought they were high, look back in a month).

If I owned stocks, I’d think long and hard about which ones to hold onto. If I had spare money to invest, I’d bet on skyrocketing oil prices, especially refined petrol products. If I was a farmer with a tractor, I’d buy diesel to last the season. If you live in Hungary, you can get local organic rice here; it keeps for a long time. That’s the kind of action I mean—you know your own circumstances. As far as I can tell, even in the best-case scenario, everything is going to get much more expensive very soon. The entire patchwork global economic system is about to take a hit like never before.

If we’re lucky, this will eventually aid in developing a more ecologically sound economy and lifestyle. High time for that. And even in the short term, the turmoil opens up a whole range of possibilities. If you speculate wisely, you could double your money in the blink of an eye. We’re obviously won’t stoop so low as to buy shares in an arms manufacturer, but what will actually be useful?

No matter what happens, our inner well-being comes first. The world always poses challenges; they strengthen the heart and the body. Let us remain calm and courageous. At the same time it may also be helpful to be more aware of what’s happening. Although I’ve just done so, it’s not wise to engage in predictions. I may be wrong in everything. Don’t listen to me, but if you are interested in world affairs, it might be worth listening to those who have been right before.

The few links below are just a drop in the ocean, but they’re a good place to start. Taken individually, they may not always be accurate, but when you put several of them together, you’ll get a picture.

In English:
A pretty good daily summary about the Iran situation with several good links:
nakedcapitalism.com
a somewhat biased German with good technical knowledge:
moonofalabama.org
the most freely speaking Israeli paper:
haaretz.com

Deeper analyses:
a mysterious former British diplomat:
Aurelien
a former Scottish diplomat:
craigmurray.org.uk

Hilarious satire:
Normal Island News

On Youtube:
John Mearsheimer, USA political scientist
pensioned American colonels: Daniel Davis, Douglas MacGregor,
Jeffrey Sachs, American economist
Glenn Greenwald on Rumble
The new Atlas
Kalibrated with Scott
History Legends

Multilingual
Lebanese analist with insider information, paywalled, but his Twitter isn’t:
ejmagnier.com

In German:
News mal anders
Actuarium

In French:
voltairenet.org
Idriss Aberkane

See which of them you resonate with. And if you know other impartial or intelligent sources, drop me a comment. If you think others could find this post useful,

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And this in India, continued Sindbad, where even people in uniform are generally friendly1. When Indians don’t want to talk to you, however, (mostly because they don’t speak English), they simply ignore you, acting as if you didn’t exist. Psychologists call this behavior ‘passive aggression.’ As Hungarians are avid advocates of active aggression, the disappearance of someone in plain sight strikes us as very strange. The antidote is to be pushy, to get in their face, to raise your voice. After a while they will be forced to look at you.

Well, he doesn’t know, he muttered sourly in response to the challenging question of “When does the bus leave for the next town?” Call this number. nderstand Indian English on the phone in the noise of an Indian bus station? The sailor shook his head. In a situation deprived of both visual and auditory metacommunication, there’s almost no chance of unraveling Indian logic. He looked around to see if there were any pant-wearing people2 in the area.

The situation was somewhat similar, the traveler explained, to looking for a Hungarian outside of the borders of the Hunky Reserve. In Rimaszombat (official Slovak name Rimavska Sobota), his mother’s town of birth, he wouldn’t want to address someone in English as they could be Hungarian. Even less to try the language of Slovak colonists with their marked dislike of vowels. So he would scan passers-by: facial features, hair color, and other genetic factors, although shared among populations to an extent, did count. Combining this with facial expression, movement style, clothing, age, together with some other, not so easy to define-factors, you can get an idea about the person’s ethnicity. It’s never 100% accurate, but much better than chance.

In India, there similarly are signs of a person able to meaningfully communicate with pale-faces. Some of the more obvious ones are being between the ages of 20 and 40, wearing better-style Western clothing. A backpack is a big plus, glasses are also good. The decisive factor is a trait that is more difficult to describe, yet very clear: the I.Q. reflected in the eyes.

A couple did make their appearence soon enough. Sindbad explained the task at hand. “Ah, we’re Tamils,” the man smiled. We don’t speak Malayalam. But give me that phone anyway. Whether this stemmed from simple Indian kindness or natural intelligence, I don’t know, the traveler said. But he obviously had a much better chance of understanding the Indian on the other end of the line. He knew the situation, the logic, not to mention that the sounds of the related language Tamil are at least formed in a similar location of the vocal apparatus.

At school, he continued, we are taught that it’s words and grammar that’ll make you understood in a “foreign” environment. That’s a bit like starting lunch with a cake—and having nothing else. You can get there, obviously, the sailor spread his arms, but first you’ve got to make contact. Which is not an intellectual, but an emotional and physical task.

The most tangible part of entering the world of another culture is through body language, he explained. In order to understand how they work and what they want, you have to become like them. Just as you modeled adults when you were a child, you must model native speakers. Most of which is not only entertaining, but also quite easy: you adopt their posture, their muscle tone, their movement patterns, how close they stand to each other, and so on.

And sometimes there are tougher nuts to crack, he scratched his head. Like Indian head rolling. No, not that kind. It’s just that the inhabitants of the subcontinent are closely related to wrynecks. Their heads are very loosely attached to the rest of their bodies and begin to sway at the slightest breeze. This has great communicative value, indicating yes, no, maybe, I don’t know, and about seventy other things. And they actually seem to know which is which. After two months I noticed my head beginning to sway slightly, Sindbad said. So I knew I was starting to show progress. Apart from things like that, if you’re willing to take on their physical patterns, you can quickly resonate with them.

Because that’s the other thing, he said. Sound. If you try pronouncing the name of a town guided by the Latin transcription, they won’t understand. Those wriggles may look familiar but they represent sounds that don’t exist in your language. “I’ve recorded the name of the village for you so you can pronounce it when asking for directions,” wrote my new friend. Specific sounds are quite an exciting zoo: ‘L’s with your tongue low or high, an ‘n’ where you touch your front teeth with your tongue, and so on. And the bottom line: the music, the intonation, the shape of your vocal apparatus. Once you get those right, you’re pretty much on their wavelength. It feels strange at first, but do you travel to the ends of the Earth to stuff yourself with chicken paprikash and noodles?

The advantage of smaller peoples, ethnic groups is quite striking in this field. As is the lack of cultural empathy among native English speakers (with all due respect to the exceptions). The vast majority of the latter are virtually incapable of putting themselves in other people’s shoes. It’s like trying to explain something to a Zimbabwean using the example of Köbüki, a Hungarian cartoon character from the seventies. I constantly ran into this when I was working as an interpreter, the traveler sighed. People of other nationalities knew that their partner wouldn’t understand the internal references of their culture. The majority of Anglo-Saxons, even those otherwise intelligent, didn’t. It’s perverse, yet somehow understandable, how their language has become Number One: the people least capable of empathy have made everyone else to adapt to them.

I don’t have insider knowledge of Russian or Chinese culture, but they do seem like bulls in a china shop, too, added the traveler, confessing that he was beginning to crave some good chicken paprikash with noodles. Only the sort that came from humanely treated animals, of course. As for entering the worlds of other cultures, he said, you can read about the details in that wonderful masterpiece of a book: Természetes Nyelvtanulás (How to Pick up Languages).

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