“It’s not just false hope that’s the problem, it’s hope itself…’Hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency.’”

A free-ranging interview with the author of A Language Older Than Words, Welcome to the Machine, and The Culture of Make Believe about civilization, violence, activism, pacifism, reasons for optimism, and why hope is a bad thing.

A counterpoint interview about Malthusian economics and cults of catastrophism is also offered, with social historian Iain Boal, “We’re Not Doomed; That’s the Problem.”:

Many people believe, at least a little, that the end of human beings–whether by ecological disaster, the collapse of the oil economy, or nuclear extinction–is inevitable. For some, this projected collapse represents a just termination for a species they consider parasitic and pathologically unable to establish an equilibrium with the natural world and the creatures who  depend upon it. Others laments the tragedy of our fate.

But what role do faith and belief play in all of this? What if the capitalist realities of scarcity and collapse have been mistakenly interpreted as natural inevitabilities?  

>> READ THE FULL ARTICLE (PDF; 8 pages)

[From the online release of Tipping the Sacred Cow - The Best of LiP: Informed Revolt.] 

People suck, and that’s my contention.
We’re a virus with shoes.
—Bill Hicks

I actually like quite a lot of people, but there’s much to recommend Hicks’ notion that people are viruses with shoes. It’s a fact that well over 40% of the human DNA chain is viral in origin, as Michael Specter writes in a fascinating New Yorker article, “Darwin’s Surprise”:

Nothing—not even the Plague—has posed a more persistent threat to humanity than viral diseases: yellow fever, measles, and smallpox have been causing epidemics for thousands of years. At the end of the First World War, fifty million people died of the Spanish flu; smallpox may have killed half a billion during the twentieth century alone…

Scientists have long suspected that if a retrovirus happens to infect a human sperm cell or egg, which is rare, and if that embryo survives—which is rarer still—the retrovirus could take its place in the blueprint of our species, passed from mother to child, and from one generation to the next, much like a gene for eye color or asthma.

One scientist interviewed for the New Yorker article, Thierry Hiedmann, contends that the mapping of the human genome project and recent findings about “endogenous retroviruses” show that genes and viruses are not, in fact, distinct entities, and that the concept of virus and humanity as enemies or combatants, rather than as co-evolutionary forces, is in error. Heidmann and others have even suggested that without viral influence, mammals might never have developed a placenta, which protects the fetus and gives it time to mature and led to live birth. “These viruses made those changes possible, [and] It is quite possible that, without them, human beings would still be laying eggs.”

So the stuff of us, the meat of our matter, is partially viral in origin. What of our language, and our culture?

Well. That partially depends on whether or not you believe language shapes thought or vice-versa. Lots of smart people disagree on this particular point. On one side are those like, oh, Noam Chomsky, who say cognition and certain brain structures give rise to infinitely varying, yet universal, linguistic impulses.

On the other side there are linguistic relativists, like the curious Benjamin Lee Whorf, an amateur linguist (Darwin was an amateur biologist) and evolutionary biologist, botanist, theologian, and physicist, who in addition to linguistics, wrote about gravitation, “being,” trees, color theory, evolution, large stemmed plants, electromagnetism, dreams, and even wrote a Hopi-English dictionary.

Whorf grew to prominence and influence through his work, exploring how languages shape the habit and thought of their users.

Presume, as many linguists do, that there’s a middle ground between these two positions, and admit the possibility that language acts on people much as people act on or through language.

“A virus operates autonomously, without human intervention. It attaches itself to a host and feeds off of it, growing and spreading from host to host. Language infects us; its power derives not from its straightforward ability to communicate or persuade but rather from this infectious nature, this power of bits of language to graft itself onto other bits of language, spreading and reproducing, using human beings as hosts. The notion of the meme—coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins to illustrate the field of memetics—crystallizes this view of the communication process.

Georges Bataille similarly argued that communication was best understood from the perspective of contagion.

In Bataille any human being is no more than a conduit for communicative process, a channel for ideas which pass through him/her.”If, as it appears to me, a book is communication, then the author is only a link among many readings.” The author is simply a node on a network, through which ideas pass…

Subjectivity is an illusion, one that allows us to operate comfortably in this plane of existence, but which nonetheless masks true reality, in which there is no division between subject and object: “There is no longer subject-object, but a ‘yawning gap’ between the one and the other and, in the gap, the subject, the object are dissolved; there is passage, communication, but not from one to the other: the one and the other have lost their separate existence”

—Bernardo Attias, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at California State University

The complicated relationship between language and its host was a major theme in the work of William S. Burroughs. When pondering the all-encompassing constancy of flux, and the role of human beings and viruses as co-evolutionary partners, and when wondering at the viral properties of language and culture, it’s worth considering the thoughts of a visionary like Burroughs, who identified as a Manichean, and who believed he was writing mythology for the space age:

“I am advancing the theory that we were not designed to remain in our present state, any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole forever,” wrote Burroughs, suggesting that what human evolution requires is actually a biological mutation away from that which one knows as human.

Burroughs always did have a way of making profane things like “Get over yourself, changeling,” and “extinction is inevitable” sound somehow like an already familiar pulp novel.

by Brian Awehali

Birds, who once were dinosaurs, could take over the world (again) if they wanted to.

In Kagoshima, a city on the southern island of Kyushu, in Japan, crows have just recently been on the attack: destroying power lines and fiber optic cable, stealing candy and bloodying children’s faces, and outwitting human “crow patrols” by building decoy nests. It was also reported recently that crows had been caught on film making tools, a behavior previously thought restricted to humans and some primates.

You see, birds are smart: They make tools, have sentries, navigate by magnetism, sense impending geophysical events and, of course, they can fly.

The whole birds-were-once-dinosaurs thing is one of those boggling things that just seems so obvious once you think about it or, really, just look at birds for a bit.

“Rahonavis is a primitive bird from 80 million-year-old rocks of Madagascar. Despite being more bird-like than Archaeopteryx, raven-sized Rahonavis retains some very distinctive theropod features including the distinctive slashing claw used to murderous effect by Velociraptor in the film Jurassic Park. Velociraptor is thought to be about as close as a dinosaur gets to being a bird without actually being one.”

It’s interesting. I was talking to my mother about birds a while back, and when I mentioned their ability to navigate by magnetism and, I’d heard, listening to underground rivers, she said: “Yeah, with their lodestone.” I’d heard the word “lodestone” before, but never knew what it meant. When I asked, she said it was like a magnet in their heads that let them find their way.

My mom sometimes shares wisdom that I’m fairly certain I should not believe. For example, that if buttercups turn your chin yellow you like butter, that Santa Claus actually exists, or that the world began just a few thousand years ago, just like the Bible says.

But anyway: Lodestones. Mom spoke of it as a kind of known thing, but I went looking online, and science, as so often seems to be the case, only recently caught up with known things.

The discovery in 2004 of tiny deposits of a mineral called magnetite (lodestone) in the beaks of pigeons and bobolink (a North American songbird) biased the debate [about how birds navigate] towards the hypothesis that birds can read Earth’s magnetic field (image).

* * *

So, do the math; birds can fly, solve problems, make and use tools, organize, and navigate by magnetism. Why do they put up with us? Against all reason, birds must like us. Despite modern industrial chicken “farming,” despite our erecting cell phone towers that disorient them, wind farms that sometimes clobber them, or mountains–continents!– of trash that poison them, they must just like us anyway, you know, the way you might love that guy who sometimes gets mad and beats the crap out of you. Like that.

It wouldn’t be because they’re meek or physically incapable of carnage, either. Check out just one type of one species, the golden eagle: flying down and killing a deer :: or strategically hunting goats by knocking them off of cliffs.

That’s the only possible explanation for why they haven’t already devoured us, pecked us underground, or made pinnipeds of us. They must enjoy watching humans. Who knows? Maybe the second most popular leisure activity among birds is peoplewatching. I suppose a few — buzzards in particular — must also possess a gustatory appreciation for people and our reputedly pork-like flavor.

Their feelings toward us must be very complex. After all, in addition to lodestones, they possess specialized limbic systems in their brains, necessary for true emotional behavior. Outside of birds, this system only exists in the higher vertebrate species. So things like rage, fear, and curiosity are not merely anthropomorphic projections when it comes to birds. They really do have distinct personalities. They also have gender-bending, “promiscuity” and sometimes engage in illogical risky behaviors.

I wonder what finally set the crows of Kagoshima over the edge?

This “shapist” theory of smell, or olfaction, continues to this day. It boils down to the essential concept of tiny pieces of things being “read” by receptors in our nose. Democritus called these pieces “atoms,” but he had no sense of atomic theory in the modern sense, which asserts that these pieces are, in fact, molecules. But that’s just a theory, and the truth is that no one really knows how our sense of smell works. The shapist theory has many inconsistencies and demonstrated limitations. Molecules with the same shape produce different smells; inversely, two molecules with completely different shapes can produce the same smell (sandalwood).

On August 6, 1945, at 8:15am, miles away from the site of the Hiroshima bombing, people reported an impossibly bright light and the smell of burning rubber. This posed a problem for the shape theory of smell: If smell was the result of particulate matter – molecules – landing on receptors in the nose, how then to explain the instantaneous travel of molecules from the blast site to noses miles away?

Enter Luca Turin and his vibratory theory of olfaction. A flamboyant polymath, perfume enthusiast-turned-authority, with a keen nose and Ph.D.’s in physiology and biophysics, Turin was interested in inconsistencies in the shapist theory of smell. He also had an unusual set of interests and training. “The thing is, the problem of smell wasn’t that hard to crack,” says Turin. “[And you] had to know a huge number of disparate facts… How many people would be aware simultaneously of the recipe for Chanel No. 5, the vibrational numbers of boranes…and Malcolm Dyson…?” (Dyson was the first to propose a vibrational theory of olfaction, in 1937, but technology was too limited then to test it, and the theory was abandoned in favor of shape theory until Turin picked it back up in 1996).

Another factor weighing uniquely in Turin’s favor was the access he was given to the large and notoriously secretive scent labs of the “Big Boys,” seven companies responsible for virtually all perfumes and scented products in the world. He was given this access largely based on having written Perfumes: The Guide, widely regarded as the definitive text in the field, and containing such gems as this:

Sacrebleu (Parfums de Nicolaï) **** dusky oriental
If you travel at night on Europe’s railways, near big stations you can sometimes see lights the size of a teacup nestled between the rails, shining the deepest mystical blue-purple light through a filthy Fresnel glass. They appear to be permanently on, suggesting that the message they convey to the train driver is an eternal truth. Since childhood I have fancied the notion it may not be a trivial one like “buffers ahead” but something numinous and unrelated to duty, perhaps “life is beautiful” or some such. Sacrebleu has the exact feel of those lights, a low hum that may be eclipsed by diurnal clamor but rules supreme when, at 3 a.m., you know you are looking into your true love’s eyes even though you can’t see them

The “Big Boys” found it hard to turn away a luminary of their industry, especially one whose popularity, olfactory precision and rapier pen had the power to buoy or sink the critical and commercial success of their new perfumes. That he was inquisitive and nettlesome-bordering-on-imperious was not lost on them, but their fear of his written wrath caused them to relent and Turin was let into the inner scientific sanctum of the industry.

The Big Boys employ thousands of people and generate roughly $20-billion-a-year in revenue. All of that revenue and all of those jobs are tied, intellectually and economically, to shape theory.

So imagine the shock and recoil when, after several years of investigation and documentation, Turin reported his findings, and proposed that the vibrational frequency, rather than the shape of molecules, determined their scent. Turin was proposing that our sense of smell arises through quantum mechanics, not biology or chemistry. Turin was also proposing, by extension, that all of the scientists and experts in the industry were operating on false premises.

So there was resistance, but no one around was qualified to review or validate Turin’s theory. Nature rejected Turin’s findings after a year and an unusual two peer reviews. “The biologists said the chemistry was wrong, the chemists said the problem was the physics, and the physicists said the fault lay with the biology,” is how Turin described the rejection. Since Turin’s initial report of his findings, several subsequent studies have produced conflicting results, and the scientific community remains agnostic to Turin’s theory. Turin has also since written his own book on the subject, entitled The Secret of Scent.

The almost complete lack of multidisciplinary scientists qualified to fully review the vibrational theory of olfaction poses a major barrier to solving the mystery of scent. Chandler Burr, Scent Editor for the New York Times (yes, Scent Editor) and author of a book about Turin entitled The Emperor of Scent, characterizes the resistance to vibrational theory as a “problem of calcified minds and vested interests.”

Smell governs a greater portion of human interaction than most people realize, and the widespread use of artificial and manufactured scents represents a qualitative alteration and denaturing of human experience. Subtle yet powerful aspects of human attraction key on smell: think of pheromones, and what people speak of when they point to having “chemistry” with someone. In most cases, whether they realize it or not, they’re talking about having exchanged coded scent messages with someone, communiques dispatched between primal, distinctly pre-cognitive parts of our brains.

Perfumers, artists of human scent attraction, have long known of and exploited the primal powers of scent, and the key ingredients of some of the more enduring fragrances manufactured in modern times underscore their understanding of our creature selves. One widely used perfume ingredient, civet, is actually cat anus gland, and inhaled on its own, is capable of producing shock, horror, and involuntary recoil. Yet hidden inside a cloud of floral and musk overtones, civet delivers a potent animalian calling card. Other little-known but popular perfume ingredients, like ambergris—whale vomit—and zebu grease—human infant feces—also point to the perfumer’s understanding of how to call and manipulate our more creature selves.

* * *

The battle over how our sense of smell works continues to rage, and may well result in a renaissance in scent manufacturing (not to mention a Nobel prize for Turin). If the vibrational theory of olfaction carries the day, you might expect the realm of human scent manufacturing to take a mighty leap forward.

But one nagging question about all of this stays in my mind: When we’re talking about a deeply primal, deeply important thing like our sense of smell, is the advance of artificial scent manufacturing necessarily good for the human experience? Scent reigns over hunger, recessed memory and human attraction. Scent belongs to our animal natures.

Smell evokes; it whets. Perhaps its manipulation in certain playful settings is a fine thing, but when an artificially-rendered scentscape becomes ubiquitous—think of deodorants, perfumes, detergents, scented creams and hair products—what is lost in the bargain?

“You’re not just kissing,” said one scientist suggestively, “you are likely absorbing information about your partner’s immune system, looking for a good match should you two procreate.”

Other scientists in attendance copiously supported their colleague’s assertion by noting findings in related studies. “A similar tendency has also been found,” asserted one postdoctoral researcher in the Berkeley Olfactory Research Program, “in some rather interesting tests where women sniffing male armpit sweat chose those indicating immune systems complementary–not similar–to their own.”

Certainly there exist women for whom the idea of a long session of male armpit huffing evokes an unseemly dark thrill. You might hope that one or more such women were among those who signed up for this study. But when pondering this (absolutely true) armpit-sniffing story, one must consider the long tour of ignominies visited upon countless women that led up to this particular moment in scientific history, and the moment in which each woman in the study was bade: Choose the best armpit.

(Alternately, the study may not have involved live male armpits at all, but rather the sniffing of previously collected male armpit sweat. Either way, it’s an odd study. It also provides me a rare opportunity to link to an only slightly related Old Spice commercial about armpits, men, manliness, and frenching):

Anyway.

Even if you don’t want to have kids or sniff anyone’s armpits, scientists say, the kiss is still crucial: it can help you chemically decide whether you will have fun dating. At least that’s the assumption you could make from research results indicating that people clicked with others based on levels of hormones present in saliva. Testosterone and oxytocin–a hormone involved in maternal bonding with offspring–are among the many hormones expressed in saliva.

(In a thankfully totally separate yet related experiment, virgin sheep injected with oxytocin began to mother unrelated lambs, which they wouldn’t have done otherwise, and which they were surely confused about afterward. Other oxytocin studies reveal even more interesting things).

Those with average-to-poor dental hygiene can take some heart from these recent studies: Even with all the advertising focus on minty fresh sterile mouths, oral hygiene or the lack thereof doesn’t obscure these chemical clues, researchers say. Sloppy kissers who aren’t lesbians can take heart as well: Men apparently like more drool in a kiss, perhaps because they tend to have worse senses of smell and taste and hence need more to work with.

–with reporting by Kari Lydersen

Lorenz was a mathemetician and a meteorologist who, in the early 1960s, discovered that weather simulation models he was developing were exhibiting chaotic, non-predictive behavior, despite a fixed set of variables and no apparent equipment malfunction. Two identical weather simulation machines, side-by-side, given the same variables to process. Wildly different results. How?

Lorenz eventually concluded that it was a “dependence on initial conditions” — in this case, the fact of computers rounding variables to decimal points: 3.12879 expressed as 3.13, etc. Even extending the number of decimal points in the simulators did not produce matching results from the weather machines. Minute variations gave rise to wildly different chains of events.

Lorenz also advanced work on what came to be known as the Lorenz Attractor, or Strange Attractor, which describes the behavior of chaotic flow in lasers, dynamos, and water wheels. The mathematical expression of Lorenz’s Strange Attractor is (seemingly coincidentally) shaped like a butterfly, and some Java programmer in Japan was kind enough to create an animated demonstration of it.

Contrary to some popular misconceptions about chaos theory, it doesn’t mean randomness prevails. Rather, it means that things occur in a non-linear, but deterministic fashion, with an extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. Fractal geometry in nature, as well as Mandelbrot sets, illustrate the mathematics of chaos theory.

French mathematician Henry Poincaré is really the “father” of chaos theory; Lorenz mostly re-popularized an idea that had merely fallen from the limelight. At the end of the 19th century, Poincaré, encouraged by an award offered by King Oscar II of Sweden, looked into how to explain the erratic orbit of Neptune and the broader question, is the solar system stable? (Poincaré’s eventual conclusion was no, but the preceding link provides a far more satisfying overview of his voyage to that conclusion.)

I was first exposed to chaos theory through James Gleick’s excellent book, Chaos: The Making of a New Science. The notion of a greater complexity and deeper order underlying the observable surface of things is great on many levels beyond the scholarly realm. Chaos theory is a rich metaphor for our present moment, which promises to impress upon quite a few people, in ways both small and large, pleasant and unpleasant, that everything is connected and even, to some extent, interdependent. And, apropos of our time in my opinion, this understanding now raises far more questions than it provides answers.