Intentional evolution. Not random mutation.

 
Only intention is capable of creation. Not randomness.

Randomness leads only to entropy.

Is this not yet self-evident, science?

Epigenetics, not random mutation, most likely drives evolution.

Thought and action change us at the most basic levels.

Here Sharon Begley reports on the work of Washington State University molecular biologist Michael Skinner:

Sins of the Grandfathers
Sharon Begley, Newsweek, October 30, 2010.

(I will expand on this topic in the future.)

 

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Last Updated: December 3, 2012
 
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Related articles:

• Speeding up evolution: Orchid epigenetics (physorg.com)

 

The Farwestern

Primitive

__________

 

I’m getting restless
Come on, Jeff
Less than one half hour
is still on hand

Let’s head for the shore
I can see the sand
Let’s find the unlooked for
Let’s travel on the land

He said, It’s hard to be someone
when you’re keeping score
Never knowing when a word
is closing off a door

I said, Who put you
under their control?
Who said you could be yourself
in just one role?
Who said you won’t put yourself together
and be whole

Tell me something charming
in which logic is applied
Soundly scientific
and taken in stride

Answered the Farwestern
Why try to conform?
What’s normal is abnormal
What’s abnormal is the norm

And, said the Farwestern
What you will discover
Black is white and white is black
and neither is the other

And he said, Who put you
under their control?
Who said you could be yourself
in just one role?
Who said you won’t put yourself together
and be whole

I said, It is strange
the way some people change
in this singular affair
when they can’t find it there

He said, Everything
is waiting to begin
Listen for the ring
and just go on in

And he said, Who put you
under their control?
Who said you could be yourself
in just one role?
Who said you won’t put yourself together
and be whole

 

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Dedicated to Isaac Asimov

 
I wrote this poem in the early 1980s, inspired by Isaac Asimov’s science essay
“The Certainty of Uncertainty” in his collection From Earth to Heaven
(Doubleday, 1966), and it is dedicated to him.

I liked the rhyme with the name “Jeff”, but I didn’t know any Jeffs at the time of the writing besides my cousin, and the poem wasn’t written for him. It may have been written for someone I was to meet in the far future but never got to know very well.

I had more than one precognition about that future time in my life. It must have sent vibrations back to me, because it turned out to be an incredibly turbulent time, an extremely emotional one, full of intense love, thwarted longing, and ultimately very deep sadness.

I didn’t know why I named this poem “The Farwestern” and subtitled it “Primitive” at the time I wrote it. But I learned many years later (quite recently, actually, in 2011, so the vibrations are still traveling backwards in time) that in what we would call primitive cultures, “west” referred to death, and life after death.

And, uncannily, that explanation fits the setting of this poem.
 

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© 1982-2011 by Cathi Carol

But Deepak… It’s a New York Times Best Seller, Now

 
Dear Deepak Chopra,

I love you, but you sound as if you’re pissed at Sam Harris.

Your review of Harris’s The Moral Landscape was a surprisingly quotidian and earthly criticism of an extremely complex and advanced psychological and sociological philosophy.

Sam’s ingenious concept, that humanity as a whole should strive for the peaks of human fulfillment using objective criteria to determine not only what those heights are, but the best ways of achieving those common pinnacles of happiness, is extraordinary.

The application of scientific principles and potentially heuristic techniques to the advancement of human happiness on earth is possible theoretically and would be highly expedient. This is desirable; far more worth striving for than trying to live up to any of the extremely flawed and distorted historical “sacred” texts grounded largely in human fear that defends territorialism, paternalism, or xenophobia.

You make a point, Deepak, that fighting the emotional/genetic prompts against fear, want, sickness, and death isn’t an easy thing to do. This is one of the arguments from religion, that we should try to rise above our physical natures if we want to find true happiness.

But the methods of religion are often baseless. Religions end up accomplishing nearly the opposite what they purport to set out to do, increase individual and group happiness, because they are formed very little out of empathy and compassion, unalterably necessary for flourishing, as Sam puts it, and far more on our species’ desires, nay, obstinate needs, for safety and control.

Science itself is far, far from perfect, in its present state, in our human near unconsciousness to what is real, and what is true. Scientific research can be biased and researchers’ conclusions are often wrong. But we can start. Knowledge increases, necessarily, humanly, incrementally.

Perhaps, we may hope, science and research will root out and prove the ways we can think, and the things we can do, that will thrill and reconcile us, please and satisfy us as we create ourselves and each other in our own happiness, out of love.

My mother almost died once, instead stayed alive, and told me, later, that one of the things she learned was that it’s not about you or me, it’s about all of us.

An idea that is helpful beyond practical is romantic. Godly in-the-sense-of-all-of-us, may I say, is Sam’s idea here, although Sam himself doesn’t yet realize that.

It’s an idea for the Universe.

 

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© 2013 Cathi Carol. All rights reserved. Please do not republish without permission.
 
Last Updated: March 25, 2013
 
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Thank you!