Tom Glenn's Blog, page 156

How We Think (2)

Continuing my reverie on thinking: left mystified by the existence of the incorporeal mind, I turn to . . .

Fact and Judgment

In college, I first encountered physicalists, those who believe that the only reality is physical, that which is touchable, countable, concrete, available to the senses. Even back then, I was an artist and could not accept a philosophy that denied the aesthetic experience initiated by music, poetry, literature, painting, sculpture, dance, and theater. I knew instinctively that my reaction to, say, a Bach fugue went far beyond the mere physical sounds.

Over time, I came to understand that physical facts alone are, by themselves, dead. In and of themselves, they convey nothing.  They are meaningless because the human mind has not interpreted them. In other words, the mind creates meaning.

Even in the most material of all disciplines, mathematics, the numbers themselves are a creation of the human intellect. Objects in nature don’t count themselves. Human beings count them. And every mathematical function is a function of the human mind. Two plus two do not by themselves equal four. They only do so when human intelligence combines them.

In the same way, facts alone tell us nothing. It is only when we human beings parse them, relate them to one another, in short, create meaning for them, that they come together in ways that allow us to draw conclusions.

That leads to the subject of importance, a quality that exists only in human cognition, not at all within the facts themselves. Whether a fact or the meaning we impart to it is important is a matter of judgment, and judgment exists only in the human mind.

I realize that this discussion has gotten awfully philosophical, and I’m not a trained philosopher. What’s important to me is to comprehend all over again that the largest and most important part of human experience has no physical existence. It is the province of the mind. Some refer to it as the spirit or the soul. Put differently, it is only when the mind creates meaning that the empty facts take on life.

More tomorrow.

How We Think

How we humans think has fascinated me ever since I began to think myself. As time has gone on, I’ve sorted out the various mysteries and arrived at some conclusions.

Brain Versus Mind

The human brain is the major asset that sets men well above animals. It is a complex organ that medical science is only beginning to understand. Without it, we human beings cease to function.

But we humans have another capacity that gives the brain its utility. It’s called the mind. The definition of “mind” in the Oxford English Dictionary runs to several pages. Definition 17 says, “the seat of a person’s consciousness, thoughts, volitions, and feelings; the system of cognitive and emotional phenomena and powers that constitutes the subjective being of a person; also the incorporeal subject of physical faculties, the spiritual part of a human being; the soul as distinguished from the body.”

The Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary again offers pages of definitions. Definition 3a, the one that seems most apt, reads “that which reasons; the doer of intellectual work — usually distinguished from will and emotion.”

As far as I know—and here, I invite readers to correct me—we have never found the mind in the brain. My understanding is that the brain is the machine, the physical apparatus, that does the work commanded by the mind. But the mind remains incorporeal (as the EOD puts it), that is, having no physical (material, bodily) existence.

I’m not religious, and, despite trying to the utmost of my ability, cannot make myself believe in the spiritual life. Yet here is this human function called “the mind” that, as far as I can tell, has no touchable actuality.

Maybe there is such a thing as a soul or spirit after all?

More tomorrow.

A Story Worth Retelling (2)

Twenty minutes later the lights came back on, and I heard the all-clear signal. The only casualty, as I was to learn later, was an outhouse. I resumed typing and got the report out even though the battle was already underway. The attack, as it turned out, was the beginning of the battle of Dak To, one of the bloodiest in the war.

I could not have devised a better way to impress the military. I never quite got up the nerve to admit that I had stayed put through the attack from sheer witlessness. The faint distrust I’d encountered from officers and enlisted men alike (I was a civilian after all) disappeared. From that day forward I was welcomed into both the officers’ and enlisted men’s club tents, I was called into action at all hours of the day and night just like the military, I was seen as one of them on the battlefield during live combat, and everybody stopped calling me “sir.”

Throughout my time in the highlands, I was sleeping on the ground along with the soldiers. One morning when I woke up, my fatigues—the army uniform I was wearing to conceal my identity from the enemy—were missing. Dressed in my skivvies, I hurried around the cantonment area asking if anybody knew where my fatigues were. They showed up a half hour later with 13s sewn on the collars where an officer’s rank would appear (my civilian rank at the time was a GS-13 , which meant, in theory, that I outranked most of the officers).  The right pocket had a patch that read “GLENN; the left patch read “CIVILIAN,” and my fatigue cap was decorated with the unit symbol. All of this led to the confusion of those personnel who didn’t know me and were never sure who, if anybody, should salute.

The soldiers found the whole situation hilarious. They couldn’t stop laughing. They insisted on snapping pictures of me in the altered fatigues. I still have one of those photos today. It remains one of my most cherished possessions.

A Story Worth Retelling

I recently visited the Palette and the Page, an art shop in Elkton, Maryland, that sells my books and many objets d’art, to prepare for a showing next month. A discussion with the owner led to my retelling of one of the stories about my years in Vietnam. I’ve told it here before, but it’s good enough to return to:

In the late summer and fall of 1967, I was working as an NSA civilian under cover supporting the combat operations of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade in the western highlands of South Vietnam, along the Laotian and Cambodian border.  One night I was in the tent that housed the military signals intelligence team I was working with. I was poking a communications paper tape of a report, to be sent out at flash presence to command elements of both the division and the brigade, that an enemy attack was imminent. All of a sudden, I heard the alarm siren. We were under attack. My analysts bolted for their combat gear and took off for their positions on the perimeter. I wasn’t prepared. We were up on a hill, not on the battlefield, and I hadn’t foreseen that we’d be attacked. In short, I didn’t have a plan. So I slipped on a flak jacket and a helmet and went on typing. The GI assigned to guard the tent watched me in disbelief.

The lights went out. I heard the incoming artillery rounds, a sound like a child screaming, distant and indistinct. Then came the concussion of the first round impacting. It brought to mind my earthquake days in San Francisco—the tent lurched; my ears rang; dust fell on my face. All there was to do was sit there in the dark and listen to the incoming rounds, my stomach turning inside out, and wait. Some rounds hit so close that I was thrown from my chair onto the dirt floor.

More tomorrow.

Don’t Remember (3)

If you haven’t seen the first two posts under this title, read them before you read this one.

So, I set the remote back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill. Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.

At the end of the day:

The car isn’t washed,

The bills aren’t paid,

There is a warm can of Pepsi sitting on the counter,

The flowers don’t have enough water,

There is still only one check in my check book,

I can’t find the remote,

I can’t find my glasses,

And I don’t remember what I did with the car keys.

Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I’m really baffled because I know I was busy all day, and I’m really tired.

I realize this is a serious problem, and I’ll try to get some help for it, but first I’ll check my e-mail….

Do me a favor.

Forward this message to everyone you know, because I don’t remember who I’ve sent it to.

Don’t laugh—if this isn’t you yet, your day is coming!

P.S.       I don’t remember who sent it to me, so if it was you, I’m sorry

Don’t Remember . . . (2)

The Pepsi is getting warm, and I decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold. As I head toward the kitchen with the Pepsi, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye—they need water.

I put the Pepsi on the counter and discover my reading glasses that I’ve been searching for all morning. I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I’m going to water the flowers. I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table.

I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I’ll be looking for the remote, but I won’t remember that it’s on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers.

I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor.

More tomorrow.

Don’t Remember . . .

A friend sent this to me. It’s long enough to require several posts:

A.A.A.D.D.- KNOW THE SYMPTOMS!

Thank goodness there’s a name for this disorder. Age-Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. This is how it manifests:

I decide to water my garden. As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide it needs washing. As I start toward the garage, I notice mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I lay my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, And notice that the can is full. So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first…

But then I think, since I’m going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first. I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only one check left. My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of Pepsi I’d been drinking . I’m going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the Pepsi aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over.

More tomorrow.

 

Too Dumb to Go to College

I’ve written in this blog several times about my painful childhood with an alcoholic mother and father in prison. By the time I was six, I was a loner. I already knew I was going to have to take care of myself—no one else was going to do it. In high school, I was working twenty hours a week to earn enough money to get by. That meant that I didn’t do very well in school. When I graduated, counselors recommended I not go to college: I wasn’t intelligent enough.

I accepted my advisors’ judgment but went to college anyway. I lived within commuting distance of the University of California in Berkeley, and the tuition for a state resident was a little over fifty dollars a semester. I continued working half time while a college student. I didn’t expect to do well. After all, those who knew best told me I wasn’t very bright. My grades were mediocre but high enough for me to graduate.

Immediately after graduation, I enlisted in the army to go to the Army Language School. Languages fascinated me. I had taught myself French and Italian as a child, took four years of Latin in high school, and studied German in college. At the Army Language School, I put in for Chinese, a language that had always fascinated me. Instead, the school taught me Vietnamese. After a year of intensive training, I graduated first in my class and was assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA). Once in the Washington, D.C. area, I enrolled at Georgetown to study Chinese.

Years later, my thirst for education overcame my good judgment once again. I knew I wasn’t very smart, but I wanted to learn. So I applied to the George Washington University to earn a master’s degree in Government. The university admitted me as a provisional student since my undergraduate grades were not the best. To my surprise, I was an exemplary student. I sailed through the coursework, outdid the younger students, and graduated with honors. The university encouraged me to go on for the doctorate which I earned in record time and again graduated with honors. Turned out I wasn’t so dumb after all.

I know now that I never was dumb. Stupid boys don’t teach themselves foreign languages and learn to play the piano without lessons. But necessity taught me to be pragmatic. Eating was more important than getting good grades.

I’ve never stopped studying. It is more important to me today than ever before.

Education: Learning to Think

These days, I hear that higher education—college—is primarily to increase the money one can earn. And education certainly does raise pay. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers age 25 and older were $909 in the second quarter of 2017. Full-time workers without a high school diploma had median weekly earnings of $515, compared with $718 for high school graduates (no college) and $1,189 for those with a bachelor’s degree. Full-time workers with advanced degrees (professional or master’s degree and above) had median weekly earnings of $1,451.”

But for me that far greater reward from education is learning how to think. I remember my fascination when I discovered the different and equally valid systems of logic inherent in mathematics, music, languages, grammar/writing, and physics/chemistry. I learned to think in those modes because I had to to pass courses. In the process, I greatly enriched my ability to think.

I learned to approach a subject from a numerical point of view, then see it aesthetically. From music I mastered the ideas of rhythm and balance. From sports, I learned how to achieve the ideal physical status to free up the mind. From Asian languages, I learned variations in how the human brain can operate. Each discipline taught me ways to deepen my thinking and expand my existence.

I concede that my education, particularly my advanced degrees, brought me a good income and, more important to me today, a substantial retirement that allows me to write full time. But the more crucial benefit was teaching me to think.

Today it is my mind, not my income, that enriches me.

A Post-Traumatic Stress Video

A friend sent me the URL for a video from Canada about soldiers in the aftermath of war suffering, and sometimes dying, from Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI).

The video calls it “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD). As long-time readers of this blog know, I use the word “injury” instead of “disorder” because the illness is the result of an external wound to the psyche, not the mind simply having gone awry. I suffer from it from my thirteen years involved in Vietnam during the war. I always will.

The importance of the video derives from understanding what happens to the human soul when it is subjected to the unspeakable horrors of combat. One of my life missions is to help Americans understand the ghastliness of combat so that they can better decide about going to war, knowing what it will do to the young men and women on the battlefield.

The video made me cry. I hope it will make you cry, too. Maybe, working together, we can reach out to our young soldiers and Marines and help them survive their soul-destroying memories.

View the video at https://www.youtube.com/embed/Wq0X0bwMprQ?feature=player_embedded