Engaging with illness and death as otherness

Encountering Otherness as a Waveform (Part #9)

Wave function collapse: The future may consider it extraordinary that the most extensive references to "death" by physicists, in relation to the wave-related insights of quantum mechanics, concern those of the paradoxical thought experiment regarding Schrödinger's cat. Curiously quantum physicists do not seem to be able to reconcile their own death with that of the theory most central to their professional concerns. The thought experiment is focused on experimental observation relating to the probability of the death of a cat shut in a box with a radioactive substance that has only a probability of killing it (if the substance decays).

Provocatively it could be argued that fundamental physics does not "do" death -- other than through complicity in its application to ensure the death of others. For physicists, death is a meaningless "nonsense", despite extensive interest in the significance of "nothing" (Lawrence Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: why there is something rather than nothing, 2011; John D. Barrow, The Book of Nothing: vacuums, voids, and the latest ideas about the origins of the universe, 2002) -- as discussed separately (Emerging Significance of Nothing, 2012). Credibility is now given, however, to the manner in which the universe might reconstitute itself after any final cosmic collapse to nothing ***

It could be provocatively argued that the experiment, as a metaphor, offers an extremely valuable insight into the "metaphysical" experience of such physicists -- effectively "locked into" a conceptual framework precluding reference to personal experience (other than "observation"). The experiment can be fruitfully reframed by replacing the cat by a physicist -- "Schrödinger's physicist" (?) -- and eliminating the need for an "external" observer (or considering the cat to be a significant observer). This could be understood as more realistic in that there is a degree of probability to the death of any physicist at any time. The sophistication brought to reflection on this probability by physicists is many orders of magnitude less than that devoted to speculation regarding the cat. The situation is experientially tragic when the death is preceded by progressive mental decay into senility.

In "wave language", death could indeed be readily compared to "wave function collapse" or "reduction of wave packet" -- and presumably this framing figures in private reflections of physicists faced with the certainty of mortality. The phrase can also be usefully applied to reframe other forms of collapse, whether the collapse of an interpersonal relationship, the collapse of civilization, or that of the human species. That of civilizations is evident in the study of macrohistorical cycles (Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah, Macrohistory and Macrohistorians: perspectives on individual, social, and civilizational change, 1997).

Immortality: Despite the attitude of physicists, death is given prominence in popular science periodicals as a major driver of civilization (Michael Shermer, Climbing Mount Immortality: death, cognition and the making of civilization, Scientific American, 6 April 2012; Death: a special report on the inevitable, New Scientist, 20 October, 2012). The editorial introducing the latter argues:

So perhaps it is time for humanity to reinvent death, 3 million years or more after our first intimations of it. Indeed, the job is already underway: the proliferation of new types of death - industrial, vehicular and biochemical - has led to correspondingly complex legal codes. And there are those who seek to redefine death still further, by freezing their heads or replicating their minds outside their bodies - all to reify our long-held notions of passing beyond humanity. Such projects may seem outlandish. But even for sceptics, the idea of greatly deferring or even defying death outright is worth deep and sincere reflection: in thinking about death, we are also thinking about life. (Memento mori: it's time we reinvented death)

Whilst death may not be of any theoretical concern to fundamental physicists, irrespective of the more disastrous consequence of their activities, it is curious to note how it becomes a central focus for the extremely wealthy in some way. Iconic examples include the (displaced) preoccupation of Bill Gates of Microsoft with child mortality, that of Steve Jobs (of Apple), and that of Larry Page (of Google). At the time of writing the cover of Time magazine (30 September 2013) features the theme Can Google Solve Death? -- introducing Calico, a Google-owned initiative to address issues of health and ageing (Harry McCracken and Lev Grossman, Google vs. Death, Time, 30 September 2013). The new Director of Engineering at Google, Ray Kurzweil, has recently asserted that humans will soon be able to upload their entire minds and become digitally immortal (JohnThomas Didymus, Google's Ray Kurzweil: 'Mind upload' digital immortality by 2045, Digital Journal, 20 June 2013).

In its issue on death, the New Scientist featured a summary of the work of Stephen Cave (Immortality: the quest to live forever and how it drives civilization, 2012). Presented by the Utne Reader as "how immortality became a national obsession", Lewis Lapham (Memento Mori, 24 September 2013) argues:

The substituting of the promise of technology for the consolations of philosophy had been foreseen by John Stuart Mill... His premonition is now the just-over-the-horizon prospect of life everlasting bankrolled by Dmitry Itskov, a Russian multimillionaire, vouched for by the Dalai Lama and a synod of Silicon Valley visionaries, among them Hiroshi Ishiguro and Ray Kurzweil. As presented to the Global Future 2045 conference... Itskov's Avatar Project proposes to reproduce the functions of human life and mind on "nonbiological substrates," do away with the "limited mortal protein-based carrier" and replace it with cybernetic bodies and holograms, a "neohumanity" that will "change the bodily nature of a human being, and make them immortal, free, playful, independent of limitations of space and time." In plain English, lifelike human heads to which digital copies of the contents of a human brain can be downloaded from the cloud.

As "emperors" of cyberspace, their initiatives are reminiscent of the traditional preoccupation of Chinese emperors with ensuring their own immortality. One favoured approach was of course the construction of monuments of appropriately framed significance, as separately discussed (Enstoning in Memorials and Monuments, 2012). Of particular interest, and of relevance to this argument, was the exploration by those emperors of the "inner alchemy" of Taoism to that end. This was experientially related to an understanding of the "circulation of light" as essential to sustaining health.

It is therefore somewhat curious that Google should have selected "Calico" as the name for its initiative, given its close association with the burial shroud. The more appropriate traditional name would have been "Elixir" -- unless "shroud" is then to be understood as a "digitally woven" cocoon of relationships of higher dimensionality, as separately discussed (Interweaving Thematic Threads and Learning Pathways: noonautics, magic carpets and wizdomes, 2010). Now revealed to be a friendly, global front-end for the US National Security Agency, might Google search facilities enable a transformation of its obsession, as separately discussed (From ECHELON to NOLEHCE: enabling a strategic conversion to a faith-based global brain, 2007).

To what extent will some form of "cognitive fusion" be discovered to be vital to the kinds of life prolongation and immortality sought by such initiatives? Is this in effect a significant mirroring at the individual level of the energy sustainability associated with the quest to manage the "power of the sun" through nuclear fusion in the International Thermonuclear Experiment Project (ITER), as argued separately (Enactivating a Cognitive Fusion Reactor: Imaginal Transformation of Energy Resourcing (ITER-8), 2006)? Curiously a fundamental design issue for ITER is management of the snake-like instabilities of the circulating nuclear plasma, again recalling Hofstadter (I Am a Strange Loop, 2007).

These associations merit reflection in the light of consideration of the relation between death and alchemy by Steven M. Rosen (Dreams, Death, Rebirth: a multimedia topological odyssey into alchemy's hidden dimensions, 2013), in the light of his earlier work (Wholeness as the Body of Paradox, Journal of Mind and Behavior, 1997; The Concept of the Infinite and the Crisis in Modern Physics, Speculations in Science and Technology, 1983).

Experience of death: Missing from the argument presented in this way is any experiential sense of "approaching" death as the encounter with otherness in its most ultimate form. Some understanding is offered by:

any sense of "dying a little" every day, especially with advancing age or as a spiritual discipline
progressive loss of faculties, most notably memory -- possibly experienced as a loss of self or a loss of dignity
any anticlimax, as a diminishing intensity of experience -- notably as in post-coital tristesse (also known as La petite mort), or perhaps as the manic phase of the bipolar cycle, possibly to be recognized as an experiential "netherworld", as separately discussed (Designing Global Self-governance for the Future: patterns of dynamic integration of the netherworld, 2010).
giving up an aspiration or hope -- notably as with the collapse of an initiative -- and the resulting despair, perhaps exemplified by commentaries such as that of Arthur Koestler (Dialogue with Death, 1942)
recognition of the need for a so-called sunset provision -- possibly taking the form of a so-called living will
engaging with the death of a significant "other" -- and the extinction of what is experienced as a form of "energy wave" until the other is "no longer there" (Joan Halifax, Being with Dying: cultivating compassion and fearlessness in the presence of death, 2009; Judith L. Lief, Making Friends with Death: a Buddhist guide to encountering mortality, 2001)
articulation of the significance in:
- poetic form, as compiled by Harold Bloom (Till I End My Song: a gathering of last poems, 2010) or by Yoel Hoffmann (Japanese Death Poems: written by Zen monks and haiku poets on the verge of death, 1998)
- other forms (Sushila Blackman, Graceful Exits: How Great Beings Die -- death stories of Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist, and Zen masters, 2005; Martin Crowley, Dying Words: the last moments of writers and philosophers, 2000; Simon Critchley, The Book of Dead Philosophers, 2009)

There is a certain irony to the manner in which aging is recognized by the progressive development of wrinkles -- effectively waves of shorter period than those which previously sustained a wrinkle-free skin. The ills and pains experienced with advancing age highlight the extent to which the body is itself experienced -- increasingly -- as a form of otherness, even an externality (Existential Embodiment of Externalities: radical cognitive engagement with environmental categories and disciplines, 2008). This calls for reflection in terms of the arguments noted above with respect to the embodiment of mind.

If the threat to life through disease and death is intimately related experientially to an encounter with otherness in an ultimate form, then there is a case for engaging in this encounter through the cognitive embodiment of waves in some manner. The threat may well be framed as arising from some form of "dysfunctional" cognitive "entanglement" with otherness as conventionally framed, and as separately argued (Cognitive Implications of Lifestyle Diseases of Rich and Poor: transforming personal entanglement with the natural environment, 2010).

Interlocking cognitive cycles essential to health: Curiously the very nature of physical "health" can be considered experientially elusive -- hence the ready engagement in dysfunctional behaviour whereby it is undermined (substance abuse, etc). The nature of psychological or cognitive "health" is even more elusive to those in quest of it. Its integrative nature can be fruitfully explored as "wholth", as separately discussed (Wholth as Sustaining Dynamic of Health and Wealth: cognitive dynamics sustaining the meta-pattern that connects, 2013).

Curiously it would appear that the above-named initiatives towards life prolongation and immortality assume that any success will necessarily be a consequence of a focus on physical health. It is therefore especially significant that Google's Calico project may be able to complement this focus with one on eliciting and sustaining the cognitive and experiential cycles which may constitute a form of template for physical health -- Mens sana in corpore sano. The argument is reinforced by the prospect of senility and dementia in lives successfully prolonged, if careful attention is not applied to the challenge. Increasing promotion of so-called brain fitness and mind training is an indication of a degree of sensitivity to the issue.

Missing is any sense of cycles of complementary styles of knowing and how their phases, as wave functions, may need to interlock in order to sustain health and coherence. A powerfully indicative metaphor is to be found in the metabolic pathways vital to physical health -- and the possibility of awareness of cognitive equivalents as discussed separately (Engaging with Globality through Cognitive Circlets, 2009). These are perhaps to be inspired by the geometric arguments regarding minimal requirements for system integrity of R. Buckminster Fuller (Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, 1975), as discussed separately, notably in relation to the dynamics of spherically symmetrical tensegrity (Geometry of Thinking for Sustainable Global Governance: cognitive implication of synergetics, 2009). What indeed might be the cognitive implications of the Amplituhedron, as noted above (Natalie Wolchover, A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics, Quanta Magazine, 17 September 2013)?

Also missing from the apparent preoccupations of Calico and similar initiatives is how access to the collective wisdom of humanity is to be organized to "inform" sustainable experiential health, namely how search facilities might enable interlocking waves of insight -- perhaps enabling cognitive networking as a complement to social networking. Given the manner in which aphorisms (as traditional vehicles of wisdom) are typically the length of tweets, could Twitter be used to enable the dynamic configuration of sustaining patterns of wisdom -- as separately explored with respect to a set of Zen koans (Configuring a Set of Zen Koan as a Wisdom Container: formatting the Gateless Gate for Twitter, 2012). The challenge could be framed in terms of the mythical "language of the birds" (Re-Emergence of the Language of the Birds through Twitter? 2010).

Given such a framing, it is interesting to note the complementary initiative of the so-called Quantum University with its focus on alternative, holistic, natural, and integrative medicine. In the light of the argument above, might experiential health be fruitfully construed as "beable theory"? Given the increasing challenges of comprehension for all, what then of the role of ignorance, as separately explored (University of Ignorance: engaging with nothing, the unknown, the incomprehensible, and the unsaid, 2013)?

Given the unprecedented wealth engendered for Bill Gates by the Windows operating system, there is a nice metaphorical contrast between "observation" of the possibility of life prolongation via the search facilities it enables and the absence of "gates" enabling effective embodiment of it in practice. A cognitive variant of the glass ceiling effect?

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Engaging with illness and death as otherness