A lot of us are like that - I’m like that, Ed Abbey was like that, and it sounds like this McCandless kid was like that: We like companionship, see, but we can’t stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again.

~ Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild (1996)

Getting the hell outta there can feel good, but so can the coming back bit, too.

Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.

~ Frank Herbert’s Chapterhouse: Dune, book VI of the Dune Chronicles

“Many histories are largely worthless because prejudiced, written to please one powerful group or another. Wait for your eyes to be opened, my dear. We are the best historians. We were there.”

“And my viewpoint will change daily?” Very introspective.

“That’s a lesson the Bashar reminded us to keep fresh in our minds. The past must be reinterpreted by the present.”

“I’m not sure I will enjoy that, Mother Superior. So many moral decisions.”

“Moral decisions are always easy to recognize,” Odrade said. “They are where you abandon self-interest.”

Streggi looked at Odrade with awe. “The courage it must take!”

“Not courage!” Not even desperation. What we do is, in its most basic sense, natural. Things done because there is no other choice.”

“Sometimes you make me feel ignorant, Mother Superior.”

“Excellent! That’s beginning wisdom. There are many kinds of ignorance, Streggi. The basest is to follow yur own desires without examining them. Sometimes, we do it unconsciously. Hone your sensitivity. Be aware of what you do unconsciously. Always ask: ‘When I did that, what was I trying to gain?’ ”

~ Frank Herbert’s Chapterhouse: Dune, book VI of the Dune Chronicles

To know a thing well, know its limits. Only when pushed beyond its tolerances will true nature be seen.

~ Frank Herbert’s Chapterhouse: Dune, book VI of the Dune Chronicles

I was watching the telly, and saw the trailer for the TV series Eureka.

The taglines went:

Science - Ethics = Murder
Emotions - Logic = Faith
Life - Dreams = Job

I wonder.

Paul Ehrlich, the distinguished Stanford University biologist who won the prestigious Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, believes that every ethical system originated in the human mind, a biological entity. He does not think, like many dualist philosophers, that there are moral truths out there, waiting to be discovered, that are distinct and independent of the messy mass of neurons that house the human mind. We are bound to our empirical existence, and our moral sense is therefore grounded firmly in the human world.

Ehrlich concedes that the capacity to construct amoral system is a product of evolution. We can imagine the consequences of our actions, think about alternatives, and imagine what others are feeling. All these are valuable qualities, and with free will are preconditions for creating a moral system. But the content of that system, he believes, is not dependent on our genes. It is an outcome of human culture, and as such can take many different forms.

~ Lord Robert Winston, Human Instinct: How Our Primeval Impulses Shape Our Modern Lives (2002)

Just as the speck of dust is at the mercy of many forces, so is human behaviour. We are pushed and pulled in all directions by many different biological, cognitive and cultural forces. Some of these may oppose one another, and some may pull in the same direction. It is entirely possible that two instinctual tendencies may act at odds to each other. But that does not mean these forces cannot coexist; it just means that the track through space is more difficult to understand. Just because we have one adaptive mechanism that promotes violence and another that promotes co-operation does not mean that our explanations of these forces are confused. We are pushed one way and pulled another, and our challenge is to try to disentangle the forces and explain their origins.

~ Lord Robert Winston, in Human Instinct: How Our Primeval Impulses Shape Our Modern Lives (2002)

What an imperceptive lot we are. Surrounded by so much, so fascinating and so real, that we do not see (hear, smell touch, taste) in nature, yet so gullible and so seduced by claims for novel power that we mistake the tricks of mediocre magicians for glimpses of a psychic world beyond our ken. The paranormal may be a fantasy; it is certainly a haven for charlatans. But ‘parahuman’ powers of perception lie all about us in birds, bees, and bacteria. And we can use the instruments of science to sense and understand what we cannot directly perceive.

~ Stephen Jay Gould in The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (1980)