Author: gulley

I’ve been reading a book called The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger. It’s about our increasing appreciation of the sophistication of plant intelligence and behavior. Right away you might be wondering if those words, intelligence and behavior, belong in a sentence about plants. Well, exactly.

One of the stories in the book is about another book that rose to prominence in the 1970s, the Secret Life of Plants. That book was also about plant intelligence. Two things were true about this book: it made many unsubstantiated claims about clever plants, and it was a huge hit with the public. Non-academics loved hearing stories about intelligent plants. Plant biologists cringed and condemned the book. The professional backlash was so strong that it set back serious discussion of plant intelligence by decades.

Now, many years later, more data is rolling in that makes many scientists ready to take up the question once again. But there is still a burned and wary group of plant scientists protesting the use of these words. “Intelligent behavior” is anthropomorphic. Plants aren’t people. But as the author Schlanger points out, this is a scientific discussion that quickly becomes philosophical. What’s not up for debate is that these plants are doing some impressive things. They can alter their chemistry to repel and poison insect pests. They can broadcast signals to nearby plants to warn them about the danger. They can recognize if neighboring plants are cousins and tailor their messages accordingly, giving preferential treatment to relatives. They can trade for valuable minerals with fungal networks. And through mechanisms not yet understood, some plants can mimic the appearance and even the chemistry of nearby plants. We now have indisputable data, reputable replicable scientific tests in which plants sense their surroundings, communicate with their peers, and solve problems.

So we have this problem: what language should we use to describe it?
Can we talk about what a plant wants, what it hates, how it can be seduced, how it can mislead and betray? Or is that language off limits as anthropomorphic? Efforts to use language carefully scrubbed of anthropomorphism quickly become convoluted. It also begins to feel like a failure of imagination. What we need to acknowledge is that these skills we are loathe to assign to anything not human are not, in fact, uniquely ours. Our refusal starts to look like a petty turf battle. Hey you plants, get off of my lawn! I’m the only one who gets to be intelligent in this neighborhood! The solution is simple enough – we just admit that the intelligent behavior franchise is open for business. It would be churlish to say welcome to the club, since they’ve been here all along.

It is perhaps no coincidence that at this same time we are also building machines that make us question the nature of intelligence and consciousness. As a culture we are breaking into new territory. Up until now, we’ve said, effectively, I’m human and I’m subjectively conscious, and if I see you’re human too, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m intelligent. You’re intelligent. I’m conscious. You’re conscious. But we then assert nobody else gets to claim this capability. And since nobody (sorry) nothing else speaks our language, they’re in no position to dispute it.

But in fact we have weak tools for assessing what we sometimes call “true intelligence,” whether mechanical or organic. And when it comes to subjective consciousness, we have no tools at all. Since we can’t define what it is, we can’t test whether or not it exists even in our family and friends, let alone in chimpanzees and begonias.

Maybe humans have been swimming in the same pool with all living things, but we just lacked the eyes and the inclination to admit it. Maybe we have to admit, once again, we’re not the center of the universe. Maybe the word “anthropomorphic” is itself inappropriate and anthropocentric. If we can admit at last that plants are canny and chatty and crafty, maybe they’ll be the ones to say, at the risk of being phytocentric, “Welcome to the club.”

Earlier this year, I finally went to Paying Attention Camp. It had been on my list for a long time. It was very cold there, but that’s just because I went in February.

The rooms were small. Just large enough for a bare-mattress bed, a sink, a chair, and a three-ring binder full of rules. One of the rules was that you had to bring your own sheets and towel. They sent me this rule before I left home, but I hadn’t read it. Attention to detail is not my strong suit. Fortunately they had extras for people like me.

Paying Attention Camp had a lot of rules. It had so many rules that it felt like I was going to prison. Here are a few of them. No phones. No internet. No music. No reading. No staying up late. No talking. No eye contact with other people. No scented personal care products. No noisy clothes.

But really there was only one big rule. Here it is: Pay attention!

That’s why I call it Paying Attention Camp. They didn’t call it that. Officially, it was the Way of Wisdom Three Day Silent Retreat at the Insight Meditation Society of Barre, Massachusetts. Those of us on the retreat were called “retreatants.” Which is a lumpy word, but the alternative was “yogis,” as used in phrases like “Remember to attend your yogi job training before the opening session!” Yogi is nice and short, but I can’t read it without thinking of this.

I imagined my yogi job training might involve picnic baskets. My actual yogi job was to clean up after breakfast.

This is how you pay attention at Paying Attention Camp. You sit down in a big room. Time passes, and eventually somebody rings a bell. When you hear the bell, you can stand up again, assuming your legs still work. In between, you’re supposed to pay attention. Silent and still. Not looking forward, not looking back. Just watching what’s happening right now. That’s all there is to it, but it’s not easy. For one thing, you’re stuck inside your head with just you for company, and that guy’s kind of an asshole.

Also, many aches and itches come to visit, and some of them use power tools to build permanent dwellings in your back and knees. It’s impossible to say how long one of these sitting sessions lasted. By my estimate it was anywhere between six and ten hours. I’m told, but find it hard to believe, that it never lasted more than 45 minutes. I needed a roomful of peer pressure to get through it.

Trying to pay attention for three days is hard. It’s hard to do for even a few minutes at a stretch. Our instructor had a special question when he wanted to make sure we were paying attention: “Is the mind aware?” I’d think, “Duh, of course the mind is aware.” Then I’d look around and wouldn’t you know it, the mind was nowhere to found. Usually I’d find it hanging out at a bar with its buddies, Worry and Distraction. Or else down some back alley with Regret. Embarrassing.

But it turns out that paying attention is good for you in the same way that exercise is good for you. If you do it regularly, you’ll feel better. That’s the promise, anyway. And I believe it, but the problem is that you never know WHEN it’s going to make you feel better. Like exercise, it mostly makes you feel crappy right away. You put in your time meditating, and there you are: sore, stiff, and blinking in the light. At such a moment, you can feel a little entitled. Yo! I paid my dues, Mr. Buddha-pants, so where’s my goddamn bliss? This is not, as the Buddhists say, a skillful question. But such is human perversity.

Over my three day retreat, I thought more and more about this analogy to physical exercise. I thought, I’m building up a muscle. An attention muscle. But what does the attention muscle do? I think it works like this.

Can we have the next slide please?

Here you are, responding to the world. That scrawny little thing in the middle is your brain. Let’s consider a specific example. Imagine you’re hammering a nail, but you miss it and instead you whack the shit out of your left thumb. In frustration you kick the dog, who has the misfortune to be nearby.

Kicking the dog is stupid and cruel, but what choice did you have? It just happened. It’s not your fault the dog was there.

See how it works? Your brain is so thin and inflexible that your hammer-catcher is wired directly to your dog-kicker. That’s the thing we’re trying to fix. Here’s where the attention-strength comes in. You can actually pry apart the sensation from the response and make a little space in there. It’s hard work, but it’s possible. It takes a lot of attention-strength.

And just look at that mess! It’s a snake’s nest of mindless behavior circuits. Those are all hardwired responses: snarling retorts, sullen pouts, sarcastic insults… a minefield of poor choices and bad moods just waiting to happen. After a time, you realize each wire is a choice, not an inevitability.

You don’t have to react to all those sensations. You can just let the happening things happen. Not that it’s easy, but that’s why you exercise. You can pull out those wires. You don’t have to kick the dog.

Clear enough space between sensation and response, and you can just sit in there and watch the world go by. That’s your brain getting bigger! This is where the work pays off.

And when you choose to act, you can be skillful about it. That’s what they call it at Paying Attention Camp: “being skillful.” That is, don’t act out of habit or craving or fear. Act out of wisdom, compassion, and the needs of the moment. Bad things still happen, but it’s amazing how much self-inflicted damage you can avoid just by paying attention. Your dog will thank you.

How can so much value come from such a simple practice? It’s a good question. I think it is a great mystery. But it seems to work. “Pay attention,” says Mr. Buddha, “You’ll see.”

Thinking about attention as skilled physical effort also help me frame how I thought about my three-day retreat. It was basically like a weekend sports clinic. Did I become enlightened? That’s like asking someone just back from soccer camp if they won the World Cup. It’s a nonsense question. You gain a few skills, you meet some nice people, and you get a better sense of the vast landscape you inhabit. You get a sense that the journey is worthwhile. But you also realize that you have to keep up the practice if you want to get good and stay good. Like sports, getting in shape once doesn’t mean you stay in shape forever. But you can develop a lasting taste for the fruits of discipline. That was the gift of Paying Attention Camp. That’s why I’m glad I went.

Note: this post originally appeared on Medium. I’m repatriating it over here on starchamber.com.

I want to show you a trick. I’ll need you to supply me with a deck of cards. Make sure it is well shuffled, please.

Thank you. Here you see I have your deck of cards in my hands. No monkey business. It’s just the way you gave it to me. Shuffle it again if you like. Now here is your question: what are the odds that this exact ordering of cards has previously existed in all the time since the development of the standard card deck? I’m including every time anyone in the world has ever shuffled a deck. It’s probably quite low. Would you guess something like a tenth of a percent chance? A hundredth of a percent?

Some hands of poker are common enough to have their own names, like Wild Bill Hickok’s “Dead Man’s Hand.” Two pair, aces over eights. Perhaps your deck’s twin first appeared in a riverboat poker room on the Mississippi in 1869. Who knows? Maybe old Wild Bill himself was dealt from a doppelganger deck. But probably not. And to say probably not is an understatement. The extraordinarily high likelihood is that your particular deck ordering has never before existed in the history of the universe, and get this, will never recur before the last sun in the last galaxy darkens and drains into the inky void. Even though the science of combinatorics assures that this is so, it still seems odd, doesn’t it? It seems odd because humans find it hard to reason about combinatorics. Don’t feel bad. I’m not sure why, but that’s just how we’re built.

Here, let’s do the math. It won’t hurt. Much.

Instead of a deck of cards, let’s play a guessing game. I’ll think of a number from 1 to 52. Can you guess it? It wouldn’t take you too many tries to guess my number, 37. Let’s say that number corresponds to the Jack of Hearts. What would the guessing game look like with two cards? Now there are 52 x 51 = 2652 possibilities. How long would it take you to guess my number if it was between 1 and 2652? A while. Okay now (you knew this part was coming) how many possibilities are there with 52 cards? There are 52 x 51 x 50 x … x 2 x 1 possible decks. This is denoted as 52 factorial, or 52! And hoo boy, is this number a doozy!

What are the odds you could guess my number now? It’s between 1 and (checks calculator) 8 x 10⁶⁷? What’s that? You want to see it unrolled in all its glory? Okay fine. Stand back. Could we zoom out the camera a bit, please?

Your odds are 1 in

80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000.

Happy now? I’ll spare you the stacks of words that rhyme with “zillion.” Just be aware that this is a freaking big number. In practical terms, it means your chances of guessing my number are zero. Not a chance. Even if you drove to the moon and back 15 times in a Winnebago filled with frictionless monkeys. The odds that your deck has existed before is so close to zero that it’s pointless to call it anything except zero.

Image by Midjourney

I don’t know about you, but this makes me feel optimistic. The universe is so full of possibility – think of all the magic hiding in a single deck of cards! Right there in the palm of your hand! From 26 letters we can deal not only the works of Shakespeare (typing monkeys notwithstanding) but all past and all future works in English. From 88 piano keys comes a never-ending geyser of tunes. There are only 92 stable elements, yet from this deck we can deal a universe that, all by itself, invented you. And you’re pretty special, so that’s saying something. Sometimes I brandish a deck of cards just to feel, just to wield the incredible life-giving power of combinatorics. There is no end to novelty! You don’t live in a desert. The exits are not blocked and the labyrinth goes on forever. In every conceivable direction there is naught but bewildering delight!

Here. Let me show a card trick. The best kind of magic.

Do you, like my sister-in-law, make a distinction between listening to books and “real reading”? Real reading, so this interpretation goes, occurs when your eyes scan words. Some people go so far as to say that it only counts as real reading when you are touching paper pages. No Kindles allowed. Speaking for myself, I am happy to say that I read books to which I only listened.

I’m thinking about this because I’m writing this while sitting on an airplane flying home from a vacation. When I say I’m writing, I mean that I am engaged in what might be called “real writing” in the same sense that my sister-in-law refers to “real reading.” That is, I am using a pen and writing in longhand. But much like reading a Kindle, I’m not using ink or paper. I’m using a device called a Supernote Nomad. I like it a lot. In fact, I like it so much that I’m trying explain to myself why. Why is it better, at least to me, than using pen and ink? And why is it better than a keyboard? Well, for one thing, it’s a shiny new gadget, and I love shiny new gadgets. So there’s that. I could still be in the new gadget honeymoon phase. But the Nomad holds all my writing in one convenient location. No notebooks or loose leaves spilling about. The feeling of the stylus moving against the “page” is very comfortable. And when I’m ready to transfer something I wrote to the computer, it has handwriting recognition, saving me the trouble of re-typing anything.

Drawn on a Nomad

I’m reminded of when I first bought an electric piano years ago (a Yamaha Clavinova). I wanted it to have the full complement of keys, feel as natural as possible, and otherwise be very minimal and clean. It was the same with this device. It’s small, simple, comfortable, and dedicated to a single task. I ask myself: why not just type into the keyboard of a small laptop or iPad? This thing is compact. I have it on my lap right now as we go through turbulence before landing at Logan Airport in Boston. But quite apart from its compact form, I like the fact that this device is dedicated to one task. With an iPad or a laptop, there is always the lurking danger of Distraction By Internet. That’s simply not possible with this device. And also by virtue of being dedicated to a single task, it feels more private. I share my iPad with others, but not this. What I write here stays here. Unless of course I choose to export it to the wide world, which I now do, if only to sing the praises of the Supernote Nomad.

Ultimately, using a pen takes my writing to a different place than typing does. I enjoy it and so it keeps me at the task longer. That is surely a very idiosyncratic thing. But if you, like me, enjoy the feel of writing in longhand and the convenience of a digital notebook, you should give this thing a try. It’s a keeper.

You are the mayor of a town with a serious rat problem. The municipal rat catcher comes by with his report: “I killed a thousand rats this month.” “Well done!” you say, and you write him a check. But this goes on month after month for years. Sometimes more rats, sometimes fewer. One day you think, shouldn’t we be coming to the end of the rats soon? At that moment, you are enlightened: You’re not in the rat extermination business. You’re in the rat FARMING business. Farmers don’t run out of wheat. They help it grow, they harvest it, then they start over again. Until you eliminate the conditions that let rats thrive, you’re just another farmer harvesting regular crops of rats. Chastened by this realization, you look around your town with fresh eyes.

It’s a rat paradise! Piles of food left out to rot, uncovered garbage, and a rat catcher who is more than happy to be fully employed month after month. Only when you clean the place up does the rat population finally start to go down for good.

Eventually you move on from your job in Ratburg. You are now the mayor of Facebookville, and you have a serious meme problem. Toxic fake news memes are running rampant, biting your citizens. You pay meme debunkers to come in every month and spray them with facts and explainers. Mr. Snopes, the municipal debunker, assures you that he is making good progress. “We killed a thousand memes this month!” But one day, as you ponder the meme food chain, it hits you. You’re a freaking MEME FARMER!

Here’s how it works. Humans excrete attention through their eyeballs. Memes feast on it, and then multiply into toxic blooms of fake news. It doesn’t pay to intervene by debunking individual memes. More will keep pouring in. You can never get ahead of the meme population until you control the steaming heaps of waste attention that pollute your streets. You thank Mr. Snopes for his valiant but ultimately misguided work. The real work lies elsewhere.

Advertisers have rewarded Facebook for consolidating all this thinly spread and divergent attention into one convenient pile. They eat their fill and leave behind a filthy mess. Until we address this problem of attention hygiene, fake news will only proliferate. Every time you take the click bait, you delight the meme, the troll who created him, and the debunker who lives for the tiny noiseless take-downs that currently pass for progress. Your untended attention is a menace to society.

So what does attention hygiene look like?

Do a social media fast every other day. Consider not forwarding or re-tweeting that stupid thing the stupid politician did. Know your triggers and steer clear of them. See a headline about a maddening NRA ad? Don’t click! You know nothing good will come of it. Importantly, even the institutions are starting to acknowledge the problem and respond. Facebook has introduced a snooze button that will let you temporarily unfollow a person, page, or group for 30 days. Call it the Snooze Feed.

We’re getting better at this. Eventually we’ll have clean streets and good attention sewers. But for now we’re still in the filthy old London typhoid ‘n cholera stage. Boil your newsfeed, and please, don’t sneeze into your browser!

Note: this post originally appeared on Medium. I’m repatriating it over here on starchamber.com.

It is a hell of a thing to watch someone you love slowly die.
To watch them dissolve before your eyes in the house that you share.
It is a sad, strange privilege.
There is an exaltation to it.
This is the edge of all we know, all we can know.
We spend so much time avoiding the edge, shrinking from it.
But I have been dragged here, and I will not shrink. I must not shrink.
The void is so close. Silent and vast.
It is reflected in her eyes, her yellowing upturned eyes that no longer fully close.
She drowses, pale and thin and full of everything that a life can hold.
It’s all still there, coiled up inside her, even now.
Where will it go?
What will remain?
She is leaving, slowly leaving me even as I watch
She is going
She goes
And I cannot point where.
Somehow it seems as though I should.

Image by Midjourney