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Into the Truth of Integrity : on the Movie "Into the Wild" and its moral philosophy

Geoffrey Hamilton
October 8, 2007

If you want to feel superior on the cheap, get yourself some integrity. If you insist that truth be had at a discount, be true to yourself. Such is the wisdom passed on by the likes of Socrates, Polonius and now 'Into the Wild's' Alexander Supertramp.

This biographical film takes on the final two years of post-grad Alexander Supertramp (a.k.a. Christopher Johnson McCandless) as he abandoned his slightly hypocritical but loving parents, a rich suburban existence, and his 24,000 dollar savings to Oxfam - all for the old Delphic scam 'know thyself'. The means by which he would be true to himself (circa 1992) was to give up his entire support network and test his limits against society and finally against the wild.

From the beginning of the story we know that he was bright and an avid reader of moral philosophy: Thoreau and Plato were piled on tables. As a well read man he looked down on his parents, but still he did what was expected of him by his parents (and, by doing so, for Plato too) including finishing university, all of which was just another way for Alex to feel superior to them. One day he got the idea that it was time that he begin a journey outside his comfort zone. The method of doing so was important so it had to be dramatic. He would disappear. So, after making up a cover story, he vanished for what would be two long years for his understandably hysterical parents.

His first steps involved living like a tramp, hopping on frieght trains and getting odd jobs while occationally dipping his toes into various wild zones across the lower fourty-eight states. As time went on the idea of pushing himself to live alone in an Alaskan forest struck his fancy. This was to be the final test, live or die, where all that he was to 'become' would speak clearly to him.

Supertramp's adventure to Alaska was systematically measured right to down to the last bullet and cup of rice. This was not about entering a true test bare and hungry: he was about as reliant on civilization as he always had been, even using an old school bus that had mysteriously been converted into a functional hunter's shelter and later abandoned. As he lay on his inconveniently dusty mattress and lighted his imperfect stove he slowly, over this last hundred days of his life, got hungrier and lonelier until he finally 'discovered' himself - discovered himself to be not Alex Supertramp but to be his regular old self, Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had found his limits, or his true self (whoopy), and it was time to stop pretending, other than to still pretend that using his given name was not also pretending.

Unfortunately, for him, he was quite literally too late. A river that he had forded to get to the wild into the winter had become impassible in summer. Trapped and starving he turned to his book on wild edibles. He couldn't help but feel proud that all his foresight had brought him this book when it was most needed. But this confidence let him down when with this little knowledge (and a little is all we get in this life) he blundered into eating a mimic of the plant he was looking for, one that poisoned him by stopping his digestion.

It was all about regrets now; he could only wait to die. He had been true to himself and it turned out he was not Alexander Supertramp after all but only a mild mannered man-about-town. He may not have named himself, but his birth name sure sounded like a true name at this point. It was modest, respected, loved, even promising. Alexander Supertramp was pretentious while the other was his true self. He died believing in that illusion.

This is really only a mature comming of age story, but one which holds up a hero for the many of the integrity police out there to emulate. People like Sean Penn, the director of this film, Avril Lavigne and Sarah Polly, among others, who call others 'sell outs' are becoming the new christian missionaries of personal salvation. To be happy, they say, you must know thyself.

Well, sorry to say, knowing themselves is not what they or anyone is doing when they are going on these adventures. I've done it myself and I've looked at the whole issue of navel gazing and can conclude that 'discovering yourself' is only about shaking off values that don't agree with you. Some believers, like Socrates, have turned this common maturing process into is some grand philosophical enterprise the result of which all of life is waiting for with baited breath.

Sorry to tell you, Delphic Oracle, you and all your followers are just looking to streamline your operations: you're always being true to yourselves no mater what you're doing. You're not looking for truth. You're just looking for advantage like anyone else. It's been nice knowing you guys but I think I'd rather figure out life first, I'll leave this narrow way of seeking advantage to you.

GRH

The compulsion to play games is the interface between the chaos of the universe and the individual. This is where to discover game gene theory.

Lamenting the Geishas

Geishas and dry sex, how are we ever going to return to the best sex there is?

February 28, 2006

The film Memoirs of a Geisha reminds me of how asexual the world is trying to become. With the growth of breast-implant style pornography, metro sexual men and Brazilian waxing you might think the world is more sexed-up than ever before. You would be wrong. Sex is so overblown and genitalized that the orgasm has become the defining act of sex. So whether it is romantic ("How good was it for you?"), scientific ("Her orgasm or lack of one means she doesn't wants to reproduce."), or barroom banter ("Did she cum?"), sex has lost much of its art.

In previous eras the idea of sex as an art had many kinds of heydays; there was burlesque, the courtesan, tantric sex and, of course, the geisha. ln Memoirs of a Geisha a geisha's use of her genitals is highly prized only because it is made part of a long journey. Even when the goal is reached it is taken away again to a great distance in order to restore its value and to allow a new journey to begin.

This game is acknowledged, as such, midway in the film when the old geisha sets up a dance performance by the young geisha for three suitors; the young geisha sees the setup as a mysterious game with rules only known by others. The dance in the movie is truly wonderful. The suitors bid high amounts of cash against each other making her hymen now the costliest ever seen in Kyoto. On one level this is a perfect example of how any business must be conducted. On the sexual level, it shows how games like dance and psychological manipulation actually increase the real meaning and value of sex.

But there are all kinds of sexual events that go even further by not going all the way. The kind of sex that makes the goal to never have intercourse is the best game there is. Usually that goal must be accompanied by some imperative, or a pretext which sounds like some imperative. This situation happened twice in my own life. Both times the meaning, value, emotions -- everything became hyper-wonderful: a kiss was not a kiss anymore, a sigh was not a sigh any longer. There is the greatest sexual growing space created in the mind when nothing is done about a sexual feeling other than by touch: love grows, energy grows, hope grows.

The geisha is all about creating those things and more. Of course, individual people today can create that again whenever they choose, but as a whole, except for the hostesses of Japan, the decline in that kind of experience is measurable by how you rarely hear anyone talk about abstaining from intercourse except as part of a 'ti-tantric' joke. Whether it is for money, as with the geisha, or for other values, this sexual emotion is about the most we can ever squeeze out of life.

GRH

Self Directed Mutation
It is possible for life to direct its own mutations. (ScienceNouveau.com)

and (Michael R. Rose's Mistakes)

January 6, 2006
Last update March 30, 2008

One of the great mysteries regarding the theory of evolution is found lurking behind these questions: how many mutations does it take before one mutation can be reproduced? And is a mutation called fit simply by something making a copy of it - is it "fit" by that definition alone? Need the mutant copy even be helpful? The mystery of the fit mutation does not seem to matter to evolutionary theory. Darwin said every individual is a mutation, so, given that all reproducing beings are mutants, I suspect a large majority of mutations are easily passed on.

Is it not therefore possible to find "imperfections" of every conceivable kind passed on to future generations, even those which could eventually cause that species' extinction and yet for a hundred generations it may have no survival effect whatsoever? Of course this happens and it happens all the time; these are labeled innocuous factors so as not to deal with the issue. What's worse is the huge amount of old DNA that gets passed on no matter how fit the host is. What are all these freeloading genes doing riding on the "adaptive" gene's coattails? According to today's evolutionists we are all just working for the genes, but genes seem to be too lazy to be doing anything like "directing" their survival. The whole situation also makes the idea of natural selection, as a designing process, irrelevant and ineffectual: if there is no way to stop the "drift" from freeloading and copying itself endlessly then there is not much point in waiting for all malevolent genes to be weeded out. But evolutionists still think success is defined by reproduction and the copying of genes (or, like Richard Dawkins miscomprehension of the drift problem, by an obvious and immediate use of mutations) and this evolutionary definition of success absurdly makes the fittest out of anything and makes the unfittest out of countless individually successful beings who do not reproduce.

There is another problem: as mutation is such a persistent and regular feature of life, how is it some beings often called 'living fossils' (like horseshoe crabs) can remain entirely the same in design over hundreds of millions of years with no mutant offshoot to speak of? The relevance of constant random mutation would mean no form of being could remain the same in design over any length of time - anymore than a rumour can be passed around and remain the same. Something must be keeping it the same.

There is another possible way to have mutations and it is much more useful: that is the effect of conscious thought on genetic inheritance. Today there is enough evidence to conclude that some effects of experience can be inherited. Epi-genetic research has shown that the turning on and off of genes can be manipulated by diet and chemicals and that these "genetic" changes, these learned genetic effects, can be passed on to future offspring. However, what I propose -- that conscious thought too can effect the DNA of one's own next generation -- has only circumstantial evidence to suggest it, but it is strong. I will add here that at least it is a more fast acting and virile theory than random mutation with natural selection alone. I will lead up to the reason why this concept is possible.

Unconscious direction of bodily functions is always with us; from digestion to brain functions, we cannot participate in the control of everything we consciously want to do, so we need unconscious manipulations from our mind to make everything work. The chameleon abilities is a superficial form of this idea. The human face is another example - our emotions are expressed exactly by muscles we don't consciously control or understand. In all kinds of ways an individual being cannot nor should not operate every aspect of his own body. (Just think of the sports figure in a slump. He is usually thinking too much. When he relaxes and forgets about his tasks his skills improve.) There are things out of everyone's conscious control that are better off that way.

There is also the phenomenon exemplified by hysterical symptoms. Just by consciously understanding what physical symptoms are expected - under certain medical conditions - an individual can unconsciously control vast numbers of cells and body parts in order to mimic the colour, shape and texture of the specific expected conditions. Stigmata and hysterical pregnancy are such cases. How such minute control is possible has never been explained scientifically, but this is further proof of an unconscious power over the body that is influenced by conscious thought.

Clown fish change sex from male to female when it realizes that a female of in group is missing. There is also the African Cichlid Fish which changes genetically and changes its form significantly when it consciously recognizes a change in its political situation. It not only puts on a new "uniform" it changes into another being entirely; if we were using DNA fingerprinting to identify a culprit we could not match up the before and after version. The unconscious abilities to morph superficially and genetically means organic selection and human engineering are not the only ways to "evolve". Even though this case does not involve reproduction there is no reason why it may not indicate such a possible method, as in the following example.

A lioness's conscious thought can turn on the reproductive system. Lionesses will receive sexual advances only when they know they have no litter alive to care for. Male Lions know this and so kill a litter so they can have the sexual spoils that go with such murders.

An important factor that suggests the possibility of self-directing mutations is the issue of transposons, or jumping genes. In mid-life a genetic mutation is very common with up to forty-five percent of the human genome made up of them. In other words nothing says within the genome that self-directing a mutation is impossible.........

continue....
Self Directed Mutation
It is possible for life to direct its own mutations.

Flash : Philosophy Repeats Itself

Geoffrey Hamilton
June 3, 2007
Last update July 8, 2007

Sometimes the best philosophers are the worst at communicating their contributions to the understanding of existence. While they often see the same issues, they afterwards confuse their message - not only by their varying eras, languages and cultures, but often they try to obscure their shortcomings in jargon and mystical assertions (as Hume similarly complained long ago). There is only one life to talk about yet, as a kind of copyright protection device, most philosophers from Plato to Deleuze encrypt the subject of life as though they are our only gatekeepers, and ride pretense into their own fantasy world.

Science, for all its faults, allows a continuity of discussion and the 'standing on the shoulders of giants', or 'progress'. Philosophers, instead, are continually built up as precious islands of immortality - and the more artfully confusing and misleading they are the more champions they seem to gain. Their fanatics then pressure readers to weigh every word (and intention) equally (sometimes in the original) before judgement is permitted - but this is still insufficient for them. No one shall judge their heroes, they imply, so these islands become unassailable Lost Worlds.

In science, at least, we are all allowed to test a claim and discard the useless and outdated without knowing every coma that led to it. There's no reason philosophers can't be subject to similar standards. And, as there is only one kind of existence to talk about, so the communications handed down by philosophers already must be assumed, in part, to refer to the same world.

There is, if you are looking for useful philosophy, some small hope of progress in the all the doggerel systems. In the past, a story of progress was made out of various 'Lost Worlds' - of Socrates' turn from natural science to ethics, or Descartes 'new' idealism, or Hume's scepticism, or Kant's redemption of it all, or the current fight against relativism - with the adjunct story of eastern philosophies thrown in. These stories are reasonable because each of the successive philosophers had read and responded to his predecessors, usually quite openly; and often one style contaminated the next. Progress is visible by such criterias. The best of these narratives (like David Berman's on Schopenhauer) make sense of vastly different personalities and styles, even when the intentions of the philosopher-subjects was to break with the past.

Despite all this, there is no reason to assume that the response/counter-response formula indicates a sufficient criteria to claim progress. I will make two objections. First, it is false by its own assumptions. Many cases of 'progress' are actually cases of amnesia and irrelevance. For example, Schopenhauer says Kant's great contribution to thought was adding an innate psychological frame for understanding space and time to Hume's innate frame for causality. Actually, Kant may have just read Anaxagoras in Plato ("..the mind is really the arranger and cause of all things", Phaedo 97D) and added to it a common innate-ness. Also, claiming an innate structure for understanding space and time is just making manifest the implications of Hume's innate causality, and is also a repackaging of Plato's all encompassing innate-ness. Amnesia regarding innate knowledge and irrelevancy regarding space and time - if Kant can be considered great and called a progressive force in philosophy, much mind numbing thinking is called for.

Second, the claim of progress is false because of the influence of the rules of narration. It matters little to the narrators of philosophy that brilliance (like Montaigne's {or even Kant's, if given a different context}) would be left on the cutting room floor for the sole reason that they could not fit it in - for narrators, stories need to be made, revelations don't.

A reassessment of the whole 'story' project is needed. Instead of the wide scope that is typically the purview of philosophy there is just one main story to look at, but it involves more of a see-saw than a progress - that is the theory of knowledge. It is the main narrative because if you don't believe in what you know, nothing else matters.

Two currents mark this story: the first is the question of whether knowledge comes before or after birth; and the second, whether knowledge is all relative or whether some of it can be absolute. (This is an example of what philosophy needs - more conflation and less hair splitting.)

These two currents are addressed continually (as in the Kant example given above) but, at some point, most philosophers eventually trick themselves away from making the best choices (i.e. all knowledge is relative, and it begins before birth with adjustments made afterwards). These philosophers, including the likes of Socrates, Pythagoras, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and most others, were self-tricked because they needed to redeem life by asserting certainty: usually a voice or god did the trick - sometimes power, or the supposed supremacy of man could mask the relativity. But if you follow the two currents in many philosopher's theories of knowledge, contained in their work, whether implied or stated, is evidence for the relativity of all meaning based on innate structures in the human mind.

Forget the bickering and sniping they do at each other, or the absurd conclusions their arguments contain, accidentally or not, there is more than enough evidence to have taken the whole of philosophy somewhere. Instead it has just been repeating itself. A separate list of numerous philosopher's comments shows all this to be the case. From the most famous to the least, from the beginning to the present time, philosophers have been standing still replaying an issue that may have been resolved many times over by a few observant people, like Montaigne, who saw by raw experience that instinct and experience both have a role in knowledge and that knowledge is relative.

Of course philosophy is more than theories of knowledge, but if it continues to cede 'progress' to its offspring science, it will be further relegated to the anti-knowledge of ethics and science will increase it's dominance. Knowledge needs the breadth of philosophy and a way to avoid the mercantile rut of science. From now on philosophers must rid themselves of their confusing synonyms and idiosyncrasies and judge fearlessly and recklessly like scientists. Debunkers say of magicians and faith healers: if you 'know' it's just a trick, you can work out how it's done. That's now the task of philosophers and historians. With an eye to the common reality that is always the subject of philosophy we can all debunk the Aristotles and Foucaults of this world and not be anchored to their mistakes and misservices. We are not at the mercy of some long dead mythological philosopher's integrity. Philosophy needs to escape its self delusion and get something accomplished. It needs to know what it has done and get on with figuring things out.

GRH

"I know it's a game, but its been my life." Amanda Kimmel, Survivor (two time runner up), Final May 11, 2008

CNN reporter to 'Naked Cowboy' in Times Square New York, December 31 2004 "How do you keep from getting cold?"
Naked Cowboy: "I pretend I'm warm and it works."

"...you're working so hard to be somebody special...what I don't see babe, where you go once you've arrived? Where we go once we've arrived?" Special to Me, Phantom of the Paradise, 1974

"We are entirely made up of bits and pieces...there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and other people...we must probe right down inside and find out what principles make things move...." Michel De Montaigne, On the Inconstancy of Our Actions

"...the life of man is nothing but a sport of folly...". Erasmus, Praise of Folly (116), 1509

Appian on Sulla's dictatorship of Rome, "...he was not afraid of having caused the death of 100,000 young men ... of having killed his personal enemies to the number of ninety senators and about fifteen consuls ... the bodies of many had been thrown out unburied, but Sulla proclaimed himself a private citizen .... I believe that sated with war, sated with power, sated with Rome, he finally fell in love with rural life." Book 1, 104.

Ghost in the Shell 2 - 2004

"If our gods and our hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then it must be said that our love is scientific as well."

"It's no use to blame the looking glass if your face is askew the mirror is not an instrument of enlightenment but of illusion."

"...what are children in the chaos preceding maturity? They differ profoundly from "humans", but they obviously have human form. The dolls that little girls mother are not surrogates for real babies. Little girls are not so much imitating child rearing as they are experiencing something deeply akin to child rearing. It is the way to achieve the ancient dream of artificial life. Descarte didn't differentiate man from machine, animate from inanimate. He lost his beloved five year old daughter and then named a doll after her, Francine. He doted on her. At least that's what they say.

"One need not be Caesar in order to understand Caesar."

"The world cannot live at the level of its great men" .

"What the body creates is as much an expression of DNA as the body itself"
Ghost in the Shell 2 - 2004

"Rob's strategy to quit worked and that just makes me sick. " miss South Carolina.
Amazing race, APRIL 6, 2005 RECAP

"For every one person who likes you you have ten people who have to criticize you." Avril Lavigne

"...Self-love was her [Nature's] greatest gift. Just let me add that no great deed was ever performed without my [goddess of stupidity's] prompting and no new art discovered unless I was responsible." Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 1509

Links

Game Theory
Game Theory
is very different from
Game Gene Theory Papers regarding Game Theory show its limits. As they say here "Games are a convenient way in which to model the strategic interactions among economic agents." It is all about finding the most probable way to win at games and that is basically all.

NOVA Science Now PBS TV, "Mirror Neurons"
Science misunderstands the game gene but still provides proof in this video.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
James Fieser, Ph.D., founder and general editor Bradley Dowden, Ph.D., general editor

Wikipedia
more accurate and interesting than Britannica

Wikinfo
More open than Wikipedia and allows cutting edge ideas.

Philosophy magazines
Google's list.

Buzzle.com
Get strange news because if it's really new it must be strange.

Muslim Philosophy
a good list of islamic philosophers and other information.

Philosophy Now Magazine