Can we embrace impermanence and life at the same time?

People find amazingly creative ways to resist impermanence.

The Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt around 450 BC and described how the Egyptians preserved their dead. Apparently, it took 600 pounds of a mixture of four salts, a hundred yards of fine Egyptian linen, resins like frankincense and myrrh, and about 70 days of human effort. Four canopic jars were used to store the liver, stomach, intestines and lungs. The heart was left in; it was believed to contain the person's essence. The brain, on the other hand, was removed through the nose and discarded. The entire mind blowing procedure is a strange mix of specialized knowledge and gross ignorance. Where is your essence without a brain?

The modern equivalent might be cryogenics. This is the inverse of mummification: throw away everything the Egyptians were concerned with, then keep the brain. According to your brain, the answer to the question "what is your most important organ" is "the brain". Self-serving, or simply, the self itself? Consider a brain transplant and ask yourself whether you'd rather be the donor or the recipient. Without a body, is there a self? The distinguished neurologist Antonio Damasio would probably say no; the sense of self depends on the entire living organism and its bodily interactions with the world.

Cryogenics may be superior to mummification, but it has problems. Bad employees might use your frozen head for batting practice, as they did recently with Ted Williams. Even if your frozen head is well maintained, can it ever be defrosted and given a body? Will future people miss you so much they want you back again?

A future fantasy is to upload "yourself" into some nano-tech quadrillion-transistor neural network substrate with terahertz connectivity to a wide array of sensors and social nets. This may enable "you" to make thousands of "friends" per second on some future Facebook, but what picture are you going to use for a head shot? Is that you? And back to Damasio, can you even feel self-aware without a biological body?

Some people want their self to live forever, but what is the self? Are we a heart? Are we a brain? Are we a face? Are we a pattern of information that can be digitized and transferred? The "pattern of information" makes sense, but the pattern is dynamic, not static. If the pattern is frozen and static, it is dead. Is that a clue? Wouldn't it be ironic if our futile resistance against impermanence is actually a resistance against the dynamic life force itself?

Can we embrace impermanence and life at the same time?

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"I used to believe in skepticism, but now I'm not so sure."

That quote has the self-referential quality of a Douglas Hofstadter construct and the subtlety of a Zen koan. It reminds me of Socrates explaining his wisdom: he knows that he doesn't know, as oppose to the fools who think they do. Some ancient variations from Sanskrit and Chinese got it wrong, claiming "he who knows, and knows that he knows is wise; follow him". Sounds like dictation from the king.

The human brain craves certainty. We want leaders who know. Socrates questioned authority and was executed for corrupting young minds.

But certainty is the enemy of understanding. The principle of impermanence trumps certainty. Yesterday's certainties turn into tomorrow's jokes. It used to be so obvious that everything revolves around our flat earth and was made by god so we could play like his children, and earth is our kindergarten except when we eat to much fruit from the tree of knowledge.

Those of faith may interpret the quote to suggest that with age, youthful egoism gives way to spiritual wisdom. The arrogant tools of scientific inquiry are seen as limited. What is unlimited is opening to the infinite revelations of transcendent being, a continual surrender to something bigger than the delusions of self-hood, the desire for a permanent, absolute truth.

Those of science may see the irony of the word "believe" and will get the hint; science is not a belief system. However, professional scientists can be guilty of blind faith in their own specialized system, and have little time or patience for anything judged to be nonsense. Skepticism serves science well, but only after there is a believable foundation to build on. Seldom is the foundation re-examined; that would be a waste of time and energy, and could drive a brain mad. Science makes the a priori claim that there is nothing so exciting as a proof that the foundation needs to be re-built, but many real human scientists don't seem to act that way.

When your foundation eventually crumbles, do you experience suffering or bliss? Is it possible to avoid the suffering by remaining detached from all foundations? Will your loved ones care to be with with you if you attain a high level of detachment from them? Will you be able to practice medicine if you doubt the techniques? Will you survive if you don't care? I remain skeptical about excessive detachment; seems like an attachment. The Chinese Book of Changes noted how things have a way of changing into their opposite when they become too extreme.

Some may see the quote as getting back to the fundamental form of pure skepticism. I'm not so sure anymore, about anything whatsoever, except for one subjective certainty: I have a consciousness that comes and goes, and behind that consciousness is a vast complex of subtle connections with everything unconscious, and with everything that has been and now is, including all life and all humanity. These connections drive my consciousness from one state to the next.

With an act of will, my consciousness can be focused. Sometimes, when my will seems free, I freely focus my consciousness on the tragedy of the impermanence of consciousness itself, and this fills me with a sorrowful compassion for all consciousness everywhere, and this compassion exists beyond skepticism.

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