Practicism-Guide for Living
Practicism- Summary & Principles
Practicism is so named because the knowledge that combines sensible ideas with scientifically proven ones is just that; but when that is inegrated with practicing it in every day life brings harmony in life and relieves the distressed stress of life.
We get up in the morning. We expect to do something, accomplish something important or urgent, or just relax and not do something that hour or the day. Mostly, we see that we do what we want and can, but there are many occasions when we are diverted or defeated by circumstances. We often think that these are very personal events especially designed for us, human individuals. Though we may accept this, we still think it is some kind of design or personal karma or destiny. In actuality, this is what happens to all natural things in the Universe. All natural systems like stones, rivers, trees etc. lead these perilous lives.
For some elements, objects and systems, things go pretty much as expected. These are the simplest of the systems, such as a stone ejected in empty space or an electron orbiting an atom or the distribution of balls thrown in random directions or a lone planet orbiting a lone star or an isolated mixture of two reactive chemicals. Such simple systems can be fully described by equations and their behavior foretold for all times or controlled by simple controllers.
But for more complex systems, progressively, the equations become poorer and poorer representations and the predictions of behavior become increasingly unreliable or even impossible. An object ejected in a windy place or an electron orbiting an atom when another complex molecule is in the neighborhood or two planets orbiting a star, already become difficult to manage and predict. Number of stones or snow piled on top of a mountain are unstable and unpredictable. The weather which is formed by global combination of temperature gradients and contact with circulating ocean currents and ocean evaporation cannot be predicted accurately locally and over a long period. No one can predict how a tree, by itself, will grow. The course of a river which interacts with geological, meteorological and biological/botanical environment, cannot be predicted for long. Each of these macro objects and systems have an enormous number of lower level interacting phenomena, each trying to behave according to an equation but are perturbed or wholly affected by nearby or influential environmental processes according to their own equations. The result is an enormous number of possible outcomes starting from a given point and variations, sometimes even the tiniest, in the influence of different factors. Yet, an average behavior over many instances or time and a probability of a specific outcome can be surmised in many cases.
Nature around us is a mosaic of complexity and simplicity, slow and fast and immediate and delayed processes and orderly and random causes. The net effect is the diverse, beautiful and sometimes awesome, awful or dangerous world.
Humans with their complex interactive brains and their orderly-disorderly lives are complex systems that are the hardest to predict and manage because of the additional factor of their diverse and abundant memory along with their diverse and emergent intelligence. This ability to control their environment in some cases and collectively in many other cases gives them the illusion that they can control everything in their lives and are dismayed when they cannot. In fact, those very controls- sensors and actuators, are subject to the same laws that govern stones, mountains, rivers, trees and plants. Yet, it is difficult to predict and control ones own or an individual’s life, a broad outcome for a large number of people in a certain situation can be predicted in terms of probabilities.
The only way an increased control can be gained is by reducing complexity in life. An already rich person has greater control in his health and nutrition and perhaps the welfare of his family and friends, because his wealth permits a reduction in complexity in having to work for food and other needs. (The rich person may have increased complexity in other areas such as wealth management, pleasure seeking and spoiled children, which results in a loss of control over those areas and leak into their loss of control over their mental health). Similar complexity-simplicity mix determines how good any person’s control over their life is. The more boring or routine and independent the life is, the more predictable and more controllable the life is. While this might appear to be a truism, this is rooted in science as it quantitatively describes the relationship between degrees of freedom, degree of complexity and predictability, specific object behavior vs statistical behavior and sudden and unexpected changes, for natural systems. Human individuals are just like stones, rivers, mountains and trees and therefore they are subject to the same consistency and unpredictability.
This understanding comes under the umbrella of Ontological Naturalism. (Under this philosophy, the concept of “causal closure”, namely the concept that mental processes are also caused by physical processes, was accepted after forces and fields and conservation of energy were hypothesized and proved by science.)
Orthodox Naturalism is often a determinism and even in the quantum mechanical sense, in which probabilities are determined in a given situation. However, Practicism qualifies this by informing that this determinism is only for special cases. In most cases, the effect in the current moment is determined by the previous history and the environment at the present moment and is unlikely to be exactly determinable for the next moment. Certainly, events for a complex system or the life of a person over a long period is not deterministic. While human reaction is to argue in a circle that a certain life situation is destiny, the life situation is “anthropic” because it just happens to have come to that point because of micro or macro life conditions together with life choices under those conditions.
Practicism is the acceptance that our life is a dynamic system just like in nature. While the mind may lead a rich spiritual life delving into philosophies and social phenomena and engaging in creative thoughts and deeds, Practicism teaches that the mind should learn to see life as physical-Natural and accept that it is unreasonable to expect that developments in the longer term are predictable or controllable. Practitioners learn this by learning the science of chaos- order within disorder, the understanding of how the brain mind works and observing the complex interaction between the details of external systems (natural and people) and oneself. This then leads to the realization that the soul or the illusory self is nothing but the essence of this unquantifiable interaction and there is no God directing this immeasurable number of interactions, minute or large. One then exercises a measure of control to set one’s environment and actions as close to success as possible, but one is always aware that that is just one factor which may or may not matter for the outcome.
While this seems more or less like the way many of us lead our lives , a practitioner of Practicism is not affected by an outcome or blame or credit people or conditions immediately around that outcome since the particular outcome was the result of many previous complex interactions between many other people and situations. The Hindu Bhagawat Gita states “I only have the right to the action, but not of the fruits of the action” needs to be read as control only over one’s own actions but not control over the fruits.
Practicism-Principles
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Few natural processes are simple and even fewer remain simple over long periods. As complexity increases, natural processes become dynamic, governed by process of chaos (order within disorder and vice versa, fractals, high sensitivity to existing conditions and bifurcations) and non equilibrium (change, evolution by natural selection and critical phenomena). Objects, ordinary and amazing, are also created and destroyed by the combination of orderly and random inputs. Each step beyond a moment depends on the conditions and forces present at that moment, some precisely and some approximately. Most processes can only be controlled or predicted in a limited way and only for short time. Yet, in many situations, their average behaviors or the probability of certain outcomes may be predictable and the outcomes would be bounded to be within certain limits, but a specific outcome for a specific case and time still would remain unpredictable.
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Humans and their lives are also subject to the above same laws that govern natural objects and natural phenomena. Humans and their lives mirror that of stones, mountains, weather, rivers, mountains and animals as well as myriad minor and major natural features.
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In the process of Emergence, when a large number of individual entities come or brought together in a coordinated fashion, one or more products emerge and the collective generates a self-identity (pretending) as a single entity. Same way, human brain cells work together to create a self with ego and the so called consciousness. In the central Emergent self, the conclusions and choices the person (their brain) makes are independent of rationality. Rationality is negotiated only through agreement with others, after the fact. In fact, our bodies which are each comprised of 15 trillion cells of different types acting in highly integrated way, also “emerge” as a single organism. Therefore, the ego and the body as one’s own is a mere concept in our brains and there may be no reality in it. It is shaped by ancestral genes, experiences and external environment as well as by intention.
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Every reality as perceived by an individual is her or his own, is unlikely to be anyone else’s. The reality that is shared among individuals, groups and local and global communities, is shaped by genetic memory, capabilities and limitations of our senses, nurture and learned and negotiated and agreed-upon pattern recognition and approximations.
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The life we experience is the consequence of both our efforts and the dynamic processes that occur around us and in us. A life without our own efforts would be very different. But, our efforts are only contributory and not the only important factors.
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Understanding this removes bias, prejudice, creates compassion for other people and also provides a better understanding of our priorities and morality.
These give us the final corollary and summary principle:
Our lives are generated by natural complexity in nature and are not much under our or anyone’s control. The process of Emergence creates a “self” from the collective working of brain cells and this “self” gets the sense of control and predictability, extrapolating from several successful examples while ignoring failures. The pleasure and suffering as well as the variability in the sense of control are caused by the unique perceptions of reality (as opposed to a possibility of an objective reality). Yet, our efforts are necessary and may be essential to achieving success in life, but that success is the result of our efforts and other natural processes.
The above principle gives us the following guidance for our life:
Understand that one has a knob or dial to control one’s life, but that is just one of the many knobs; sometimes very effective when synchronous or resonant with other knobs and sometimes useless. Our duty is to use this control to the best of our ability, but there is no guarantee that this control will lead to the desired result- in fact, it could also harm the outcome. Life is a continuous process of trial and error.
Our decisions and choices are only made through optimizing and negotiating through our personal experiences and with other people. The truth, rationality, morality and reality, general or in situations, are concepts that are based upon this optimization. Our brains can and does make up many things and constantly deceives us partly or fully. So, we should be skeptical about our own and other’s conclusions, when actual physical evidence is lacking.
Every act of acquisition of pleasure or suffering brings with it a myriad side effects, some pleasurable or fortunate and some painful or unfortunate. There is no formula. Beware of “isms” that tell you that there is a way to completely avoid suffering or that pleasure always incurs suffering and vice versa. Beware of the “isms” that declare that humans are just animals and objects or that humans are completely free of natural limits because of the so called consciousness. Beware of the “isms” that that say that one can flout natural laws or break cause and effect by doing or being something. Beware of “ologies” that predict events and results for the future, not based on empirical facts or contrary to scientific understanding. Humans are different in that they have a powerful brain, but they are not free in their thoughts and actions and the resulting consequences.
An important aspect is that the principles do not say one has no control, but that one has less or more control depending on situations. One must engage intelligently and intentionally in exercising control where it is likely to be beneficial and plan according to a best possible forecast which takes into account circumstances and factors. One must also plan for the contingency of the forecast not coming true. One of the more effective controls we have is to reduce complexity through simple living, avoiding complex situations and staying away from emotional and non-evidential arguments and situations. However, this will also result in the fact that there may be fewer or less intense pleasures.
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