United Nations: Human family faces an urgent choice!

 Crisis after crisis - a shared test for humanity, says Antonio Guterres. UN photo (cropped) 

The world is heading in the wrong direction and without change a breakdown in social order can be expected and a future of perpetual crisis, the head of the United Nations Antonio Guterres states in a report on the many global problems that are coming together to produce a "do or die" moment for human life on this planet.

His study,  Our Common Agenda, contains a grim list of stress points that highlight how the fabric of international well-being is unlikely to hold unless a combined effort is undertaken without delay.

However, the report, with its frightening outlook for humankind, seems to have been lost in a weekend where the news cycle was focused largely on remembering the 9/11 attack and sports events. That's a shame because its contents are compelling reminders of how the priorities of leading countries have created a furnace that is set to consume all that makes life on this planet possible.  

The introduction lays out our predicament:

We are at an inflection point in history. The Covid-19 pandemic has served as a wake-up call and with the climate crisis now looming, the world is experiencing its biggest shared test since the Second World War.

Humanity faces a stark and urgent choice: breakdown or breakthrough. The choices we make — or fail to make — today could result in further breakdown and a future of perpetual crises, or a breakthrough to a better, more sustainable, peaceful future for our people and planet. 

The United Nations was created after World War Two to manage conflicts between nation states. Today, it increasingly confronts issues across countries such as disease, poverty, migration, or climate change.

Our Common Agenda argues that: 

The coronavirus disease (Covid-19) is upending our world, threatening our health, destroying economies and livelihoods and deepening poverty and inequalities.

Conflicts continue to rage and worsen.

The disastrous effects of a changing climate – famine, floods, fires and extreme heat – threaten our very existence.

For millions of people around the world, poverty, discrimination, violence and exclusion are denying them their rights to the basic necessities of life: health, safety, a vaccination against disease, clean water to drink, a plate of food or a seat in a classroom.

Increasingly, people are turning their backs on the values of trust and solidarity in one another – the very values we need to rebuild our world and secure a better, more sustainable future for our people and our planet.

Humanity’s welfare – and indeed, humanity’s very future – depend on solidarity and working together as a global family to achieve common goals. 

The report's information on living conditions came from all around the world:

One message rang through loud and clear: the choices we make, or fail to make, today could result in further breakdown, or a breakthrough to a greener, better, safer future.

The choice is ours to make; but we will not have this chance again.  

 To look at the impact of the crises as analysed in the report:

The coronavirus disease pandemic has been a challenge like no other since the Second World War, revealing our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness. It has exposed human rights concerns and exacerbated deep fragilities and inequalities in our societies. It has amplified disenchantment with institutions and political leadership as the virus has lingered. We have also seen many examples of vaccine nationalism.

Let there be no illusion: Covid-19 may pale in comparison to future challenges if we do not learn from failures that have cost lives and livelihoods.

 What awaits us in the scenario of breakdown and perpetual crisis without concerted healthcare action:

• Covid-19 is endemic, constantly mutating

• Richer countries hoard vaccines, no plan for equitable distribution

• Health systems are overwhelmed

• No preparedness for future pandemics

• Some countries are poorer in 2030 than before the pandemic hit

 The scenario of breakdown and perpetual crisis without concerted environmental action:

• Owing to unchanged emission levels from human activity, global warming of 2°C will be exceeded during the twenty-first century

• Heatwaves, floods, droughts, tropical cyclones and other extremes are unprecedented in magnitude, frequency and timing, and occur in regions that have never been affected before

• The Arctic is ice free in the summer; most permafrost is lost and extreme sea levels occur every year

• One million species are on the verge of extinction, with irreversible biodiversity loss

• More than 1 billion people live with heat that is so extreme that it threatens their lives

 The scenario of breakdown and perpetual crisis without action to reverse destabilizing inequalities:

• Continuous erosion of human rights

• Growing poverty, and massive loss of jobs and income

• Public goods like education and social protection systems are underfunded

• Protests spread across borders, often met with violent repression

• Technology fuels division

• New types of warfare invented faster than new ways of making peace

The report states: 

Our best projections show that a stark choice confronts us: to continue with business as usual and risk significant breakdown and perpetual crisis, or to make concerted efforts to break through and achieve an international system that delivers for people and the planet. These omens must not be ignored, nor these opportunities squandered.  

Before going to the report's positive scenario, one element that needs to be factored in is that of solidarity: 

Everything proposed in this report depends on a deepening of solidarity. Solidarity is not charity; in an interconnected world, it is common sense. It is the principle of working together, recognizing that we are bound to each other and that no community or country can solve its challenges alone. 

It is about our shared responsibilities to and for each other, taking account of our common humanity and each person’s dignity, our diversity and our varying levels of capacity and need. The importance of solidarity has been thrown into sharp relief by Covid-19 and the race against variants, even for countries that are well advanced with vaccination campaigns.

No one is safe [from the virus] until everyone is safe. The same is true of our biodiversity, without which none of us can survive, and for actions to address the climate crisis. In the absence of solidarity, we have arrived at a critical paradox: international cooperation is more needed than ever but also harder to achieve.

Through a deeper commitment to solidarity, at the national level, between generations and in the multilateral system, we can avoid the breakdown scenario and, instead, break through towards a more positive future.

Now for the scenario of breakthrough and the prospect of a greener, safer better future. First, that of a sustainable recovery from our present crises:

 • Vaccines shared widely and equitably

• Capacity to produce vaccines for future pandemics within 100 days and to distribute them globally within a year

• People in crisis and conflict settings have a bridge to better lives

• Revised international debt architecture

• Business incentives are reshaped to support global public goods

• Progress to address illicit financial flows, tax avoidance and climate finance

• Financial and economic systems support more sustainable, resilient and inclusive patterns of growth

Second, the positive outlook for healthy people and planet based on solidarity:

 • Global temperature rise is limited to 1.5°C

• All countries and sectors decarbonize by 2050

• Support provided to countries heavily affected by climate emergencies

• Just transitions to a new labour ecosystem are ensured

• A functioning ecosystem is preserved for succeeding generations

• Communities are equipped to adapt and be resilient to climate change impacts

Finally, with trust and protection the scenario looks like this:

 • Strong commitment to the universality and indivisibility of human rights

• Universal social protection floors, including universal health coverage

• Universal digital connectivity

• Quality education, skills enhancement and lifelong learning

• Progress on addressing gender, racial, economic and other inequalities

• Equal partnership between institutions and the people they serve and among and within communities to strengthen social cohesion

Which brings us back to solidarity, specifically the search for the common good by way of a social contract:

A strong social contract anchored in human rights at the national level is the necessary foundation for us to work together. It may not be written down in any single document, but the social contract has profound consequences for people, underpinning their rights and obligations and shaping their life chances. It is also vital for international cooperation, since bonds across countries do not work when bonds within them are broken.

The inequality, mistrust and intolerance that we are seeing in many countries and regions, heightened by the devastating impact of the pandemic, suggest that the time has come to renew the social contract for a new era in which individuals, States and other actors work in partnership to build trust, increase participation and inclusion and redefine human progress.

The deepening of solidarity at the national level must be matched by a new commitment to young people and future generations, to whom the opening words of the Charter of the United Nations make a solemn promise. Strengthened solidarity is long overdue with the existing generation of young people, who feel that our political, social and economic systems ignore their present and sacrifice their future.

We must take steps to deliver  better education and jobs for them and to give them a greater voice in designing their own futures. We must also find ways to systematically consider the interests of the 10.9 billion people who are expected to be born this century, predominantly in Africa and Asia: we will achieve a breakthrough only if we think and act together on their behalf for the long term.

To support solidarity within societies and between generations, we also need a new deal at the global level. The purpose of international cooperation in the twenty-first century is to achieve a set of vital common goals on which our welfare, and indeed survival, as a human race depend. Notably, we need to improve the protection of the global commons and the provision of a broader set of global public goods, those issues that benefit humanity as a whole and that cannot be managed by any one State or actor alone.

Just as the founders of the United Nations came together determined to save succeeding generations from war, we must now come together to save succeeding generations from war, climate change, pandemics, hunger, poverty, injustice and a host of risks that we may not yet foresee entirely. This is Our Common Agenda. 

As part of the effort to rebuild trust among particpants in each society, the Common Agenda urges tax reform locally and internationally:

A reformed international tax system is needed to respond to the realities of growing cross-border trade and investment and an increasingly digitalized economy while also addressing existing shortcomings in fair and effective taxation of businesses and reducing harmful tax competition.

The G20 has agreed on a new international tax architecture that addresses the tax challenges arising from globalization and digitalization and introduces a global minimum tax for corporations, with a blueprint in place for broader implementation under the auspices of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The internet:

The internet has altered our societies as profoundly as the printing press did, requiring a deep reimagining of the ethics and mindsets with which we approach knowledge, communication and cohesion. Along with the potential for more accessible information and rapid communication and consultation, the digital age, particularly social media, has also heightened fragmentation and “echo chambers” [listening to only like-minded views]. Objectivity, or even the idea that people can aspire to ascertain the best available truth, has come increasingly into question. 

 Some facts and figures relating to the need for investment in social protection, meaning public welfare:

• The wealth of billionaires increased by over US$3.9 trillion between March and December 2020, while 4 billion people are still without any form of basic social protection.

• 92 per cent of African women are in the informal economy. This keeps them outside of social security systems.

• A total of $78 billion would be needed for low-income countries to establish social protection floors, including health care, covering their combined population of 711 million people.

The rationale for social protection is given here:

Social protection systems have demonstrated their value during the COVID-19 pandemic, saving lives and backstopping economies at large. Without the surge in State-provided social protection, economic damage could have been far worse. This is also the case for previous crises. We must not lose this momentum. A new era for social protection systems would be a foundation for peaceful societies and other measures to leave no one behind and eradicate extreme poverty.

I urge States to accelerate steps to achieve universal social protection coverage, including for the remaining 4 billion people currently unprotected, in line with target 1.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals. While the types and modalities of coverage may vary, at a minimum this means access to health care for all and basic income security for children, those unable to work and older persons.

Then there is work:

Decent work opportunities for all are also needed for shared prosperity. With the nature and types of work transforming rapidly, this requires a floor of rights and protections for all workers, irrespective of their employment arrangements, as laid out in the ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work. Workers should not shoulder all the risks when it comes to their income, their hours of work and how they cope if they are ill or unemployed.

Investment in sectors with the greatest potential for creating more and better jobs, such as the green, care and digital economies, is key and can be brought about through major public investment, along with incentive structures for long-term business investments consistent with human development and well-being.

The inadequacy of using gross domestic product to measure a nation's development success is expressed forcefully:

We know that GDP fails to account for human well-being, planetary sustainability and non-market services and care, or to consider the distributional dimensions of economic activity. Absurdly, GDP rises when there is overfishing, cutting of forests or burning of fossil fuels. We are destroying nature, but we count it as an increase in wealth. Such discussions have been ongoing for decades. It is time to collectively commit to complementary measurements. Without that fundamental shift, the targets that we have fixed in relation to biodiversity, pollution and climate change will not be achievable. 

"Women's work" is given due attention:

In rethinking GDP, we must also find ways to validate the care and informal economy. Specifically, most of the care work around the world is unpaid and done by women and girls, perpetuating economic inequality between genders. COVID-19 also had deeply gendered economic and job impacts that highlighted and exacerbated the trillions of dollars that are lost owing to billions of hours of unpaid care work performed every year.

Rethinking the care economy means valuing unpaid care work in economic models but also investing in quality paid care as part of essential public services and social protection arrangements, including by improved pay and working conditions (target 5.4 of the Sustainable Development Goals). More broadly, we also need to find new ways to account for and value the vast informal economy.

More facts and figures, this time relating to the transition to a green economy:

• Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels, chemicals and other pollutants is responsible for the death of 7 million people every year, costing around $5 trillion annually.

 • Shifting to a green economy could yield a direct economic gain of US$26 trillion through 2030 compared with business-as-usual and create over 65 million new low-carbon jobs.

The immediate task:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned us in August 2021 that we are at imminent risk of hitting the dangerous threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius in the near term. Every fraction of a degree represents lost lives, livelihoods, assets, species and ecosystems. We should be dramatically reducing emissions each year, towards a 45 per cent reduction by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050, as made clear by the Panel, yet temperatures continue to rise. 

We should be shoring up our populations, infrastructure, economies and societies to be resilient to climate change, yet adaptation and resilience continue to be seriously underfunded.

Climate Breakdown or Breakthrough 

Climate change - Transforming food systems:

• Sustainable food systems and strong forest protection could generate over $2 trillion per year of economic benefits, create millions of jobs and improve food security, while supporting solutions to climate change.

In conclusion, the "Moving Forward" section points to the 12 elements that have guided this report:

This vision builds on and responds to the declaration on the commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations, in which Member States made 12 critical commitments:

• to leave no one behind; 

• to protect our planet;

• to promote peace and prevent conflict;

• to abide by international law and ensure justice;

• to place women and girls at the centre;

• to build trust;

• to improve digital cooperation;

• to upgrade the United Nations;

• to ensure sustainable financing;

• to boost partnerships;

• to listen to and work with youth; and

• to be prepared for future crises.   

In the past, newspapers would have had the social responsibility - and the capacity - to do what I have done here, to mine an important international document in order to allow readers to develop their citizenship skills by becoming aware of what international leaders are saying about the needs of Planet Earth, and the care of the human family. I hope you found this material as informative as I did. 

Ω Here is the best news report I could find in a check of all the main news sources relating to this significant document. 

Ω The thrust of  Our Common Agenda is contained in the 2015 letter to the world of Pope Francis, Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home. See here.

Ω If you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.

Yes, we do have a soul: What this means.

In the course of writing my previous post on the inability of neuroscientists to pinpoint where in the brain or its processes the human's intellectual and decision-making capabilities arise, it struck me that many people are likely to be unfamiliar with the concept of the soul, perhaps only knowing of  the term from its use in "soul music" or the saying, "It's got no soul!" (as in Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street").

Fundamentally, the soul is of central importance in understanding the human person because it endows the person with the dignity that we find in declarations of human rights and, generally, in claims that everyone must be treated equally and justly. 

The only way the human person can claim a dignity above the rest of the natural world, and an equality among peers, is through the mutual acknowledgement that each person has a transcendent character,  a quality that is beyond the material. This is often referred to as the brain-mind mystery, as discussed in that previous post.

In other words, if the person is held to be only of a material nature, then there is no solid base for the human to claim a dignity above any other element of the natural world, deflating any likelihood of  successfully creating a system of moral behaviour that would be upheld in society. 

We can see this breakdown of the moral order in Western countries with the secularization of the culture. This has led to the Godless principle that there are no boundaries on human behaviour. as expressed by US Supreme Court judge Anthony Kennedy in 1992: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." 

Neuroscientists, as we saw in my previous post, recognise that their research has shown the limitations of attempts to discover in the brain's functions the source of human consciousness, or of the power of reasoning, or of the independence of the will, which are what Catholics refer to as the spiritual faculties of the human person.

As well as making possible self-reflection, meaning our consciousness, the soul is where we exercise our intellect and free will, where we believe and love, sin, and yearn for goodness, beauty, truth, and for God.

What all of us are dealing with as we explore our human capabilities are features of human existence that have been puzzling people through all time. We have the ancients, then the Greeks and Romans, and the creators of Hinduism and Buddhism, and the varied array of animists over the millennia, who have laboured over the same matter, an awareness that the body is not all that we are. A typical example is the case of  the Dyaks and Sumatrans who, as anthropologists in what is now Indonesia found, bound various parts of the body with cords during sickness to prevent the escape of what animated the body. 

However, it is the Catholic doctrine of the soul that is most useful to examine because it enshrines the principles of ancient speculation, and is ready to receive and assimilate the fruits of modern research. 

First, this post will clarify what Catholics mean by the soul, and then it will provide some scientific insight into why there should be respect for its doctrine.

The human person is a single entity defined by material and spiritual components such that the spiritual soul is metaphysically the “form of the body” (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 362-368).

This phrase is defined by the Church. It means that a human body can only exist as a holistic and functional reality in the cosmos through the spiritual soul. And by corollary, it means that the spiritual soul holds all the material powers of the body in integral unity as human and personal. 

It is also Catholic doctrine that body and soul do not share the same genesis because matter and spirit are not one common order of existence. This need not imply any opposition between matter and spirit. Both matter and spirit are ultimately from God’s creative hand. The body comes from the parents, but the soul is fused with the body to be the "holistic reality" spoken of above (CCC 382). Another way this is described is that the soul animates the body, so that we are an ensouled body (rather than an embodied soul). 

The soul has a natural aptitude and need for existence in the body. But it is not wholly immersed in matter, because its higher operations are intrinsically independent of the organism. This "rational soul"  is produced by special creation and is of a higher order than the "vegetative" and "sensitive" souls that are part of the different levels of the purely material world.

Therefore, the soul is that component of human nature that is fully integrated with the body as with the individual and personal centre of control and direction, namely the intellect and will. In this, the body, with its inherited instincts, is acknowledged as integral to our thinking and self-determination, but it is not the full picture.

One writer goes into greater detail:

Our brains no doubt work on the same patterns as other brains in nature, but the human quest for knowledge is not just bounded by the needs of survival. We indulge in pure speculation and seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Our minds delve far beyond the things we can reach directly with the physical senses. We reach out to the very boundaries of creation and beyond. This is both the wonder and the burden of being human.

We also yearn for more than just the satisfaction of bodily needs. The human will and creativity faculty are a further witness to our freedom from the environmental harmonics of animal urge and instinct. We actively shape and develop the environment itself based on our own insight into the structure and patterns of Nature. At our best we do this in harmony with the laws of creation, enhancing the world with our own creative developments and inventiveness. Tragically, we can also break the laws of our own well-being and perhaps even the natural harmony of the planet we live upon. We are not supposed to do this, of course, but the fact that we can do so still demonstrates the transcendent power of the human spirit. No purely material creature could break the material laws of directional control that shape and define its very essence.

All of this shows that we are not just creatures who are controlled and directed. We are creatures who exercise control and direction. That is to say, we are not just matter; we are mind as well. Our fairly constant and active consciousness of our physical environment furnishes the foundational experience of what mind and matter are.

The writer goes on, offering this interrogation of evolution:

If it is true that evolution produces more and more powerful brains as it progresses, and this requires more and more control from the environment to ensure its meaningful and balanced behaviour, then, somewhere along the line, things must reach a natural limit. Nature could produce a supreme brain that was still within its control, but if things were to develop one step beyond that, then it would indeed have created something that was out of control and could not be given a programme of life - an animal that had no place or meaning in Nature.

Such a creature would be un-natural by definition. So, in fact, such an event could never happen - at least not on its own. Everything in the universe, including our own brains, is built up on this principle of control and direction, and Nature cannot break its own fundamental law without the whole process of the universe being undermined and coming to grief.

And yet evidently something has given us power over the physical environment, power to work out the laws of nature themselves and control them for our own ends, power even to destroy Nature itself with our technology if we are foolish enough. It looks like the impossible has actually happened. How do we explain this?... 

This ‘new power’ cannot be something material, something which arises from the organisation of atoms and molecules and electrical energies of the universe... Therefore it can only come from one other source. It must come directly from God. The human body comes about from the seed and egg of parents in common with other animals, but the soul is created immediately by God’s loving command and wise, eternal will. Whenever a new human life is conceived the soul must also be there. This is because the formula or pattern that makes up the human body makes no sense and has no place in Nature without the [soul] to hold it together and give it a meaning and a purpose.

All the preceeding gives some insight into the Catholic, and largely Christian, doctrine of the soul. But it would be a sin of omission if I did not add some information about the work of Christians in conducting and analysing research in the realm of consciousness and its transcendental nature.

A good starting point for futher information is the 2015 book The Soul's Upward Yearning: Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason. Here, the author, Robert Spitzer, examines the research being done that highlights the "transphysical soul" and the "possibility and plausibility of [our ] transcendent nature and destiny."

One quote given in Spitzer's text is from Sir John Eccles (died 1997), the Australian neurophysiologist who won the Nobel Prize for his research on brain synapses. He did a lot of research into how the soul could interact with the material brain.  In a 1990 text he expressed his dismay at the boundaries set by some scientists in what they would accept as to the brain's capabilities:

The materialist critics argue that insuperable difficulties are encountered by the hypothesis that immaterial mental events can act in any way on material structures such as neurons. Such as presumed action is alleged to be incompatible with the conservation laws of physics, in particular of the first law of thermodynamics. This objection would certainly be sustained by nineteenth century physicists, and by neuroscientists and philosophers who are still ideologically in the physics of the nineteenth century, not recognizing the revolution wrought by quantum physicists in the twentieth century.

So it is not the Christians who are backward, but those with heuristic platforms that they will not shift from. Spitzer, a Jesuit priest and scholar,  updates Eccles' view with an overview of more recent scientific contributions, including that a "whole new area of biophysics is developing around  [the use of quantum theory]: neuroquantology".  

In concluding this post, I turn to a summary of Spitzer's extensive analysis of evidence for the soul: 

Father Spitzer's work provides [...]traditional and contemporary evidence for God and the transphysical soul. It shows that we are transcendent beings with souls capable of surviving bodily death; that we are self-reflective beings able to strive toward perfect truth, love, goodness, and beauty; that we have the dignity of being created in the very image of God. If we underestimate these truths, we undevalue one another, underlive our lives, and underachieve our destiny.   

References:

Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907-1912. Access here. 

Robert Spitzer, 2015, The Soul's Upward Yearning, Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason, Ignatius Press, San Francisco.

Faith.org.uk, "Body and Soul - Renewing Catholic Orthodoxy", Editorial, FAITH Magazine, March - April 2008. England. Access here.

Stephen Beale, "What Are We? Body and Soul…and Spirit?", Catholic Exchange, Access here. 

Photo by Monstera from Pexels. (Altered)

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Neuroscientists admit the brain still full of mystery

                                                                              Photo by Markus Spiske from Pexels

Two neuroscientists have new books out. In doing the publicity rounds they have shone light on where gaps exist in their understanding of the human intellect and will. The human brain means mystery. 

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University. He is the presenter of a TV series, The Brain, shown on PBS, the BBC and elsewhere. In his latest book, Livewired, "he tells the story of brain plasticity: how your forest of billions of neurons reconfigures every moment over your life," as his website puts it.

So how do we maintain a personal identity while this material transformation is going on? What preserves our subjective consciousness over the course of our life?

In an interview, Eagleman lays out the basics to do with the brain:

What we’re looking at is three pounds [1.36 kg] of material in our skulls that is essentially a very alien kind of material to us. It doesn’t write down memories, the way we think of a computer doing it. And it is capable of figuring out its own culture and identity and making leaps into the unknown. I’m here in Silicon Valley. Everything we talk about is hardware and software.

But what’s happening in the brain is what I call livewire, where you have 86 billion neurons, each with 10,000 connections, and they are constantly reconfiguring every second of your life. Even by the time you get to the end of this paragraph, you’ll be a slightly different person than you were at the beginning.

[...] If you blindfold somebody for an hour, you can start to see changes where touch and hearing will start taking over the visual parts of the brain. 

As if expressing wonderment at the intricacy of that physical process, the interviewer, Andrew Anthony, states:  "Another mystery is consciousness." From one mystery, to another. The interviewer goes on: "Do you think we are close to understanding what consciousness is and how it’s created?" Eagleman replies with admirable humility:

There’s a great deal of debate about how to define consciousness, but we are essentially talking about the thing that flickers to life when you wake up in the morning. But as far as understanding why it happens, I don’t know that we’re much closer than we’ve ever been. It’s different from other scientific conundrums in that what we’re asking is, how do you take physical pieces and parts and translate that into private, subjective experience, like the redness of red, or the pain of pain or the smell of cinnamon? And so not only do we not have a theory, but we don’t really know what such a theory would look like that would explain our experience in physical or mathematical terms.

This points to consciousness being a spiritual capacity that humans alone in creation are endowed with. Eagleman brings out that element when exploring whether, in the future, it will be possible to "glean the details of a person’s life from their brains." His answer indicates his belief is that there is physical content that is ripe for the picking: "our computational capacities are becoming so extraordinary now, it’s just a countdown until we get there." 

However, and this is the most interesting part of his answer if we are thinking of the brain-mind dichotomy, he adds:  

Do we get to keep our inner thoughts private? Almost certainly we will. You can’t stick somebody in a scanner and try to ask them particular kinds of questions. 

That there is clearly something about our intellect and will that is beyond the physical is brought out in an interview with Anil Seth, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex in England.  His book, Being You, has just been published. This is how interviewer Tim Adams introduces his discussion with Seth:

For centuries, philosophers have theorised about the mind-body question, debating the relationship between the physical matter of the brain and the conscious mental activity it somehow creates. Even with advances in neuroscience and brain imaging techniques, large parts of that fundamental relationship remain stubbornly mysterious.

It was with good reason that, in 1995, the cognitive scientist David Chalmers coined the term “the hard problem” to describe the question of exactly how our brains conjure subjective conscious experience. Some philosophers continue to insist that mind is inherently distinct from matter.

So the interview is presented as a look at whether "advances in understanding how the brain functions undermine those ideas of dualism."

Seth's first statement does seem to support a form of "dualism" with his reference to what he calls "emergence":

The reason I’m interested in consciousness is intrinsically personal. I want to understand myself and, by extension, others. But I’m also super-interested for example in developing statistical models and mathematical methods for characterising things such as emergence [behaviour of the mind as a whole that exceeds the capability of its individual parts] and there is no personal component in that.

An example that Seth has given elsewhere is of someone having a pang of jealousy as a result of something seen or heard. Is that jealousy a spiritual or a purely physical experience? How to regard lust or greed, or kindness or compassion? 

Let's explore the interview some more as Seth sets up a study team at Sussex "as a multidisciplinary group, with pure mathematicians, psychologists and computer scientists as well as cognitive neuroscientists."

The starting point is: "The question of how to develop a satisfying scientific explanation of conscious experience."

Tim Adams: Presumably, the mind-body problem is never going to be entirely resolved?

Anil Seth: No, but I’d like to make progress. It’s the boring answer of continuing to do rigorous science [...] My approach is that we risk not understanding the central mystery of life by lurching to one or other form of magical thinking. While science might be a little bit slower, there is much to be done in a straightforward materialist understanding of how the brain relates to conscious experience.

Later in the discussion, Seth comments: 

The philosopher William James said: “Thoughts themselves are the thinkers.” I think that there’s a truth to that. It’s perhaps always a mistake to think of thoughts being produced or observed by a prior internal self. Thought is foundational to psychology, but it’s one of the things that’s hardest to study. You can’t control thought in the same way you can systematically manipulate perception in the lab. So I’ve tended to avoid investigating how the mind wanders and so on.  [My emphasis - BS]

Further on this topic:

But where do thoughts come from? I’m left a little cold by psychoanalytic explanations, which suggest there’s a subconscious trying to get in there and give you some thought that would otherwise be repressed. I think, to me, they’re the maximally abstract version of perception.

Is Seth saying that thoughts usually arise from our sensible experience, but turn into something of a spiritual nature? That fully corresponds with the Christian understanding of the body-spirit unity, the embodied soul or ensouled body, where there is unity of the two elements, but integrity of each individually, with the soul taking precedence because it is of a higher order as to capacity. 

Adams: One pivotal one in your argument about the how and why of consciousness is the idea that “I predict myself, therefore I am”. What is the “I” in that sentence?

Seth: It’s a collection of perceptual predictions. It’s a playful sentence. The “I” is deliberately ambiguous there – it says there is an experience arising of me being a single unified individual, with all these different attributes: memories, emotional bonds, experiences of body. For this piece of flesh and blood here, they seem to be unified – at least if I don’t reflect on it too much. 

Christians would say that the unifying factor is the simple nature the unified body-soul. Seth says that as yet he is agnostic toward the physical-spiritual unity, "the central mystery of life":

I’m agnostic about whether at the end of this programme of trying to account in physical terms for properties of experience, there will still be some residue of mystery left, something more to explain. 

How Seth's views are conflicted are revealed in the next exchange:

Have your thoughts [...] ever taken any spiritual swerve – in terms of the why of there being something rather than nothing?

It’s more that I think there’s hubris in assuming that everything will submit to a mechanistic programme of explanation. I think it’s intellectual honesty to acknowledge that the existence of conscious experience as a phenomenon in a universe for which we generally have physicalist accounts seems weird. I want to figure out the ways in which we can undermine this seeming weird. 

To parse that statement:

First, for sure it is arrogant to assume in the blinkered manner of much of science that the hard reductive principles of physical processes are the only ones to apply. 

Second, Seth acknowledges that the "existence of conscious experience" is totally unexpected in the context of the totality of the evolutionary process. Haven't we known that for millennia!

Third, how can Seth say that with regards this universe, "we generally have physicalist accounts"? Has he not looked to the religious traditions, especially Christianity with its solid history of scholarship, absorbing as it did the penetrating insights of Aristotle and Plato, for a wider reading of the nature of the human person?

Fourth, in this team effort to "undermine this seeming weird" is he fully open to the "spiritual swerve" arising from the answers he gains, or is he going to remain a lazy or feeble agnostic instead of showing a willingness to explore where colleagues, captured by scientism and/or political correctness, fear to tread? 

Fifth, Seth states that perception is a “hallucination” and “a big lie created by our deceptive brains”. Why the negativity, the deprecation of processes that do, in fact, help us to know reality? As another commentator put it:

It does seem perverse to claim that the very physicality of being alive downgrades perception to spontaneous fakery.

Sixth, I find this from Seth somewhat disconcerting as to a person "being you" - "A lot of what we know about human consciousness is based on animal experiments." The professor should leave the octopi alone and focus on the human.

Perhaps his book, which I have not read, does offer a wealth of  research findings on, for example, reflective reason. To quote (with minor editing) Ronald Knox, a Catholic priest and public intellectual, writing 100 [!] years ago in a more relevant way than lately published neuroscientists on concerns how we know we live in the real world: [*]

Run "instinct" for all its worth; show how [humankind's] delicate sensibility in a thousand directions is but the hypertrophy of such instinct; collect whatever instances you will of inherited tendencies, of herd-psychology, and the rest of it - you will still come up against a specific difference bewtween [humans] and the brute which eludes all materialist explanation: I mean the reflective reason.

When your attention, instead of being directed towards some object outside yourself, is directed towards  yourself as thinking or towards your own thinking process, that is the work of the intellect, that is [humankind's] special prerogative.

The phenomenon of the intellect, considered in itself, is not subject to any material laws or susceptible to any material explanation.

The person is the object of their own thought, and in the direction of that act they borrow nothing whatsoever from their material surroundings. 

Therefore, there is an absolute difference between "the living thing that can feel and the living thing that can reflect on its feelings". This is where neuroscience should apply its talents, towards all the manifestations of the intellect and its associated spiritual capacity, the will.

[*] The Beginning and End of Man, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1961 edition (first edition 1921)

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Women's full equality in the Christian family

Husband and wife ... a mutual submission of love, not of inferiority

For Christians, women and men have equal status. Christians also respect the complementarity of women and men as female and male. Women and men approaching marriage have to negotiate with each other the characteristics of that equality, how equality will play out in their real life situation. 

It's very easy for husbands to be lazy, and for wives to be overburdened but unwilling to say "No" as tasks and responsibilities multiply. That is why a clear plan from the start is imperative. Who is going to clean the toilet? Who is going to make the bed? Who is going to take a child to the doctor? It's been said often that love is not a noun but a verb. Love is not an emotion, but it is an act of the will put into effect. "I will love my spouse no matter what!"

The starting point is to recognize the facts:

Man and woman were made "for each other" — not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be "helpmate" to the other, for they are equal as persons ("bone of my bones ..." Genesis 2:23) and complementary as masculine and feminine. [Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 372.]

The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out. [CCC, no. 2333] 

This sounds all right and proper, but how does it stand against Paul's calls in Colossians and Ephesians for wives to submit to husbands?

Scripture scholars tell us that the "household code" that Paul discusses in those two letters, and the kindred admonition to "submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men; the king ... or to governors" (1Peter 2:13) were meant to persuade the society around them that they were not anarchists, given that Christians had broken from worshipping state and traditional gods, and were living with a great deal of freedom as to customary rules and regulations.

Those hierarchical codes, inherited by the New Testament writers from the ethical writings of Aristotle and from the patriarchical setting of Roman law, worked from the superior to the subordinate. So we have to acknowledge that Paul was a man of his time in giving guidance to new believers; he was also working somewhat under the constraints set by the dominant society.

However, we can see how Paul was not to be bound by such structures. In Colossians and Ephesians, he offers advice to the subordinates first and, secondly, he addresses all the social groups directly rather than through "the head of the household" - not "Husbands, teach your wives to be submissive" as was the customary manner of address.

More importantly, there is much that is fresh in Paul's exhortations, much that breaks from custom and the traditional strictures of  family life.

Paul gives each part of the household new status by addressing each independently, expressing a dignity that he had built into church practice by admitting wives and slaves to baptism independently of husband or owner. Also, if the husband or owner became a Christian, the wife and slave did not automatically do likewise, but could make their own decisions.  

More widely in the New Testament, as to the dignity of the individual, we find family ties could be abandoned in favour of becoming a disciple when the family authority had not accepted the subordinate's personal decision. It's easy to see how the enemies of the new "cult" would be quick to accuse it of undermining established social order.

Turning directly to the implications of the exhortation, "Wives be submissive to your husbands", we see that wives have been given dignity and autonomy that supercede the patriarchical codes. Ephesians expresses an equality between husband and wife by linking all behavior to the "ideal of mutual submission to Christ" (5:21).

To look at Colossians' "Wives be subject to your husbands", this is more holy advice than a statement of a rule. The freedom indicated is that of the wife's will, so that making a decision on how to act is a matter of being "subject as the Son is subject to the Father" (1 Cor 11:3; 15:28).  As to men, "Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her..." (3:19), "this not superiority associated with arrogance but instead [the] humility and love that must dictate the behavior of the baptized."  

In turn, to delve into the message of Ephesians, which whether directly or by another's hand, it is like Colossians in that it comes from late in Paul's ministry. So both are mature considerations of family life. The family code passage, 5:22-6:9, is qualified by 5:21, "by calling for the mutual submission of members one to another, and hence in a sense reverses the typical pattern of interaction in the household." Likewise, ...

Ephesians 6:9 relativizes the power of the heads of households by reminding them of the ultimate equality of all before God.

We have touched upon the constraints Paul and other New Testament writers were under, however:

Modern readers [of the New Testament] often ask why the profound sense among New Testament Christians that Christ had transformed the world did not lead to complete transformation of the social order.

The best answer seems to be that it was not seen as wise or practical to do so. ... [Paul's letters] frequently accept existing social arrangements in the process of evangelizing the urban world of the Greco-Roman city.  

Moreover, Paul seems to have been concerned that sudden changes in life or status could cause anxiety and disorder in the fledgling community (cf 1 Cor 7). 

A second element of uncertainty for some readers of Ephesians may come from "the use of marriage as a metaphor for the relationship between divinity and humanity..."

The problem lies in the fact that it is the husband who is seen to represent God or Christ and the woman who is the reflection of the human community (Church or Israel).

The marriage metaphor should never be taken, however, as a statement of male impunity in the face of female fallability.

Such interpretations are, in fact, precluded in the text itself not only by the call for mutual submission of 5:21, but also by the simple fact that both husbands and wives are [equally] part of the Church and ultimately subject to Christ. 

Ephesians is regarded as the most important text in the New Testament on the sanctity of marriage:

This text reveals that marriage can serve as a reflection of the relationship that is the very foundation of Christianity: the union between Christ and the community.

Marriage can serve as the ultimate model of self-giving love and the ultimate sign of God's dealing with the world. 

 A neat commentary on Paul's instruction is given by Fr Frank Doyle in Living Space:

The parallel between the relationship of a husband and wife and that of the Church and Jesus its Lord is full of meaning. Perhaps we have problems with the wife having to submit to her husband "in everything". But it is a submission of love not of inferiority and the same is required of husbands, who are to "love their wives just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy". 

Husbands are to love their wives "as they love their own bodies". They are to give at least the same level of care to their partner as they would to themselves. This clearly involves a mutual bonding of deep intensity and commitment which leaves little room for domination or exploitation by either partner. 

Proponents of "women’s liberation" may not be very happy with some of the things said about marriage and wives in that passage. We cannot change the passages which have many beautiful things in it but we do need to sift what is the Word of God and what reflects Paul’s being a man of his times. 

References:

Margaret Y MacDonald, "Ephesians", pages 1670-1686; Carolyn Osiek, "The New Testament Household Codes", page 1707; Cesar Alejandro Mora Paz, "Colossians", pages 697-1709 in The International Bible Commentary, William R Farmer ed., 1998, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN. 

Paul J Kobelski, "The Letter to the Ephesians" pages 883-890; Maurya P Horgan, "The Letter to the Colossians", pages 876-882, in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Raymond E Brown, Joseph A Fitzmyer, Roland E Murphy eds., 1990, Prentice Hall, NJ.

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Gender ideology meets a Christian response

A persons's sex is present in every cell of the body. Photo: Source

Today children are taught in school and through the news media that everyone can choose his or her sex. The issue is troubling many parents whose daughters in particular are being caught in a quagmire of sexual "rights" activism, peer pressure and social media chatter in dealing with the normal difficulties of coming to terms with adolescence.

The consequences can be horrific as, even in teenagers, breasts can be amputated, and male genitalia mutilated either surgically or chemically. The use of drugs on young people has a permanent effect in reshaping their body. Shamefully, medical professionals are capitulating to the activists, such is the cultural dysfunction abroad in society.

In the past decade our culture has seen growing acceptance of the claim that a person’s biological sex and personal identity have no necessary connection. That is, human identity is self-defined and becomes the choice of the individual. People reckon that they can be anything they want to be, no matter the reality of their case.

Kids learn that it’s possible to change one’s sex despite the reality that each person is born as a male or female. They are led to believe sex is an option, not a fact of nature. Yes, some individuals are born with ambiguous genitalia, and some individuals do feel they are in the wrong body. However, these cases are very few. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, gender dysphoria prevalence in the US accounts for 0.005–0.014% of the population for biological males and 0.002–0.003% for biological females. 

“Gender dysphoria” is a psychological condition in which a biological male or female comes to feel that his or her emotional and/or psychological identity does not match his or her biological sex and “experiences clinically significant distress” as a result (American Psychiatric Association 2013).

Document on the Christian response

From this point I want to quote extensively from a document issued last month titled "A Catechesis on the Human Person and Gender Ideology". It was compiled for the Catholic bishop of Arlington, Virginia, Bishop Michael F. Burbidge, to call for charity and compassion for those who are genuinely affected by gender dysphoria or by those with physical complications with genitalia. He also wanted to speak truth to the ideologies that are causing widespread cultural upheaval.

The first point made is this: 

"To be a human person means to be a unity of body and soul from the moment of conception. Thus, the body reveals not only the soul, but the person; the person, as a unity of body and soul, acts through the body. Thus, each person’s body, given by God from the moment of conception, is neither foreign nor a burden, but an integral part of the person."

 Second, and in keeping with the authoritative witness of Scripture (cf. Gen 1:27), the human person is created male or female. The human soul is created to animate and be embodied by one particular, specifically male or female, body. A person’s sex is an immutable biological reality, determined at conception. The sexed body reveals God’s design not only for each individual person, but also for all human beings, by “establishing us in a relationship with other living beings.”[Laudato Sí, no. 155]

"Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others. Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity."[ Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2332-2333.] 

In this way, the document cites the "human ecology" that is binding on each person. “The human being, too, has a nature that they must respect and that they cannot manipulate at will.”[LS, no. 155] This is the reality with which we find ourselves. For example, we cannot neglect our body without the consequence of poor health; we cannot expect our body to do what it is not made to do, for example, survive extreme heat or cold.

Third, the differences between man and woman are ordered towards their complementary union in marriage. Indeed, the differences between man and woman, male and female, are unintelligible apart from such a union.

"Man and woman were made 'for each other' — not that God left them half-made and incomplete: he created them to be a communion of persons, in which each can be 'helpmate' to the other, for they are equal as persons ('bone of my bones ...') and complementary as masculine and feminine. In marriage, God unites them in such a way that, by forming 'one flesh,' they can transmit human life: 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.' By transmitting human life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses and parents co-operate in a unique way in the Creator's work." [CCC no. 372]

"Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out." [CCC no. 2333]

Sexual difference is at the heart of family life. Children need, and have a right to, a father and a mother. 

What of a person with atypical interests?

Each person is called to accept their body in the same way we accept that we have certain talents or that we don't have wished for traits. This is so, too, for sexual identity:

It is important to note that there may be a variety of ways in which a person may express his or her sexual identity as male or female, according to the norms and practices of a particular time or culture. Moreover, a person may have atypical interests, but this does not change the person’s sexual identity as either male or female.

Speaking to cases of gender dysphoria, the document says:

From a theological perspective, the experience of this interior conflict is not sinful in itself but must be understood as a disorder reflecting the broader disharmony caused by original sin. It is a particularly painful experience of the wounds we all suffer as a result of original sin. Every individual experiencing this condition should be treated with respect, justice, and charity.

What is new in our times, however, is the growing cultural acceptance of the erroneous claim that some people, including children and adolescents, are “in” the “wrong body” and therefore must undergo “gender transition,” either to relieve distress or as an expression of personal autonomy. Sometimes this involves psycho-social changes: The person asserts a new identity, reinforced by a different name, pronouns, and wardrobe. At other times it involves a medical or surgical change: The person seeks chemical or surgical interventions that alter the body’s function and appearance and even impair or destroy otherwise healthy reproductive organs.

At its core, this belief in a “transgender” identity rejects the significance of the sexed body and seeks cultural, medical, and legal validation of the person’s self-defined identity—an approach called “gender affirmation.” Culturally, these claims have brought challenges to law, medicine, education, business, and religious freedom. 

This next part contains the crux of the issue, describing why what we see happening in society so distressing:

We know from biology that a person’s sex is genetically determined at conception and present in every cell of the body. Because the body tells us about ourselves, our biological sex does in fact indicate our inalienable identity as male or female. Thus, so-called “transitioning” might change a person’s appearance and physical traits (hormones, breasts, genitalia, etc.) but does not in fact change the truth of the person’s identity as male or female, a truth reflected in every cell of the body. Indeed, no amount of “masculinizing” or “feminizing” hormones or surgery can make a man into a woman, or a woman into a man.

Speaking the truth in love

How should a Christian relate to a person struggling with gender dysphoria? "A disciple of Christ desires to love all people and to seek their good actively", but also, in love, to speak the truth.

The claim to “be transgender” or the desire to seek “transition” rests on a mistaken view of the human person, rejects the body as a gift from God, and leads to grave harm. To affirm someone in an identity at odds with biological sex or to affirm a person’s desired “transition” is to mislead that person. It involves speaking and interacting with that person in an untruthful manner. Although the law of gradualness might prompt us to discern the best time to communicate the fullness of the truth, in no circumstances can we confirm a person in error.

Indeed, there is ample evidence that “gender affirmation” not only does not resolve a person’s struggles but also can in fact exacerbate them. The acceptance and/or approval of a person’s claimed transgender identity is particularly dangerous in the case of children, whose psychological development is both delicate and incomplete. First and foremost, a child needs to know the truth: He or she has been created male or female, forever. Affirming a child’s distorted self-perception or supporting a child’s desire to “be” someone other than the person (male or female) God created, gravely misleads and confuses the child about “who” he or she is.

In addition, “gender-affirming” medical or surgical interventions cause significant, even irreparable, bodily harm to children and adolescents. These include the use of puberty blockers (in effect, chemical castration) to arrest the natural psychological and physical development of a healthy child, cross-sex hormones to induce the development of opposite-sex, secondary sex characteristics, and surgery to remove an adolescent’s healthy breasts, organs, and/or genitals. These kinds of interventions involve serious mutilations of the human body, and are morally unacceptable.

Although some advocates justify “gender affirmation” as necessary to reduce the risk of suicide, such measures appear to offer only temporary psychological relief, and suicidal risks remain significantly elevated following gender-transitioning measures.[*]

Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to claims that “gender transition” will resolve their difficulties. Long-term studies show “higher rates of mortality, suicidal behavior and psychiatric morbidity in gender-transitioned individuals compared to the general population.”[**] In addition, studies show that children and adolescents diagnosed with gender dysphoria have high rates of comorbid mental health disorders, such as depression or anxiety, are three to four times more likely to be on the autism spectrum, and are more likely to have suffered from adverse childhood events, including unresolved loss or trauma or abuse.[***] Psychotherapeutic treatments that incorporate “ongoing therapeutic work ... to address unresolved trauma and loss, the maintenance of subjective well-being, and the development of the self,” along with established treatments addressing suicidal ideation are appropriate interventions.[****] Gender transition is not the solution.

Indeed, to disregard or withhold information about the harms of pursuing “transition” or about the benefits of alternative, psychotherapeutic treatments constitutes a failure in both justice and charity. 

How parents can handle the matter 

The document gives this advice:

In addition to your good example and teaching, raising your children also requires vigilance against dangerous ideas and influences. This means the close monitoring of what your children receive via the internet and social media. Transgender ideology is being celebrated, promoted, and pushed out over all social media platforms and even children’s programming. Much of your good work and witness can be undone quickly by a child’s unsupervised or unrestricted internet access.

Another strong source of misinformation about the nature of the person, and the meaning of the body is, regrettably, the public education system. Our region’s public schools provide an excellent education in many regards. However, many also aggressively promote a false understanding of the human person in their advocacy of gender ideology. Current policies compel the use of chosen names and/or pronouns. Staff in many schools are required to affirm a child’s declared “gender identity” and facilitate a child’s “transition,” even in the absence of parental notice or permission. Parents with children in public school must, therefore, discuss specific Catholic teaching on these issues with their children and be even more vigilant and vocal against this false and harmful ideology.

The Church extends her pastoral care especially to those parents whose children suffer gender dysphoria or feel distress over their God-given identity as male or female. Parents in such situations experience a profound sorrow as they witness their children’s suffering. Their sorrow is deepened if their children pursue “gender affirming” therapy, a harmful and life-altering path. Parents are encouraged to find strength and wisdom through the grace of the sacraments, and to seek pastoral support in the parish or diocese.

In difficult circumstances, parents are often tempted to think—or are made to feel—that their Catholic faith is at odds with what is good for their child. In fact, authentic love for their children is always aligned with the truth. In the case of gender dysphoria, this means recognizing that happiness and peace will not be found in rejecting the truth of the human person and the human body. Thus parents must resist simplistic solutions presented by advocates of gender ideology and strive to discover and address the real reasons for their children’s pain and unhappiness.

They should seek out trustworthy clinicians for sound counsel. Meeting with other parents who have been through similar trials also can be a source of strength and support. Under no circumstances should parents seek “gender-affirming” therapy for their children, as it is fundamentally incompatible with the truth of the human person. They should not seek, encourage, or approve any counseling or medical procedures that would confirm mistaken understandings of human sexuality and identity, or lead to (often irreversible) bodily mutilation. Trusting God, parents need to be confident that a child’s ultimate happiness lies in accepting the body as God’s gift and discovering his or her true identity as a son or daughter of God.

Go on in the document, as linked above, to read the warm advice to those actually struggling with gender dysphoria.

To conclude, it's imperative that we give full weight in how we read cultural movements in our society to those endowed with the moral authority, drawn from God's guidance, yes, but also from the observation of humankind going back to the roots of Western civilisation. The moral weakness of the medical profession in this matter is indicative of how fickle the leaders of society can be, and how false their guidance in certain circumstances.

[] See this resource: Sex Change Regret: https://sexchangeregret.com/.

[*]  Hruz PW. Deficiencies in Scientific Evidence for Medical Management of Gender Dysphoria. The Linacre Quarterly. 2020;87(1):34-42.

[**] d’Abrera, J., et al. (2020). Informed consent and childhood gender dysphoria: emerging complexities in diagnosis and treatment. Australasian Psychiatry, 28 (5), 536-538. doi:10.1177/1039856220928863.

        Bränström, R., & Pachankis, J. (2020). Toward Rigorous Methodologies for Strengthening Causal  Inference in the Association Between Gender-Affirming Care and Transgender Individuals’ Mental      Health: Response to Letters. American Journal of Psychiatry, 177(8), 769-772.

[***] Kozlowska, K., et al. G. (2021). Australian children and adolescents with gender dysphoria: Clinical presentations and challenges experienced by a multidisciplinary team and gender service. Human Systems: Therapy, Culture, and Attachments, 0(0).

[****] Giovanardi, G., Vitelli, R., Maggiora Vergano, C., Fortunato, A., Chianura, L., Lingiardi, V., & Speranza, A. (2018). Attachment Patterns and Complex Trauma in  a Sample of Adults Diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria. Frontiers in Psychology, 9(60). doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00060.

The supernatural comes to meet a Harvard professor

Roy Schoeman, who 'fell into heaven', filling his life with meaning and purpose

 “Thanks, but no thanks” is often the way people respond when someone offers to tell about a deeply spiritual experience they have had. Awkwardness around anything to do with the spiritual realm may be because of a lack of familiarity with the immaterial, the supernatural, the transcendent. Or maybe prayer, a spiritual act at the simplest level, is a practice that has been relegated to the past and so they just don’t want to get involved with that sphere of life anymore because they’re too busy in dealing with the complexities of the world.

But I dare you to read my summary of Roy Schoeman’s account of two spiritual encounters he had and not sense that something extraordinary did in fact occur, and that those encounters enveloped him in a deep love, a love that is available to everyone.

First, a little background and then it's over to Schoeman to recount what happened to him and why the events had such a profound effect on his life.

He was born in 1951 into a New York family and grew up in a fully Jewish environment. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - becoming an atheist in the process -  and at Harvard Business School, where he received an MBA, impressing his professors so much that he was invited to join the faculty and was offered support to complete a doctorate. That was in 1980. He taught as a professor of marketing there for a few years, moving on to consulting, which allowed him to pursue his interest in rock climbing and skiing.

Then, in 1987, he had his first astonishing experience, where he "fell into heaven", as he describes it. In this account, edited to stay just with the main features, he first sets the scene by referring to his success at joining the Harvard faculty:

Although it may sound rather surprising that's actually when the bottom fell out of my world because ever since I had been a small child I knew there has to be a real meaning and purpose to life and expected to come into the real meaning and purpose of life at some point when I got older. 

I thought it would be when I began my career but I was already more successful in a worldly career than I had ever anticipated being a professor in Harvard but there was still no meaning or purpose to life and therefore I fell into the darkest despair of my life.

I was walking in nature early one morning in a kind of nature preserve right off the ocean that was half pine trees and half sand dunes and I received the most spectacular grace in my life.

I was walking along lost in my thoughts. I had long since lost any hope, not believing that God existed or anything like that, when from one moment to the next the curtain between Earth and heaven disappeared and I found myself in the presence of God, very knowingly in the presence of God, and seeing my life as though I had died and was looking back over my life in the presence of God.

In an instant [...] I saw that we live forever; I saw that every action has a moral content that's recorded for all eternity, that everything that had ever happened to me had been the most perfect thing that could have been arranged, coming from the hands of an all-knowing, all-loving God, not only including those things that had caused the most suffering at the time that I had thought of as the greatest disasters, but especially the things that had caused [God] suffering at the time.

I saw that my two greatest regrets after I died would be, number one, all of the time and energy I had wasted worrying about not being loved when every moment of my existence I was held in an ocean of love greater than I ever imagined could exist coming from this all-knowing, all-loving God. The other great regret would be every hour I had wasted doing nothing of value in the eyes of heaven.

The most overwhelming aspect of this experience, the most transformative, was to come into the intimate and deep and certain knowledge that God himself,  the God who not only created everything that exists but created existence itself, not only knew me by name, not only cared about me, but has been watching over me, controlling everything that ever happened to me, actually knowing how I felt at every moment and caring about how I felt at every moment, such that, in a very real way, everything that made me happy, made him happy, and everything that made me sad, made him sad. Coming into the knowledge of this was really the most revolutionary, transformative aspect of this experience. 

I knew that the meaning and purpose of my life was to worship and serve my Lord and God and Master who is revealing himself to me, but I didn't know his name and I couldn't think of this as the God of the Old Testament. I couldn't think of this religion as Judaism. The picture of God that emerges from the Old Testament is certainly a picture of a God far more distant and severe and removed from ordinary mankind than this God was, so I [...] didn't know what religion to follow. 

So I prayed at the time - I was actually still walking at the time - even though I had fallen into heaven, so to speak, and could see the spiritual world. and was in this intimate communion with God, I was still also seeing the physical world around me. The physical world had become as though transparent and I could see through it into the spiritual world.

Anyway, as I was walking I prayed to know the name of my Lord and God and Master. [...] "Let me know your name. I don't mind if you're Buddha, and I have to become Buddhist; I don't mind if you're Krishna and I have to become Hindu; I don't mind if you're Apollo and I have to become a Roman pagan, as long as you're not Christ and I have to become Christian."

That desire for God not to be Christ was because I didn't want to become Christian. [This] came from my being Jewish and I didn't want to kind of go over to what I saw as the enemy side. And he respected that, and he did not reveal his name to me, so I returned home happier than I had ever been in my life.

[...] Since this had been a mystical experience I turned in that direction to find out more about it, which was a very imprudent thing to do, and I looked into some rather foolish new-agey kinds of directions, but I also did something which brought great fruit, which was every night I would say a short prayer that I had made up to know the name of my Lord and God and Master who had revealed himself to me.

Those are the circumstances of the "mystical experience" that gave Schoeman an awareness that he was in the presence of God. Exactly one year later he had his second transformative spiritual experience. He describes that night this way:

 I thought I was awoken by a hand gently on my shoulder and [was...] alone with the most beautiful young woman I could ever imagine, and I knew without being told that it was the Blessed Virgin Mary. When I found myself in her presence all I wanted to do was was honor her appropriately.. [...] She offered to answer any questions I might have for her. [...] 

I asked her what her favorite prayer to her was. [...] Her first response was, "I love all prayers", but I was a bit pushy and I said, "But you must love some prayers more than others?" and she recited a prayer [...] in Portuguese.  I didn't know any Portuguese so all I could do was try to remember the first few syllables phonetically and the next morning as soon as I woke up I wrote them down phonetically. [...] Later, after speaking to a Portuguese Catholic woman and asking her to recite all of the prayers to Mary in Portuguese, I identified the prayer as, Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

When I went to sleep that night I knew virtually nothing about the Blessed Virgin Mary. All I knew was from Christmas carols, mostly from Silent Night and from having seen Christmas creches in public places. I had never touched, much less opened a New Testament. I knew none of what she revealed to me in this experience.

The other thing that I want to say is that although she was perfectly beautiful to look at, indescribably beautiful, even more profoundly affecting was the beauty of her voice. [...] The only way I can describe it is it was composed of that which makes music music. When she spoke, and when the beauty of her voice flowed through me, carrying with it her love, it lifted me up into a state of ecstasy greater than I ever imagined could exist. So most of my questions actually flowed out of my being absolutely overwhelmed by who she was and by her grandeur.

I'll mention a couple of the questions - they were actually more exclamations than they were actually questions. For instance, at one point I kind of [stammered out], "How is it possible, how can it be that you're so glorious, that you're so magnificent, that you're so exalted, how can it be?' Her response was just to look down at me almost with pity and shake her head gently and say, "Oh no, you don't understand. I'm nothing. I'm a creature. I'm a created thing. He's everything!" 

Then, again out of this desire to somehow honor her appropriately, I asked what title she liked best for herself and her response was "I am the beloved daughter of the Father, mother of the Son and spouse of the Spirit."

 I asked her several other questions of somewhat less significance and she spoke to me for another 10 or 15 minutes. She said she had something she wanted to tell me and after that the audience was over and I went back to sleep.

The next morning when I woke up I was hopelessly in love with the Blessed Virgin Mary and I wanted nothing other than to be as fully and completely Christian as possible. I obviously knew from this experience that the God who revealed himself to me a year earlier had been Christ.

In the experience of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I thought I was awake and my memory represents it as that I had been awake, and I remembered with an absolute word-for-word clarity. I actually even remember thinking about other questions that I had decided not to ask, and so forth.

However, I now understand that if there had been a camera in the room it would have shown me asleep in bed throughout that experience. 

Watch the full video where Schoeman expands on this summary. Go here. 

So what impact on Schoeman's life have these extraordinary experiences had? "By their fruits you shall know them." In 1992, he was baptised and since then he has remained unmarried, devoting his life to enabling people to know God as intimately as he does. He has written several books, teaches, and speaks whenever asked, as well as producing and hosting a Catholic TV talk show. He has a special calling to help his fellow Jews so that "their pride in being Jewish will draw them towards, rather than away from, the Catholic Church."   

Such a life witness confirms a high level of plausibility for truthfulness and accuracy of these accounts of the supernatural breaking through into the material world.

Video gaming rules test parents and business spirit

Overuse has to be a concern of the whole "village". (Photo Source)

Reaction to the Chinese government direction on Monday to tech companies that they limit players of video games to a maximum of three hours a week has taken two tracks - a delighted welcome from parents, and an acknowledgement that social needs must be put above the drive for greater profit. 

Here's Reuters reporter Helen Coster doing a good job in localising the news of China's video rules: 

Raleigh Smith Duttweiler was folding laundry in her Ohio home, her three children playing the video game Minecraft upstairs, when she heard an NPR story about new rules in China that forbid teenagers and children under age 18 from playing video games for more than three hours a week.

"Oh, that's an idea," Duttweiler ... recalls thinking. "My American gut instinct: This is sort of an infringement on rights and you don't get to tell us what to do inside of our own homes.

"On the other hand, it's not particularly good for kids to play as much as even my own children play. And I do think it would be a lot easier to turn it off if it wasn't just arguing with Mommy, but actually saying 'Well, the police said so.'"

Chinese authorities have labelled as "spiritual opium" the overuse of video games, and by association social media, and they have highlighted how these are an addiction entrapping a growing number of young people. Coster reports:

China's regulator said the new rules were a response to growing concern that games affected the physical and mental health of children, a fear echoed by parents and experts in the United States.

One such expert is "Paul Morgan, a father of two teenagers and Penn State professor who studies electronic device use." He is quoted as saying: "These electronic devices are ubiquitous. It's really hard to get kids away from them." Though he believes young people with disabilities could benefit from the social interactions provided by video games...

Morgan says negative associations with screen time are particularly evident for heavy users, possibly due to displacing activities like exercise or sleep. [However,] the ban doesn't address social media use, which is thought to be especially harmful for girls. 

Another parent is also in favour of controls being implemented as a way of supporting parents:

Shira Weiss, a New Jersey-based publicist for technology clients including a video game company, sees value in the games that help keep her twin 12-year-old sons connected to their peers, but wants to better limit how often they play the more violent games.

"I think the Chinese rules are good," Weiss said. "You're still saying 'Play video games,' but you're just setting limits." She added, partially joking: "Can they come here and impose that restriction on my house?"

In China, too, parents showed support for the new rules. Li Tong is a hotel manager in Beijing with a 14-year old daughter. In one of a series of Reuters articles used here,* he is reported as saying: 

"My daughter is glued to her phone after dinner every day for one to two hours and it's difficult for me or her mother to stop her. We told her it's bad for her eyes and it's a waste of her time, but she won't listen."

Some details about the rules: 

The new rules place the onus on implementation on the gaming industry and are not laws per se that would punish individuals for infractions. Kids can often circumvent rules that require the use of their real names and national identification numbers when signing into games by using the login details of adult family members.

They limit under-18s to playing for one hour a day - 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. - on only Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, according to the Xinhua state news agency. They can also play for an hour, at the same time, on public holidays.

The rules from the National Press and Publication Administration regulator coincide with a broader clampdown against China's tech giants, such as Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings.

The campaign to prevent what state media has described as the "savage growth" of some companies has wiped tens of billions of dollars off shares traded at home and abroad.  

What worries the business sector is the long-term consequences of an interruption in the habit-forming pattern of game-playing that companies rely on for their spectacular profits, à la cigarette companies:

While the hit to gaming stocks was relatively measured as children do not provide much revenue for gaming companies, analysts noted that the implications for the long-term growth of the industry were much more severe.

"The root of the problem here is not the immediate revenue impact," said Mio Kato, an analyst who publishes on SmartKarma. "The problem is that this move destroys the entire habit-forming nature of playing games at an early age."

There was also relief that the regulations did not go further.

"What the industry is really afraid of is if the government stops approving new games like they did in 2018," said a Beijing-based private equity investor, referring to a nine-month period when China suspended approvals of new video game titles as part of an overhaul of the regulatory bodies that oversee the sector.

However, we saw how Coster's article quotes Ohio mother Smith Duttweiler in drawing attention to what would be expected as a typical American response to the Chinese rule-setting, namely, that it is an infringement of personal - and business - rights.

On those lines, Coster cites another American parent:  

Michael Gural-Maiello, who works in business development at an engineering firm and has an 11-year-old son, believes parents should be the ones regulating their children's video game use. "I don't think governments really have a place in telling parents how their children should be spending their time."

But if the source of the problem that pits children against parents is something that is truly addictive, then parents need support from society as a whole in combatting that overwhelming attraction. Parents are not able to cope; therefore, government has a role to play in preserving the well-being of its young people.

Notice that the Chinese rules force gaming companies to act; it is not the government as such intruding into homes.   

 Authorities in China, the world's largest video games market, have worried for years about addiction to gaming and the internet among young people, setting up clinics which combine therapy and military drills for those with so-called "gaming disorders".

About 62.5% of Chinese minors often play games online, and 13.2% of underage mobile game users play mobile games for more than two hours a day on weekdays, according to state media.

Chinese regulators have also targeted the [fee-gouging] private tutoring industry and what they see as celebrity worship in recent weeks, citing the need to ensure the wellbeing of children.

Yes, "to ensure the well-being of children" first should come parents' exerting their status, lost since the days of "no-rules" parenting starting in the 1960s and 70s, the status of being guardians of the psychic as well as physical health of their children. That status involves the exercise of God-given authority, which young people have to learn to submit to, even if the rest of society is telling them that they have a "right" to do what they want, parents be damned!

That struggle within the home has to be a "whole village" effort if children, and therefore the whole of society, are not to be crippled by the various forms of dis-ease we see all around us.

What we see happening in China this week is not a sudden impulse. Rather it is part of ongoing engagement of the government in trying to recruit business conglomerates in acting for the common good:

In 2017, Tencent Holdings said it would limit play time for some young users of its flagship mobile game "Honor of Kings", a response to complaints from parents and teachers that children were becoming addicted.

A year later, citing concerns over growing rates of myopia, Beijing said it was looking at potential measures to restrict game play by children and suspended video game approvals for nine months.

In 2019, it passed laws limiting minors to less than 1.5 hours of online games on weekdays and three hours on weekends, with no game playing allowed between 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. It also limited how much minors could spend on virtual gaming items each month, with maximum amounts ranging from US$28 to $57, depending on the age.

In addition, minors were required to use their real names and national identification numbers when they logged on to play and companies like Tencent and NetEase (9999.HK), set up systems to identify minors.

In July, Tencent rolled out a facial recognition function dubbed "midnight patrol" that parents can switch on to prevent children from using adult logins to get around the government curfew. 

In this context, and given the Western subservience to powerful business interests,  it is worthwhile for me to repeat what I ran in a post earlier this year on how to "right the ship" vis-a-vis doing business and achieving the common good.  I quote from Jonathan Sacks, who, in his 2020 book**, urges everyone to take stock of why Western society is in such a state of moral crisis, with the spirit of meaninglessness erupting everywhere:  

There is no question that the behaviour of banks, other financial institutions and CEOs of major corporations has generated much anger at the most visceral level. After all, gut instinct is what drives our feelings of justice as fairness. But that behaviour is the logical consequence of the individualism that has been our substitute for morality since the 1960s: the ‘I’ that takes precedence over the ‘We’. How could we reject the claims of traditional morality in every other sphere of life and yet expect them to prevail in the heat of the marketplace? Was that not the point of the famous speech delivered by the actor Michael Douglas in the film Wall Street that ‘Greed – for lack of a better word – is good’? Greed ‘captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit’, he said: it marks ‘the upward surge of mankind’.

Markets don't distribute rewards fairly

 In a world where the market rules and its operation is driven by greed, people come to believe that their worth is measured by what you earn or can afford and not by qualities of character like honesty, integrity and service to others. Politics itself, because it can assume no shared morality among its citizens, ceases to be about vision, aspiration and the common good and becomes instead transactional, managerial, a kind of consumer product: vote for the party that gives you more of what you want for a lower price in taxes. You discover that politicians are claiming unwarranted expenses or getting paid for access: in short that politics has come to be seen as a business like any other, and not an entirely reputable one. That is when young people no longer get involved. Why should they? If all that matters is money, they can make more of it elsewhere.

However, Sacks is not advocating the overthrow of the free market system. But he is saying that when the morality that made the markets work, involving trust and confidence and faith in people and their words and signed documents, is neglected, "something significant is going wrong". He explains:

The market economy has generated more real wealth, eliminated more poverty and liberated more human creativity than any other economic system. The fault is not with the market itself, but with the idea that the market alone is all we need. Markets do not guarantee equity, responsibility or integrity. They can maximise short-term gain at the cost of long-term sustainability. They cannot be relied upon to distribute rewards fairly. They cannot guarantee honesty. When confronted with flagrant self-interest, they combine the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity. Markets need morals, and morals are not made by markets.

They are made by schools, the media, custom, tradition, religious leaders, moral role models and the influence of people. But when religion loses its voice and the media worship success, when right and wrong become relativised and all talk of morality is condemned as ‘judgemental’, when people lose all sense of honour and shame and there is nothing they will not do if they can get away with it, no regulation will save us. People will continually outwit the regulators, as they did by the so-called ‘securitisation’ of risk that meant no one knew who owed what to whom.

Markets were made to serve us; we were not made to serve markets. Economics needs ethics. Markets do not survive by market forces alone. They depend on respect for the people affected by our decisions. Lose that and we will lose not just money and jobs but something more significant still: freedom, trust and decency, the things that have a value, not a price.

Parents, business leaders and investors, politicians, the media, that is the community as a whole, have a grand task ahead of us to protect our young people and so serve the common good. 

* Reuters articles used can be found here, here,  here and here

**Jonathan Sacks, 2020, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, Hodder & Stoughton/Hachette, London and New York. 

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