Getting Ahead by Losing it All

Just when you thought reality could not get any more like the science fiction of the 1950’s and 60’s scientists in Russia and a surgeon from Italy have announced that the first head transplant will be happening early in 2017.

Actually they say it is a body transplant. They are giving the head a new body to control.

I have not heard any of the backlash or religious arguments yet – but I am sure they will come as we think about this. It is a most intriguing idea, one that has been around since we talked about cryogenically preserving brains and then giving them new bodies when the science caught up.

Just the idea that they call it a body transplant shows a bias. People are saying the head, and really they are saying the brain, is what makes us who we are.

Does it?

I don’t have a definitive answer to this, but there is a lot of argument and theory over the last thousand years that shows it is an important question. We could start with René Descartes who famously intoned, “Cogito, Ergo Sum” which means I think, therefore I am. In a nutshell Descartes was saying the only thing we can trust is our own mind – that is how we know we are alive, because we are thinking.

But what of this mysterious idea of the soul? Is there something about the human body, some physical and spiritual aspect that both connects us to God and survives after death? And if so, what is it and where is it?

In the ancient Greek world the soul was thought to be the home of the emotions, and of such concepts as right and wrong. Things like love and courage came from the soul while rational thought came from the mind. Later we would speak of emotions as being matters of the heart – so are brain and heart two separate parts of what makes a person who they are?

It was Thomas Aquinas sometime in the 1200’s who came up with the idea that the soul survives death – that it is somehow part of the divine, of God, and it is how we go on after we die. For Aquinas the soul was not a physical thing but a spiritual thing – maybe a spark of divine energy that exists in us for a while before returning to heaven?

Modern Neuroscience is convinced that everything we are and do and feel comes from the brain; that everything is rational thought and so something like love is actually just our brain doing a cost effect benefit analysis really quickly and telling us the reasons we should like this other person outweigh the reasons we should not. It is not a very romantic view.

I have heard it argued that the appendix is the soul. No one really knows why we have one. Of course, mine got inflamed and was removed so if that is true then I am in trouble.

Go ahead and do some research; every religion talks of the soul, every person struggles with what makes us unique… is it really just our brain? Can you put my brain into another body and still have me be Brett? If so I am choosing Channum Tating.

But what if it is more than that? Am I more than the sum of everything I think? Does my body, my heart, my emotions come from somewhere else? What if all the different pieces are what makes me me? What if the soul is in the heart? Or the stomach? Or anywhere else but the head?

 
I guess we will see in 2017….

The More Things Change

Have you ever sat at your dining room table and looked at the things on it and wondered... wondered what the archaeologists are going to dig up in 500 years?

I may, admittedly, spend too much time in museums or at King's Landing – but I am forever thinking about what people will think in the future. Why Tupperware, for example. I can picture it now, “they made this throwaway material and then stored food in it” “What, there are so many better ways to store food.” “I know, right!”

Imagine the fun someone is going to have figuring out just what the hell a Keurig is.

It also may be a product of being a little older when I ended up with young children. I get asked on a daily basis questions such as did they have cars when you were little. People tell me I should answer honestly, but I find it more fun to describe in great detail the horse and buggy I supposedly owned and how when I was little the world was black and white because they had not invented colour yet.

But you can see it right? Whether you are 15 or a hundred you can see how much things have changed, can you not? In university I typed my assignments on a typewriter. I first learned to dial on a rotary telephone. I did not even hear of the internet until I was in the workforce. I can name a hundred things I had, or did, or ate that people no longer do. And my kids cannot even picture some of what I am talking about without an example.

The above five paragraphs are a metaphor – an example – that I want you to keep in your mind because it is very visual and very true. We can all imagine how much the world has changed in terms of what is physically in the world.

Now, take one step to the left and ask yourself, is that not true for how we think and feel as well?

When I was growing up I knew for certain that I would get a job. Hell, I could get any job I wanted. When I grew up it was expected that you were going to fall and break your arm. No one was going to stop you from getting on that damn spinning death trap on the playground. When I grew up I never met anyone that was not Caucasian. I may have never met anyone who did not have Scottish blood in their veins somewhere. Whenever an adult talked I listened and did whatever they said. I was out from dawn to dusk without my parents even asking where I was.

But there was more to it. Men and Women did different jobs. Your type of job was determined by what class you belonged to. Everything from swearing to j-walking was so taboo that you felt as if you were a gangster when you did it. Only men and women fell in love with each other. You had kids. You belonged to the boy scouts, the PTA, the Rotary club, the masons or a bowling league. There were not a whole lot of surprises waiting on the horizon – or at least, that is what you were led to believe.

We knew what we owned and we knew who we were. Believe it or not, it was more black and white. Now... take one more step off of that track to the left and let's think about God.

Within the last forty years, within the last 10 years, within the last 2 years, a lot has changed.

Why is it we are so sure that whatever it is the church and God were about 2000 years ago has not changed? Why do we think that the faith that was good enough for my grandfather is good enough for me? The television he had is certainly not good enough for me. His attitudes towards women and sexuality are certainly not good enough for me. Why is his faith good enough for me?

Everything evolves. Our understanding of the universe and of society. I just think we should be more willing and open when it comes to how the church and faith and our relationship to God evolves. What would happen if we just let go?