I figure a nice discussion of the existence and nature of the human soul is just the kind of light topic we need to kick off a Tuesday morning. Actually, an interesting discussion on the subject erupted in the comments of the George Carlin post, and I thought they deserved front page treatment.

Jason:

But, when I sleep, I dream some of the time. There is still something going on in my brain.

If there is nothing after death, then the last electrons firing though my brain would be the onces carrying the pain of my organs failing. Not restful, nor peaceful.

The term “Rest in Peace” usually refers to a soul, not the decaying corpse of a former mammal.

T:

The suffering you describe happens whether there is an afterlife or not. The “pain of organ failure” can happen for weeks, month, or years. Ask a diabetic with peripheral neuropathy causing incessant leg pain, or someone with emphysema fighting for breath for years. Christian or atheist, their suffering is often at its least in the few moments before death, compared with the time leading up to that point.

Rare is the occasion where I’m witness to someone actively painfully fighting death, or exhibiting pain. In many cases, organ failure prior to death seems to have its own narcotic and analgesic effect. Renal failure and respiratory failure blunt awareness. The most common scene I see is the family huddled around a loved one who has been unresponsive for several minutes to hours, taking possibly a last breath, a long pause (sometimes twenty seconds or so), followed by another breath. And then none. And then a peace that is final, and yet not much different from the moment before where there was just unconsciousness, a heartbeat, a rare breath, and an otherwise still body.

If in a particular case, the last moments are painful, anxious, or filled with fear, then the moment that that ends would peaceful. I just can’t honestly recall a hospital or nursing home death that was like that. Trauma cases probably differ, and someone like an ER physician would be witness to that.

I could see someone believing a soul travels out of the body at death, but I have trouble believing that someone “can’t image” it being possible that such a thing isn’t so. I know things that I see. There’s a bit less of a dead dog on the side of the road each day, until eventually there’s nearly nothing there to indicate it was ever there. But we saw it there so we know it was. But what is the evidence for the notion that an invisible life essence of some kind survived the death, left the body, and traveled to parts unknown at the time of death? And how can it be that such a notion is nearly universally accepted (at least in the case of dead people–opinions about dead dogs vary, I imagine), so that it’s “unimaginable” that it isn’t so?

Is the finality of death “unimaginable” because it’s so sad or cruel that it just can’t be allowed to be true? Is it unimaginable because the evidence for an afterlife is just too compelling to ignore? Or is it unimaginable because that’s what we’ve been told down through the ages, and nothing’s more compelling than someone professing to having received the gift of a revelation?

Me:

I think the need to imagine a soul comes from the difficulty in perceiving the difference between a live body and a dead body in a way that explains the functioning in the former and the lack of functioning in the latter.

Traditionally, humans have used the supernatural to explain that which they couldn’t understand. Death is/was one of the most important of those things.

Hence, you get the soul. Or maybe, if your an ancient Egyptian, you’d explain it as the ka.

The Egyptians believed that Khnum created the bodies of children on a potter’s wheel and inserted them into women’s bodies. Depending on the region, Egyptians believed that Heket or Meskhenet, was the creator of each person’s Ka, breathing it into them at the instant of their birth as the part of their soul that made them be, alive.

In the modern day, you have Descarte wrestling with a distinction between mind and matter and Leibniz positing a conglomeration of minutely aware monads – the stuff of which matter and mind is made of jointly. There are a pantheon of great minds wrestling with the idea.

As our knowledge of physics, mechanics, electronics, etc. has gotten better; it’s less of a mystery as to how a complex system like the human body can go from functional to non-functional. Still up in the air is how the machine goes from unaware to self-aware.

Not that these are perfect comparisons, but just one data point.

Dow Jones Industrial Average:

January 21, 1993 – 3,256.81
January 20, 2001 – 10,659.98
June 23, 2008 – 11,842.36

Clinton: Days – 2,921; Average daily gain – 2.534; Net change – 7,403.13; Percentage change – 227.31%.

Bush: Days – 2,711; Average daily gain – 0.436; Net change – 1,182.38; Percentage change – 0.11%.

George Carlin, one of the great comedians, has died at the age of 71 of heart failure. One of the things I most appreciated about his humor was his attention to language and the rhythm of his routine. He was very much an artist.

I’m probably going to butcher this anecdote, but a former boss of mine told a story about taking a train ride some time back. One of the passengers in the car got he and the other passengers in the car going around telling jokes. My boss says he held his own pretty well, but the initiating passenger had them all beat. So, after a while, my boss asks, “Excuse me, but aren’t you George Carlin.” The initiating passenger says, “Why would you say a thing like that? I haven’t once mentioned raping the Pope.” It was George Carlin.

Update I was happy there was a lot of Carlin coverage today. I was less happy about all of the “Seven Dirty Words” coverage. That’s an important bit of cultural history, but in my estimation, it’s far from Carlin’s best work. Higher up in my mind(but this is just one that jumps to mind, not necessarily his best work either) was this piece of work (following the outstanding “Advertising Lullaby”) which is representative of Carlin’s work – caustic with careful attention to the rhythm and language of the bit; and biting because he unafraid to gore the sacred cow:

When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time!

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!

I just thought I’d mention that I’m not a big fan of United Airlines. Their business plan seems to be a matter of shifting all burdens of uncertainty onto their customers such that they have full plane loads of people ready to take off at their own convenience. I expect some hassles when flying. It just goes with the territory. But, somehow, with United you just get an extra feeling of indifference on the part of the company toward its customers.

I probably wouldn’t mention it if this is the first time I’d been on a trip and felt particularly annoyed by United. Most notable on this trip was the hour long delay at Dulles in getting our bags. The flight itself was only an hour from wheels up to wheels down. Then, while we were waiting for our trip back, they had apparently overbooked three or four different flights, including ours.

I don’t have any particular loyalty to any other airlines, they’re mostly just a commodity with similar levels of service — at least to an occasional traveler such as myself. But, in the future, I’ll probably spend a couple of extra bucks to avoid United and see if they’re unique or whether I just haven’t had bad luck with the other carriers yet. Apparently, I’m not the only one with a low opinion of United. In fairness, I do have to mention that there was an extremely pleasant and helpful counter person when we were checking in. We tried to use one of the self-check terminals and just got an uninformative “unable to process, please see attendant” message. The attendant was fast, pleasant, and got the job done.

I’m going to the nation’s capital today. I’ll try to have things cleaned up by Sunday.

Update
Getting wisdom from Albert Einstein:

Update 2 – Friday was an enjoyable day despite any number of errors, missteps, and other speed bumps that could have been aggravating had we been towing along cranky children. The flight itself was decent – just about one hour from wheels up to wheels down. Before the flight, I went to the newsstand for a newspaper, but couldn’t help myself and got a backpacking magazine. This is being a little cruel to myself since it shows pictures of places I won’t get to for at least another year.

Anyway, once we got to Dulles, however, we found out that it sucks as an airport. The baggage handling was ponderous. The wait for baggage took just about as long as the flight itself. Then the wait to get to the rental car took quite awhile. Then we checked into the hotel – and got a nice surprise. We’re here for a wedding, and the bride and groom had a nice gift basket with cookies and metro fare in it. I made a navigation error getting to the park & ride that took us into some snarled traffic at 2 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. Finally, we got to the park & ride – the Metro system in D.C. is pretty slick once you get to it.

Our first destination was a pilgrimage to the Lincoln Memorial.I like to gauge my level of jadedness by my emotional reaction to the Memorial. I still get a little choked up there, so there is still some humanity left.

After that, we got a little tripped up by the paucity of dining opportunities in the mall area. I would have been happy with a hot dog cart, but my dear wife was looking for something just a little more upscale (not much, just a little). After some wanderings (and discovering that I had “T”s phone number misprogrammed into my phone when I was calling to ask about the whereabouts of a Thai restaurant he’d mentioned near Foggy Bottom. Ultimately, we went to a little burger place near George Washington where I had an excellent burger topped with corned beef, kraut, and russian dressing.

Then we tried to walk to the Jefferson Memorial from the Smithsonian Metro station. Either it can’t be done or we took the wrong approach; because the sidewalk ended at the Treasury building and didn’t appear to go over the bridge to the Jefferson Memorial Island. At that point, we’d walked a number of miles and were just ready to get back to the hotel.
[To be continued]

Update 3
When we got back to the hotel, we thought swimming in the pool would be just the thing. But, as it turns out, the pool was kind of small and unremarkable and, in any case, was filled with about 8 teens playing volleyball with a beach ball. The elevator had mentioned they had a comedy club attached with shows beginning at 8. We had just enough time to make it, but when we went in the greeters said that the sign was wrong – it didn’t start until 9. So, we returned at 9. The audience consisted of ourselves and 10 other people. A dozen patrons at a comedy club. That’s pretty unfortunate for those comics who like to interact with the audience. It got even more pathetic — the first two comics were the greeters we’d met when we came at 8. Fortunately, the headliner was funny. My favorite bit was about Mel Gibson – “I mean, I’ve been drunk; but I’ve never been Nazi drunk.

This morning was a little slice of heaven, however. The kids being absent, Amy and I slept until a little after 9. That’s pretty much unheard of these days. So, the whole cleaning up D.C. thing has taken a back burner, but overall the trip has been enjoyable.

StrangeMaps brings us a map of federal land ownership in the United States. The federal government owns about 2% of land in Indiana. That’s toward the low end of things. In Nevada, the federal government owns about 84.5% of the land.

From the nice neighbor, didn’t make much noise file:

THE remains of a woman have been found sitting in front of her TV – 42 years after she was reported missing.

Hedviga Golik, who was born in 1924, had apparently made herself a cup of tea before sitting in her favourite armchair in front of her black and white television.

Croatian police said she was last seen by neighbours in 1966, when she would have been 42 years old.

Her neighbours thought she had moved out of her flat in the capital, Zagreb.

But she was found by police and bailiffs who had broken in to help the authorities establish who owned the flat.
. . .
“When officers went there, they said it was like stepping into a place frozen in time.

“The cup she had been drinking tea from was still on a table next to the chair she had been sitting in and the house was full of things no one had seen for decades. Nothing had been disturbed for decades, even though there were more than a few cobwebs in there.”

I just caught a bit of Chuck Todd on “Morning Joe.” He mentioned that, politically, he keeps thinking about the family who moved out of the city into the exurbs. They moved for a bigger house and better schools. Now their house isn’t worth what it used to be, their property taxes have increased because the counties they live in have raised the fees and assessments without changing the services much and now they’re not getting any benefit out of the lower assessed value of their house, and their commute is costing them $100 per month where it used to cost them $50.

Pretty much.

Now we’re in for a lot of pain as we readjust. I wonder if higher gas prices will reduce the incentive for sprawl — if you think of urban areas as a bubble, the higher energy prices may serve as sort of external pressure inward that, to one extent or another, counteracts the internal pressure outward. Just a thought.

The Evansville Courier Press has a good opinion on the Supreme Court’s recent decision affirming the Bush administration’s obligation to abide by the Constitution which sets forth very specific conditions for the suspension of habeas corpus (rebellion or invasion), none of which are currently in effect. The opinion also calls out Justice Scalia for his fear mongering.

Habeas corpus, the Great Writ, is a legal principle first articulated in medieval England that gives a prisoner the right to be brought before a judge to hear the charges and challenge his imprisonment. It is one of the rights the Founding Fathers extended to the accused in the Constitution. Years ago, the Supreme Court observed that “habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.”
. . .
What the decision won’t do — as Justice Antonin Scalia asserted it would — is to “almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.” This is the kind of fear mongering that got us into this predicament in the first place.

(emphasis added).

My view is that there is no state action outside of the Constitution. As soon as government officials act in an extra-constitutional manner, they are simply acting as individuals. That’s not necessarily a recognized legal view.