The Future of the Mind by Michio Kaku

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"Consciousness is the process of creating a model of the world using multiple feedback loops..."
Level 0 where an organism is stationary or has limited mobility and creates a model of its place using feedback loops in a few parameters (e.g temperature). Organisms that are mobile and have a central nervous system have Level I consciousness which includes a new set of parameters to measure their changing location. Reptiles are an example. In Level II consciousness organisms create a model of their place not only in space but also with respect to others (i.e. they are social animals with emotions. "Humans are alone in the animal kingdom in understanding the concept of tomorrow. ... Level III consciousness creates a model of its place in the world and the simulates it into the future by making rough predictions."

This is our strength and our problem. It gives us a past to agonize over.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck

This is a specimen gathering trip with ruminations thrown in of which those in Chapter 10 are especially interesting. He says that hope is a diagnostic human trait. But he quotes a study in which in fossil echinoderms mutations often have a destructive effect. Man is the only animal whose interest and drive are outside himself. Other species make little impression of the world but the world is torn by man. But these changes were not demanded but created because man 's desire created the technical ability. So our evolution is cultural toward collectivization and complexity which as a rule in paleontology precedes extinction.

In Chapter 11 Steinbeck comments on the Mexican Indians way of life. In paying bribes to official a bargain is struck, the service performed, and its over. For us nothing is clear. "We go to a friend who knows a judge. The friend goes to the judge. The judge knows  a senator who has the ear of the awarder of contracts. And eventually we sell five carloads of lumber. ...Ten years later the son of the awarder of contracts must be appointed to Annapolis. The senator must have traffic tickets fixed for many years. The judge has a political lien of your friend and your friend taxes you indefinitely with friends who need jobs. It would be simpler and cheaper to go to the awarder of contracts, give him one-quarter of the price of the lumber, and get it over with.

In Chapter 14 Steinbeck comments on explanations. Instead of looking. for why, accept what is. For example, if a neighbor is unreasonably frightened of possible burglars, do not reason with her to change her. Accept her feelings as what is and help her. He expressed this contrast much more thoroughly but this is a brief summary.

From Chapter 21: "...groups melt into ecological groups until the time when what we know as life meets and enters what we think of as non-life....And it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, ....is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Francis, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment that all things are one and that one thing is all things...."

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