Mind Watching: Field Notes from Wilderness Solitude – Day 6

50 days of observations, insights, and contemplations...

by Tyler Volk

Tyler Volk’s “Mind Watching” Series Table of Contents

Day 6 - The Light of Creativity

When I decided twenty five years ago to commit to a Ph.D. program in science, who was it that actually decided? Of course, it was I who decided and I take full responsibility for the decision and the professional life that resulted (no complaints, all in all). But it’s not clear who or what the I is that makes such decisions.

Thinking back, I can consciously discern reasons that played a role. For one, I responded to deep interests that went all the back into childhood, and which I had neglected for a number of years before the decision. Related to that, I had become frustrated with a haphazard concoction of part time jobs, which ranged from middle school instructor to plumber. So one could say that my decision naturally followed from the true function of the “I,” which might be to discern and then act on reasons.

Nevertheless, what cognitive process in me discerns and then acts? The more I look into these issues, the more I seem like a psychological automaton, a mental neuro-robot. Isn’t the procedure for how certain reasons become dominant merely one of the functions of the neuro-robot I might very well be? Reasons arise within the mind, pros and cons are collected and weighed, and often juggled over and over, both within the mesh of consciousness and also hidden from conscious view, until finally a yea or nay is chosen, usually based on expected value or penalty from the “heaviest” side. In the end I might identify with the positive emotion associated with the winning side, saying “Yes, that’s what I want,” or “I’ll take that chance,” but emotions are themselves rather automatic.

Whenever I start to locate some “I” playing a certain role, it disappears when I look further into how conscious and presumably unconscious algorithms participated in that particular role-aspect of self.

My current way out of this logic is to take refuge in the fact that if I am a mental robot, at least I’m a unique one. I’m no less worthy than any snowflake or cloud. You, too, are unique. Hang on to that.

But is “uniqueness” only a justification to make me feel better? Certain discoveries about the brain have drained us of soul, so now championing a self-help slogan of irreducible uniqueness helps restore some dignity to the self. Emotions such as distress show that we have needs, say for self-esteem, and by affirming uniqueness we help fulfill some of our deepest needs. Well, that’s better than nothing.

Tonight I made a discovery.

I had been training my backyard telescope on the planet Jupiter for the past several nights, which looms brightly in the western sky above the cliffs. The fab four Jovian moons—vivid points of light, like stars—have all been visible through the telescope, except when one of them is behind or in front of the banded miracle of Jupiter itself. I challenged myself to figure out the dynamics of the moons, namely their relative distances from Jupiter and orbital periods. My simple strategy was to memorize their positions and then see how they changed on each subsequent night.

The moons, however, did not oblige. They apparently shifted too drastically from night to night. One moon that might appear innermost to Jupiter on one evening could conceivably (it was difficult to know) be outside another’s orbit around Jupiter itself, because the moons were all sliding right and left, back and forth, along essentially the same track, which is their collective orbital plane nearly on edge to our line of sight.

Tonight I finally had what proved to be a key idea. Could their rate of change be so fast that I could note them shifting during the course of a single evening? Ah! I kept myself awake and checked their positions at intervals over several hours during the night.

Yes—at least one moon visibly changed in a few hours. No wonder I was having trouble figuring out their geometry by observing only once every twenty-four hours. Given the radical changes day by day in the configuration, at least some moons were likely circling Jupiter completely in a few Earth days. I had been mentally stuck, my thinking kept in a box, conceptually trapped by the month-long, leisurely time it takes for Earth’s moon to orbit us.

I felt like the fool who in the end had better chuckle at himself. There I was, mister fancy pants science Ph.D., with lots of facts in the head but with no understanding of some things I could see with my own eyes, who could quote the speed of light and the billions of years since the Big Bang yet didn’t have enough sense to immediately conclude what my original night to night changes implied——that the four Jovian moons were whipping around. At least I eventually did figure out I needed more frequent data, even if that meant less sleep, so I could chart the shift in individual moons.

I was also exhilarated. I had made a discovery about the speeds of the moons of Jupiter. So what if Galileo had scooped me by five hundred years? So what if I could have looked up the facts online or in one of the astronomy books I have with me? I made the discovery, as if for the first time. I had used my mind to figure something out, to deduce, merely by watching the amazing dance of lights hundreds of millions of miles away.

The overall experience gave me an additional reason to why a focus on individuality is not just a rationalization but truly important. Individuality includes—must include—creativity. By creating, the uniqueness of every human grows without limits.

If humans start to ideate on the fact they are only automatons, more elaborate than the multi-leveled automatic growth of leaves on a walnut tree, but still essentially mechanistic, they might give up the quest for understanding for its own sake. So hang on to the affirmation of individuality. Then go further, use creativity to shift into active joy. Sing songs sung by no one else. From the knowledge that all is unique—from clouds to each day itself—one can ask new questions and make discoveries.

In Zen Buddhism, everyone must go through the process of enlightenment individually, through personal discoveries, and that process requires creativity, not just rote memorization of texts or oral teachings. In the end, it is important how we feel about things. We might not know exactly what it means to be conscious and striving and growing and loving, but we can know it feels right to do all those as explorers and creators, thereby enhancing the uniqueness of each and every day, a uniqueness drawn down from a sky of possibilities and up from depths we scarcely ever fathom.

Note: FYI, of Jupiter’s many moons, “four of them, the Galilean satellites, are visible in binoculars or a small telescope . . . They are about as large as our moon, but move much more rapidly than Luna. Io makes one complete trip around Jupiter in less than 2 days while the others have periods of 3 to 16 days.”

© 2024 Tyler Volk

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