Tick became Snow Leopard became Peregrine Falcon became Jang-bu became Lama at Crystal Mountain

The texts arrived in succession "Mom! I got a ticket", "I got a ticket." It was 9 pm where I was which meant it was midnight where she was. I saw the three dots lining up on my phone as she was trying to say more and in those few seconds, my mind came up with golden, speeding, concert, flight - a neat little Connections group:  __ tickets. None of those turned out to be correct. She gave up on her phone's autocorrect and called me instead with panic in her voice. She had found a tick on her leg! 

The "she" is our soon-to-be 19 year old who is a rising Sophomore in a college 2500 miles away, on her first summer research stint. I knew next to nothing about ticks other than they can cause Lyme's disease, and I didn't even know what Lyme's disease was. But when she said that she will be right back as she tried to figure out the safest way to remove the said tick, my mind started racing again - tick, Lyme's disease, debilitating sickness - all in the matter of a few seconds. With help from a few friends she managed to remove the creature, trapped it in a jar as instructed, washed the leg with soap and water and cleaned the area with rubbing alcohol. She then called us back and said she will see a doctor tomorrow just to be safe and that was that - Good night!

For the next hour I went on a maddening, surfing trip on the Internet. By the time I was done, I could differentiate dog ticks from deer ticks, had identified from the hazy pic she sent me that it belonged to the dog variety, there was no Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in her state, the County's numbers for Lyme's was still very low and she had it on her leg only for a few hours, so she should be OK, fingers crossed.

I woke up after a bit of disturbed sleep last night and I thought about my meditation practice and all the lectures I listen to about mindfulness and the teachings of Vedanta and realized that none of them came to my help at a moment like this. While I was calm on the outside, my mind was racing and while I was aware of the phenomenon I found it hard to calm it down. As a rational person I knew there was nothing for me to do, she had done all the right things and now we just have to wait to see what the doctor says. 

"Expect Nothing" was the advice given to the famous writer Peter Matthiessen by his Zen master before he left for the Himalayas on a 1973 trip looking for Blue Sheep and the Snow Leopard.  It was a grueling journey, filled with difficulties - the terrain tough, weather brutal, and the governments not cooperative, to say the least. During the journey Matthiessen had numerous moments of realization, some even transcendent and all of that is beautifully captured in his book The Snow Leopard. But anyone who has read the book knows that the eponymous creature only revealed its footprints and scat to the author. At one point his fellow traveler the famous naturalist George Schaller says "Isn't that something? To be delighted with a pile of crap?" Matthiessen was able to accept that. He writes, "and in the not-seeing, I am content. I think I must be disappointed, having come so far, and yet I do not feel that way. I am disappointed, and also I am not disappointed. That the snow leopard is, that it is here, that its frosty eyes watch us from the mountain - that is enough."

These last couple of months, I have had my own Snow Leopard moments. I have been going to my local state preserve to observe a beautiful Peregrine Falcon family. The first time this season, I went in April with my niece who was visiting. I had charged ahead looking for the birds as I wanted to show her these beauties, while she came at her own relaxed pace with my husband. They were not to be seen and as I turned back disappointed, I saw her looking up and she asked me, "Is that the bird you are looking for?" and sure enough she had spotted the nest and the falcon! The next time I went in May with my daughter and by this time the chicks had hatched. There were 3 we could see and we even saw the mother kill a snowy egret, prepare the meal in a different part of the cliff and bring it over to her eager, hungry chicks and feed them. Since then I went back multiple times as I wanted to see the chicks fledge and train with their parents. But no luck. Each time, I let Matthiessen talk to me in my mind "that the peregrine falcons are, that they are here, that their dark marked eyes watch us from the cliffs - that is enough." 

 

This morning I was waiting for my daughter to call after she saw the doctor and instead of sitting around and waiting my husband and I decided to hike the preserve. I expected nothing and assumed the falcons must be away by now and so I didn't even carry my binoculars with me. We were at the top of the cliffs taking in the Pacific Ocean when suddenly I hear the call and sure enough I saw one fly overhead and land at a distant cliff. I have a hard time localizing sound as my left ear is practically useless so my husband turned me around and said that he heard the sound from the other side too - there was number 2 calling. And before we knew it, two falcons flew by so closely that we could see their eyes and their patches so clearly. If we put our hands out we could have touched them. We both ducked by reflex. Soon a third bird joined these two and I saw one drop something for the other two to catch. I have only seen this behavior where the parents teach the young ones to hunt in TV documentaries. We were both so stunned that we just stood still, we didn't reach for our phones. We stood there long after the birds had flown, just grateful and joyful to have witnessed that.

I was telling my husband how I could practice mindfulness in these matters but not when it came to our daughter and her tick situation. How could I get swept away in so many thoughts! In The Snow Leopard, Matthiessen narrates an incident with his porters and Sherpas. One of them was carrying his dry clothes and sleeping bag and was refusing help in crossing an ice bridge. Matthiessen gets angry because if the porter falls Matthiessen will have a very cold night ahead of him. But his mood turns "when the brave Dawa, attempting to catch Jang-bu's pack, hurled across a stream dropped it ineptly into the water. Wonderfully Jang-bu laughed aloud, as did Dawa and Phu-Tsering, although it meant wet clothes and a wet sleeping bag for the head Sherpa. That happy-go-lucky spirit, that acceptance which is not fatalism but a deep trust in life made me ashamed."  Matthiessen himself is frustrated when he realizes that despite the transformative journey that he had undertaken he was still beset by ego, emotions, irritations, what he calls as "the aching gap between what I know and what I am." 

Can I ever get to Jang-bu's state, especially when it concerned my child? Her experience with ticks took her to an urgent care with the help of a friend who is a godsend; she adulted her way out of her situation calmly and this was one more experience that demonstrated her independence and clear thinking with no contributions from me. Forget Jang-bu, I am no where near Matthiessen and his level of practice, so if even he could feel this aching gap I consoled myself saying I should give myself credit for only being worried for an hour or two, recognizing I had nothing to offer at this time, and figuring out ways to calm myself down - which included a hike this morning. Matthiessen writes "The teaching offered us by Lama Tupjuk with the snow leopard watching from the rocks and the Crystal Mountain flying on the sky, was not, as I had thought that day, the enlightened wisdom of one man but a splendid utterance of the divine in all mankind." 

What was that teaching?

Of course I enjoy this life! It's wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!

Conservation and Community - The San Diego Bird Festival (2024)

The San Diego Bird Festival of 2024 was nothing short of a triumph this year and I am proclaiming this just based on the quality of the keynotes. The outings and talks were outstanding too and the 1000+ people who had registered must be on cloud nine now. I have been attending the festival since 2013 when my daughter was 8. We only did the Family Sunday the first year, started attending a few talks the second, and then added in keynotes and trips as her interest grew. I remember we did a birding by ear workshop in 2017 which also led us to seeing the beautiful owls of Tecolote Canyon and one year we went on an amazing pelagic trip. This year was bittersweet for me as I was by myself as she is away in college but she asked me to quit moping and appreciate how lucky I was to be at the festival!

The festival's star attraction was Christian Cooper of Extraordinary Birder fame - a show that we love at our home. Parents with Disney+ subscription should watch it with their kids of all ages! (Some of the episodes are also available on Nat Geo Wild's youtube channel.) Not only did they feature some truly remarkable birds but the emphasis on conservation efforts resulted in the show featuring some remarkable birders too. Cooper's keynote at the Bird Festival delivered what it promised! It was funny, heart warming, inspiring and was a clarion call to all the groups working to protect biodiversity to expand their tent and incorporate multifactorial diversity in their approach.  The opening night keynote was by writer and birder Julia Zarankin who was very funny with a self-deprecating humor which was perfect for her messages -  it is never too late to get into birding, it is OK to make mistakes, and there is no one particular way to be a birder.

But the highlight for me this year was the keynote by Tiana Williams-Claussen who spoke about her 17 year journey to reintroduce the California Condor to the wild in the ancestral territories of the Yurok tribe and the Pacific Northwest. I think if there was ever a perfect talk this was it! It had everything - culture, chronicles, conservation, courage, continuity, and most importantly Condors. Graduating with a BA from Harvard, Tiana returned to work for her tribe and listening to elders felt that bringing the condors back would be the panacea for all things the ecosystem and her people needed. 

Condors hold an important place in the Yurok's foundational stories and their songs and feathers are an integral part of their world renewal ceremonies. The soaring Condors were said to carry the prayers of the Yurok upwards to the creator. She talked about how they were an indicator species to the ecosystem because of the important services (not just ecosystem but also cultural and spiritual) they provide and drew parallels between what happened to Condors and what happened to Native Americans.

The story of California Condors went from being a tragic one (when the birds were reduced to 27 in the wild in the 1980s) to one of conservation success  which has led to reintroduction of condors to their native habitats in the hundreds. San Diego has been at the heart of this effort with the San Diego Zoo playing a critical role in the conservation program. Tiana speaking at the San Diego Bird Festival was just perfect as she is part of the long line of conservation biologists who have worked tirelessly to bring these birds back into our landscape. Her work is by no means done. I was shocked to learn that even today DDT is having a huge impact on mortality of these birds. I mean - Silent Spring was published in the 1960s and these chemicals are still persistent in the bodies of marine mammals which become food for condors.

Condors being obligate scavengers can be seen as conjurers who create life from death and folks like Tiana are doing the same to the condors - snatching them from the brink of extinction and bringing them "back to life". The birds she shared with us were each given names according to their personality and what they meant to her people and my favorite was Ney-gem' 'Ne-chweenkah whose name in English was "She Carries Our Prayers." Tiana closed her lecture with a picture of her 5 year old and said how thrilled she was that her child was growing up in a time with condors circling the skies. I am not ashamed to admit that I teared up at that!

I left this festival with a lot of hope. Julia's keynote reminded me it is never too late to become a birder and find the sense of humor to laugh at ourselves, Tiana showed me how cultural connections forge strong links to conservation and communities and Christian asked us to expand our tent and be more inclusive as it is an all-hands-on-deck kinda moment. 

It also made me nostalgic as I looked back to 2013/2014 when my daughter and I started attending San Diego Audubon events - birdwalks, lectures, restoration events and the festival itself. We were an odd couple - my daughter and I. I was a forty year old who couldn't tell an osprey from a cormorant trying to keep up with an eight year old. We were welcomed by the SDAS community who made room for both of us and gave us our very first birding lesson in Tijuana estuary - how to tell great and snowy egrets apart! I am grateful for that and all the lessons we have been learning ever since and the 2024 festival was another step along that journey.

Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) 2024

These past few days I have been part of a worldwide event called the Great Backyard Bird Count. Organized by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology it encourages everyone to document the birds they see in their own backyard and submit a checklist to their database called eBird. All they require is that you watch for 15 mins and document what you see and if you see the same old birds, that's perfectly OK too. I have been doing GBBC on and off for many years now with my daughter. This year I had to fly solo as she is almost 3000 miles away and I had to overcome a lot of inertia to get going. But I am so glad I did it. Besides the karmic points of contributing data to one of the largest citizen science projects in the world, it also reminded me of the simple joy of seeing birds in our own neck of the woods. GBBC is also a breath of fresh air because for these 4 days people from all over the world come together united by their love for birds. As I am writing this post collectively we have documented the presence of nearly 7400 species of birds. My adopted country and the country of my birth lead in the number of checklists. We see checklists from Israel and even a few from Palestinian territory, from Ukraine and Russia.

I managed to hit 50 species by the third day today and have been rewarded with so many fantastic sightings of birds just doing their thing. I am not a photographer by any means, but I have been lugging my giant Nikon DSLR which captured all these pictures despite my lack of skill and upper body strength. Most of these are taken in the San Elijo Lagoon which is my favorite spot to bird in San Diego. 

The highlight for me has been capturing Ospreys fishing

Here are some other raptors I saw these past few days

Cooper's

Red-shouldered Hawk

A kestrel trying to chase the Red-Shouldered

The Kestrel triumphed in chasing away the bigger hawk

A Red-tailed hawk circled so close to my head

 

This time of the year we get to see a lot of waterfowl in the lagoon. Here are a few

Male Bufflehead

Female Buffleheads

Redhead

Here are some grebes

Pied-Billed

Eared Grebes

Western Grebe

More waterfowl

Ring-Necked Duck

Lesser Scaups

Ruddy duck

A pair of Shovellers

I saw a number of smaller birds too but am not quick with the camera and couldn't capture all the warblers I saw. In some cases all I heard was the song. But here are a few I managed to capture

A bushtit busy at work. Yep he is upside down!

A butter-butt (yellow rumped warbler)  

Kingbird (Cassin's?)

Recent reports on migratory species have been documenting the alarming decline of migratory species around the world. Habitat loss, pollution, over-exploitation and not to mention climate change are all disrupting the lives of countless species. To share the world with so many species is a blessing and these past few days has been a reminder of that. I only saw/heard 50 species of birds this week and that is a very small percentage of the species of birds seen in one of the most biodiverse counties in the US but this was a much needed shot in the arm for me and gave me a lot of hope.

I close this post with the song of the Red-Winged Blackbird. Let's hope he sings forever!

 

The Ethics of Extinction

 I wrapped up 2023 with the fiction book Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman which is set in a not too distant future when species are rapidly becoming extinct and the world has come up with a cap-and-trade mechanism for extinction credits. It is first and foremost a terrific work of sci-fi and has a great plot and characters and interesting ideas and could be read just for that. In some parts it is a bit didactic but for the most part it is a well told story that raises numerous philosophical and ethical questions regarding extinction.  Beauman wonders why so few humans feel anything when a species goes extinct, especially when we fully know that human activities are mainly responsible for the fate. He poses a thought experiment - Imagine that you find out someone you know has cancer. Then imagine, that you are the person who has to tell them that they have cancer. Now, he asks us to consider our mental state when we have to tell them they have cancer and we were responsible for giving them the fatal form of cancer. Isn't that how we should be feeling towards species that we have driven to extinction - from the dodo / passenger pigeons to the Hawaiian Crows? But somehow we all don't grapple with these questions. Beauman in an interview mentioned the book Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction by Thom Van Dooren as one of the books that informed him during the writing of the Lumpsucker. So I decided to start my 2024 reading with this book.

Fair warning: This is going to be a long read as there are so many important ideas in the book and I am writing this for a few friends (you know who you are) who might not be able to get their hands on the book easily or have the time to read it. But I hope everyone will at least skim the post and get the actual book. One minor point - I am personally not a big fan of the postmodernists (Foucault, Derrida). Van Dooren quotes them frequently but I was not turned off. He also quotes Donna Haraway. I am not a big fan of her Cyborg Manifesto but I have admired her views on companion species so I was OK with the constant references to Haraway.

Flight Ways is a fantastic book (and very short too) and should be read more widely! I mostly volunteer my time for conservation causes especially for birds and this book spoke to me personally. The author traces the Flight Ways of 5 species - Laysan Albatross, Indian Vulture, Little Penguins, Whooping Cranes and Hawaiian Crows. Each of these bird species is facing extinction at different rates and through each case study Van Dooren raises ethical questions and asks us to adopt new ways of looking at a species, at extinction, and even at conservation.

Van Dooren reminds us that the thing we call "species" is first and foremost an incredible achievement! To have survived against all odds and made it through generation after generation and be here at this moment is testament to the fact that "a species does not just happen but must be achieved in each new generation." When a species goes extinct it is therefore more than just the last individual of the species dying but it is in fact the loss of a complete way of life - culture, language, sounds, and meanings. Every species has an inherent value and meaning independent of their use for humans. While extinction occurs naturally just like evolution does, the pressures on other species thanks to human activity is unprecedented. Van Dooren argues for us to adopt not an anthropocentric view but a "cenocentric" one where we extend our feeling of togetherness not just to other humans but to all of us who co-evolved during the cenozoic era (following the extinction of dinosaurs) - or as he puts it "a plea for the continuity of cenozoic achievement."

Albatross - Messy Temporalities

 

Albatrosses spend almost 8 months in the air flying across open oceans. They come to the land only to breed and raise their young. It is a two-parent, full-time activity that calls for enormous dedication from the parents. One parent can incubate the egg going without food for 20 days while the other is out feeding. Once the chick hatches it takes two to feed the chick continuously until the fully grown chick can take off into the air. They have been doing this phenomenal work for millennia but now are threatened by plastic waste accumulating in the ocean which enters their foodchain. The photographer Chris Jordan documented all the plastic that can be found in the dead chicks stomach with his eerie photographs like the one above. There is an intersection of two different timescales here. On the one hand these birds have evolved and survived over millions of years but an individual chick's life is being cut short by our culture's use and throw attitude towards plastics. Plastics however remain in the environment for a long time and the persistent organic pollutants released by these use-and-throw materials has the ability to threaten evolutionary timescales. Some folks may argue that Albatrosses have failed to adapt to our modern world. But Van Dooren asks us to consider if we have "evolved" into the kinds of beings worthy of our inheritances. How can we continue to alter environments in the way it "undermines the possibilities" for other beings? 

Indian Vulture - Death woven into life

 

I cannot think of a better bird to represent India than the vulture. Ancient Hindu Vedic texts constantly call to mind how we are all food and how life is about eating and being eaten. Vultures have the unique ability to "twist death back into life." Until the late '80s/early '90s India supported a huge population of vultures unlike any other place on earth. There are many reasons for this 1) vultures are revered by Hindus (Jatayu who challenged Ravana in the Ramayana) and Parsees relied on them for disposing their dead 2) large domestic cattle population that was not eaten by humans 3) humans did not compete with the vultures for the dead cattle so they never shoot at vultures 4) humans relied on  the service of vultures for disposing off the dead carcasses of cattle. So what changed? A drug called Diclofenac used as an anti inflammatory / pain killer is frequently injected into cattle especially by the poor in an attempt to extend the life of their cows. Vultures who can digest anthrax easily are unable to handle Diclofenac and are dying out. This has so many unintended consequences because vultures are woven into the complex fabric of life in India. Van Dooren lays out this complex interconnection beautifully. Here is my simplified version:

Poverty --> cattle life extended by Diclofenac --> death of vultures --> carcasses not consumed by vultures now consumed by stray dogs --> stray dog population explode --> transmit rabies --> poor more likely to be bitten by rabies infected dogs --> anthrax spread from cattle bones that are not picked clean by vultures --> partially cleaned bones sent to fertilizer industry --> poor recruited to clean flesh off bones which might contain anthrax --> death of bread winner plunges family into poverty

The death of vultures has a disproportionate impact on the poor in India but it also raises the spectre of diseases like rabies and spread of anthrax to humans. If this is not a wake up call then I am not sure what is! Extinction of vultures is not just an extinction of one species but it "disrupts and cuts across and confuses simplistic categories like natural and cultural, biological and social, the living and the dead"

Little Penguins - Storied places in animal worlds

The third species looked at was the Little Penguin specifically the ones that come to land to breed in Manly in Australia. Their habitat is now threatened by human encroachment of shorelines. As humans want beachfront properties our wants have threatened the homes of these penguins who are now seen as "unwelcome guests" although they have been doing this for millennia and we are the newcomers.  In this chapter Van Dooren asks us to think about spaces especially shared spaces and how do humans make places out of spaces and if that is any different for other species. We make places out of spaces not just with physical alterations but also through social/ mental processes that give meaning to the space. In other words, we build our homes through stories. Little Penguins show extreme "site fidelity" even if it means facing death as this has been an evolutionary strategy that has worked well for them over so many generations. The changes we have made to their "habitats" are very recent in terms of evolutionary history that so many colonial seabird species face the same issue. They are returning home every year to find their homes invariably altered by human (and dogs and foxes) encroachment. Van Dooren argues that penguins don't just occupy habitats - "rather they inhabit experiential worlds in which a burrow might meaningfully be understood as a home." These are "inter-generationally gifted" spaces.We need to take the penguin stories seriously. In fact all shared spaces have other agents besides humans and we need to think of them as capable of narratives to come up with a strategy that is collaborative and ethical.

Whooping Cranes - Violent Care of Captive Life

One of the greatest success stories of conservation is that of the Whooping Cranes. Dedicated conservationists wearing stifling crane suits for hours together to avoid the chicks imprinting on them act as surrogate parents and help the young birds migrate by leading them on in an ultra light aircraft. This is pretty much all I knew about Whooping Crane conservation and in my mind there was nothing wrong with this picture. After all we have come a long way from Konrad Lorenz who was the first to study imprinting with some very questionable experiments. But that was those days and this is now. You can see where this is going. This chapter made me the most uncomfortable as I believe the ethical dilemmas posed by captive breeding of nearly extinct species are complicated to say the least. Here are some of the issues highlighted by Dooren that are not known outside the conservation groups

1) The violent nature of artificial insemination - the process of collecting the semen and injecting it 2) using sandhill cranes to incubate the eggs of whooping cranes 3) Quails were used as "food testers" for the whooping cranes when a microtoxin was found in the food supply 4) Canada geese and trumpeter swans were used for testing out potential hazards (like power lines) on the migration routes 5) finally, the human caregivers work long hours in sweltering heat in uncomfortable suits for many hours.

Van Dooren calls the above as "sacrificial surrogacy" where a species of least concern (e.g. quail, Canada geese) is sacrificed for the sake of the threatened species. Does the conservation of the Whooping cranes justify the violence meted out to the other species? There is no easy answer to this one and Van Dooren doesn't provide one. He just wants this violence to be acknowledged and communicated transparently.

Mourning Crows - Grief in a shared world

This was the final species covered by the book and fittingly it was about grief. The Hawaiian crow is extinct in the wild and only about 100 birds are alive in captivity. They are different from the "true crows" as these are fruit and forest specialists, but they are similar in intelligence and social structure like the true crows. With loss of the forests and increased predation from rats, mongoose and avian malaria the Hawaiian crows were driven to extinction in the wild. Corvids are often described as elephants with feathers. They are social, intelligent creatures and grieving and mourning the dead has been observed among corvids. A magpie funeral involves pecking at the dead and leaving behind some grass near the dead one. Crows gather in huge flocks around one of their dead and one hears a lot of scolding and noise at such a wake. Crows are known to avoid a place for nearly 2 years where one of them died. So maybe a crow funeral is an opportunity to learn something is dangerous and is to be avoided. Van Dooren calls this grieving as a "process of relearning the world." Extinction in this case is not just about the loss of a species or a biodiversity loss - even conservationists think of extinction only in these limited terms. But it could mean a loss of non-human languages, social ties, ways of grieving and other ways of life.

This goes back to the question raised by Van Dooren and Ned Beauman - why then is there very little mourning when a species becomes extinct? Human exceptionalism? Perhaps. Van Dooren also suggests that we have "hyperseparated ourselves from nature and reduced it conceptually" and so we don't use an ethical lens to look at the non-human sphere. He warns that this will come back to bite us as we push ecosystems to the edge. Mourning matters as we learn to live with the dead, and learn to acknowledge that these lives and their stories and cultures matter and maybe Van Dooren hopes it will motivate us to come up with new approaches if "life in its diversity is to go on."

It has been a few days since I finished the book but it has stayed with me. I have often volunteered for habitat restoration events and monitoring populations of the endangered California Least Terns. As I read the chapter on the Manly penguins I thought about the terns and how we have squeezed them onto 3 artificial dunes in Mission Bay and even those spaces are not guaranteed homes for them. I am now working on stopping a golf project next to a nesting site of these terns. Reading this book has given more weight to my arguments. It has opened my mind to thinking about these places as not "habitats" but "homes" for these birds and I am recognizing that it is my ethical duty to share these spaces collaboratively in the spirit of mutualism.

The Creator - A Missed Opportunity

 I watched The Creator this weekend as I am a big sci-fi/ fantasy fan and although I didn't read the reviews I saw that the headlines were mostly positive. I am not sure what to think about the timing of the movie - it argues for a sympathetic understanding of AI at a time when Hollywood writers are striking against AI generated content and there is a cold-war like stance regarding AI between the US and China.

I would have been happy with this movie if it was made 20+ years ago but not now. This is a very superficial, lazy handling of ideas that could have become transformational if nuance was added in. In the midst of great visuals and lots of charisma from John David, and some wonderful acting by San Diegan Madeline Yuna Voyles, we forget the razor thin plot and ideas. But as soon as the movie ended I woke up from the trance and felt disappointed. It dawned on me that

The Creator = Apocalypse Now + Leon:The Professional + (Inverse)Terminator + (5%) of Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch novels + Rogue One

LA has been subjected to a nuclear attack by AI in 2065 and so the US is on a mission to wipe out AI which has not just found refuge but is also thriving alongside the population of "New Asia" - an amalgam of so many Asian cultures/ countries. "The Creator" has come up with a new machine called Alfie a simulant child who is programmed to not hate humans and bring machines under her mind control, which the US is out to destroy. John David is on this mission and will he or won't he is the question (but you see I threw in Leon in my equation so you know how it goes). So far so predictable. I expected to hear Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" but we got "Everything in its right place" instead. That was perhaps the only surprise.

Here are the misses.

• New Asia!!!! - How naive do we have to be to think that all of Asia seems to be a melting pot of languages and cultures all united with the common goal of defending AI from the US. Just throwing in a mix of Hindu, Buddhist religious symbols, motifs and music does not make it OK. Forget about erasing identities etc, that's not my main point. With so many cultures coming together it would have been nice to explore differences in how AI are integrated instead of this one big mish-mash. Please don't compare this to Dune (the book) and what it does to the Middle Eastern cultures - note: that Dune was written in the '60s and existed before Star Wars or any of the other sci-fi franchises and Dune was so inventive and full of ideas that set the stage for lots of scifi for the next 6 or 7 decades.
  
• All AI treated the same. This is a corollary to all Asians are treated the same. 2065 has a spectrum of people and machines. John David himself  has a bionic arm and prosthetics and on the other end are simulants. Then there are ugly, industrial looking C3PO like machines which unlike C3PO don't have a unique personality - what we would consider as traditional robots. Humans don't seem to be making any distinction between these robots and simulants in terms of how they love/hate them. Missed opportunity here - there could have been an interesting take on why we are OK with some types of AI vs others. What modifications do we find un/acceptable, at what point do we consider AI sentient. There is no room for any of those ideas. New Asians are equal opportunity lovers while Americans are equal opportunity haters of AI
• In-your-face Moralizing - we get it that the movie wants to give us a sympathetic understanding of AI. That doesn't mean we have to see Americans as in-your-face horrible people to make the AI look less menacing. The movie wants us to walk away feeling don't blame the tech, blame the humans as we are always bad (the nuclear war was a human error as Ken Watanabe says). How can we believe that the AI want to be accepted as sentient, want to protect their species, while at the same time believe that it was humans who made all the mistakes. 

These are just a few of the glaring issues that stood out for me. If sympathetic AI stories are going to come into vogue, then please Hollywood someone give the greenlight to a TV show based on Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books! Also can we get John David Washington a movie that he deserves instead of a hodge podge that The Creator is.

I guess in a roundabout way the movie is a success as we actually discussed it at our home (despite the spouse not being a scifi fan) and it did make me take the time to write about it. Now that Dune 2 is delayed Creator is a good stopgap for those who don't like Marvel movies but like scifi/action movies.If this is not your cup of tea, just wait a few more weeks for Killers of the Flower Moon.

From Octopuses to Hinduism - by way of Donne, Gandhi, and Upanishads

 This past month has been one of me dealing with physical separation from my daughter who is now a freshman in college far, far from home. This is the longest I have been away from her and I am dealing with the separation in the only way I know - turning inward with the help of books. And it so happens, some kind of alignment in the stars brought me into contact with the following books which on surface seem all disparate and disconnected but on contemplation all point to something at the core of human existence.

With the advent of Generative AI and LLM there seems to be a lot of discussion which falls into one of two camps - the destructive power of AI or how AI can change the world. In this context words like consciousness and sentience are thrown about and it has been hard to get a handle on these concepts. If the AI of the future gains consciousness and becomes sentient how would we co-exist in such a world? 

In The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler a species of highly intelligent octopi have been discovered in an archipelago bought out by a single corporation, forcibly evacuating the previous residents and sealing off the space to “study” the species. An Android called Evrim and a biologist Ha Nguyen are the two inhabitants of the island along with the security officer Atlantsetseg. In essence this is a “first-contact” story except that the first-contact is not with an alien from outside our planet, but just another species with a mind capable of symbolic language, culture and communication. While there are a number of interesting concepts covered by the story (which totally deserves all the attention it is getting) I was especially drawn to the question about why “other minds” make us anxious - whether they are seen in androids or octopuses. Stepping away from sci-fi/ fantasy, first-contacts even among humans have not ended well for at least one of the groups and xenophobia has always been part of the human condition. Isolation and indifference are two factors that stood out as contributing to this mistrust of other beings and connection and empathy seem to be the solution. How do you begin to develop this connection to all beings?

The answer was provided by John Donne, the 16th century English poet/ preacher whose famous words I quote here

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

 

I read Katherine Rendell’s vivid biography of John Donne called Super-Infinite. It is a fantastic biography and she traces the rise, fall, and rise of Donne from his cavalier days as a young misogynistic poet who wrote about bodies, love, sex and lust to his transformation into a popular preacher whose sermons were so popular and sought after. The poet and the preacher seem like two completely different people but they were the one and the same and he brought his keen intellect and his meditative mind to his oversexed poetry and to his moving sermons. 

As I read some of Donne’s writings, I could not help but think about some of the phrases in the Upanishads. I am reading the English translation by Patrick Olivelle and while I cannot claim enlightenment (very very far from it), I have been blown away by the concepts of self and consciousness seen in these texts that predate current developments in neuroscience by a few thousand years. The Upanishads ask us to turn inwards and analyze the nature of our own senses and minds. While the world around us as perceived by our senses change relentlessly there is an infinite, indivisible reality that pervades all. By tapping into this consciousness we are encouraged to meditate on the unity in diversity. I picked up the book unsure about what to expect and the first few pages of horse sacrifice kinda lost me, but I persevered and in that process discovered so many brilliant ideas like the 5 sheaths of knowledge (Taittriya), the states of the self and their relation to OM (Mandukya), the connection of the cosmic sphere to the bodily sphere or the macrocosm to the microcosm (Chandogya). 

Ramachandra Guha’s biography of Gandhi is a great volume to read alongside the Upanishads. Every time I have doubts as to whether anyone can live like how the Upanishads recommend, I see something from Gandhi’s life that offers proof. I am not saying he was a saint and was infallible. If that was the case there is no point in learning from his life. He was human, made mistakes but was open about his mistakes, debated with those who held opposing views and was not afraid of changing his own assumptions. I am currently reading the sections on Gandhi’s battle against untouchability in the 1930s. There is no doubt that his views evolved over time and contact with Ambedkar accelerated his evolution. What amazes me is the flak that Gandhi got from all sides for forcing the issue of untouchability in the 1930s a decade before India obtained freedom and how he managed to retain his poise and his core values. The number of so-called “sanatanists” who protested at Gandhi’s meetings wearing black shirts and flags, and one time even trying to bomb his motorcade sounds eerily familiar to some of the militant Hinduism that is getting popular in India these days. When Gandhi’s son married Rajagopala Chari’s daughter he received hate mail from the so-called “Sanatanists” for promoting inter-caste marriage.

While I am writing this there is a raging debate in India about Sanatana Dharma and its relation to Hinduism. This was not something that was discussed at any meaningful depth at home while I was growing up. Most of us have very vague ideas about Dharma, whether it is Sanatana, Svadharma, or even Varnashtrama Dharma. The only thing that is eternal and unchanging in the Upanishads is the self - the atman which when it comes to realize Thou Art That - is the Brahman. If that is the only eternal and that is common to all beings and if the goal of every Hindu is to elevate themselves to this higher plane, I cannot but see caste violence, untouchability, sense of superiority as barriers to that evolution. And Gandhi’s way of purging these out of our individual lives is as important as Ambedkar’s way of making sure there is no room in the State for these practices.

A living religion also has to evolve with times and not constantly look back to the past. When the Roman Catholic Church talks about LGBTQ people as sinners, or stands against contraception or abortion rights they become an outdated institution in the face of the needs of modern human beings. The core message of Jesus was about love and that is somehow lost in all this muddle. Similarly if Hinduism is mainly defined by some rituals and practices left over from 3000 years ago that don’t make sense for the modern world then it starts becoming irrelevant to modern life. When I encountered the Upanishads for the first time I finally felt like there were treasures in there that spoke to me. Yes, there are some mentions of caste, horse sacrifice and rituals that don’t appeal to me as a modern being and mentions of sexual practices that are frankly scientifically wrong and offensive to women. The argument that Katherine Rundell makes for reading John Donne applies here. When I read Shakespeare’s Hamlet I am blown away by the playwright’s ability to go into the mind of a human being, while at the same time I am irritated by some of the digressions and how poorly Hamlet treats Ophelia. While I am not going to throw the baby with the bath water, the analogy holds good only if I can separate the baby from the bath water, and the bath water can be wiped away from the baby.

Hinduism has always accommodated a wide variety of views and practices, so I am annoyed when anyone tries to define what Hinduism is and is not for nearly a Billion people! I guess what I am saying is - let me be, let me make a choice as to what I want to adopt and follow as long as I don’t violate the rights of another being and respect the dignity of all beings. Gandhi felt that every religious person has to examine their own religious beliefs and be critical of those, prune those that don't work anymore and not simply point fingers at another's religion. I have come a long way from Octopuses to Upanisads. Ha Ngyuen, in The Mountain and the Sea defines consciousness as awareness which is not different from what the Upanisads show us. Awareness with empathy for other beings should be the basis of any belief system and that is the only kind of belief system that I can subscribe to.

Tracking Thoreau through Concord

There are very few heroes who can stand the test of time, whose moral arc didn't have to "evolve" but was just there all along. Thoreau was certainly one of those. While he had a complicated relationship with Native Americans it was mostly one of respect and admiration. A staunch abolitionist who not only believed in abolishing slavery but also in racial equality his courage to take a stance even if that meant standing alone was inspiring. Thoreau and Gandhi had a major similarity - they believed in personal liberation as much as in political liberation. It is not enough to speak up for political causes (something that everyone seems to do on twitter) but also focus on personal growth (something most of us don't seem to have an interest in or the time for). 

After dropping our daughter off at college I decided that tracing Thoreau's steps through Concord was one way to deal with the separation. The only tenet of Transcendentalism one has to adhere to is to enjoy walking outdoors. Given that I meet that criteria and am unabashedly a fan of Thoreau I think I can call myself a Transcendentalist. So like a true follower I criss-crossed the town of Concord on foot trying to travel back in time and trace my hero's footsteps. Here it is.

I began my journey at Walden - a book I re-read every few years - the pond which I visited for the third time. At the outset I want to clear up a common misconception about Thoreau's 2 years, 2 months, 2 days at Walden. He didn't claim to be a hermit. He was not a misanthrope. Concord's main street symbolized to him a very linear, unexamined life. One went to school, gets to Harvard, graduates with a job, makes money, settles down in marriage, makes more money for the future generations and hob nobs with like-minded people. Stepping away a few miles from the Main street and living in a shack in the woods was his way of breaking the linearity and taking the time to examine his life. So coming home to a Sunday dinner or getting his clothes washed at home were not acts of hypocrisy that took away from his experiment at Walden. With that out of the way, here is a replica of his cabin in the woods

The actual location is marked by a stone cairn (Alcott's way of honoring his dear friend)

 

The view from his cabin today looks like this

Here I must give a shout-out to my SIL who took me to Walden for the first time back in the winter of 2010. This was my third visit, the last two being in the summer months. She recommends I make it out there during the fall, and I am hoping I can do it.

Now that Walden was done, I went around looking for signs of Thoreau within the town of Concord. I first went to the Concord Museum and sure enough there were a lot of artifacts that gave me joy and goosebumps. Here are a few

A letter from Frederick Douglass to Thoreau's sister Helen who was very active in the AntiSlavery society. Douglass was a frequent guest at the Thoreau's and the Thoreau home was a stop on the underground railroad. Thoreau, besides speaking out against slavery and in support of John Brown, privately drove at least a couple of escaped slaves and put them on a train to Canada. He was also known to have made shoes for runaways.

The famous green desk that he wrote in. It graced his cabin at Walden and later the attic in his house. Simple, no-nonsense desk just like the writer.

After DaVinci, Thoreau was the ultimate renaissance man. His musical ability with the flute was well known that Emerson would make him bring it to his gatherings to entertain folks. Below is the Aeolian Harp that he built

The Thoreau family made its money by making top notch pencils. Thoreau brought his engineering mind to the process and had a special technique for grinding the graphite. How many authors can claim to have also made the tool they used to write with?

His bed, walking stick and spyglass at Walden and also the rocking chair (one of 3 chairs in Walden). One chair for solitude, two for company, three for society was all he needed. 

 His friend Cholmondeley gifted him numerous books on Indian philosophy. Thoreau was well-read and was the first in the town of Concord to get his hands on Darwin's Origin of Species.

Thoreau's largest source of income was from surveying. His surveys of Walden pond are known for their accuracy. 

These were some of the artifacts preserved in the museum. I now set out to look for Thoreau by criss-crossing Concord. Luckily I met a guide who shared a similar liking for Thoreau and kindly pointed out to me important landmarks within the town.

The famous Colonial Inn of Concord has sections of the building dating back to 1716. This particular corner was once a home of the Thoreaus and they also had their pencil workshop here. 

The Masonic temple at Concord once was the site of the school that Thoreau taught in right after graduating from Harvard. When forced to inflict corporal punishment on his students, he complied just once. But the following morning he quit in protest!

This was the site of the famous prison where Thoreau was held for refusing to pay poll taxes to a Government that sanctioned slavery and went to war with Mexico. Gandhi had independently come up with his Satyagraha but later read Thoreau and was inspired by his writings.

This is the garden outside the Old Manse that Thoreau and Concord's African American resident John Garrison raised together for Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia when they moved to Concord from Salem. Today the garden is still maintained and the three sisters are grown (corn, beans and squash) along with sunflowers.

This is the historic bell of the town that was rung on numerous important occasions. Thoreau rang this bell when Emerson stepped up to speak against slavery. Emerson needed some time for his views to "evolve" and Thoreau and the women of the Antislavery society of Concord were instrumental in nudging Emerson.

This is Emerson's mansion. Thoreau was frequently a guest at this home and when Emerson went on a speaking tour of the continent, Emerson's wife requested that Thoreau move in with them to help her raise the kids and maintain the house. Tutor, gardener, handyman, playmate for the kids - all rolled into one, Thoreau packed up from Walden and moved in here because of that request.

For my final stop I chose Sleepy Hollow. Thoreau designed and built the pond in the cemetery and many years after he died his grave was moved to the Author's Ridge section of Sleepy Hollow.

Surrounded by pines the Thoreaus are all remembered in this cemetery. He lies here with his beloved brother and his two brave sisters and his parents.

Many folks leave pencils at the graves in Author's Ridge. I didn't want to. I only had a crumpled flower and a pine cone with me. So I laid those on his grave. His gravestone is as simple as he was in his life. I sat in silence on a nearby bench. I could hear him say "Simplify, Simplify, Simplify." He made it look so easy. Walking all day in Concord I could see the contrast between an examined vs an un-examined life a life of courage vs a life that just goes through the motions. I have followed a linear path all my life as it was just too easy to do. I left Concord with a bit more inspiration to be more deliberate. How long the effect will last I don't know. It's one of the reasons I re-read Walden.

It was time to go and I asked my husband to drive by 255 Main Street, the house in which he died. Apparently it was sold for a cool $2.5M! I could see Thoreau shaking his head.