Simple facebook exchange with a friend.

They posted one of those posters containing the distilled wisdom of the East in numbered lines and I couldnt contain myself. Hehe I know youre not going to be surprised but I disagree with a couple of those childish nostrums. Not because I think they are wrong or my opinion is that they are not right but because they are demonstrably, provably empirically incorrect. It helps if the guidelines you live your life by are based in fact rather than fancy. 1. Know that after all, LIFE IS SIMPLE. Do not complicate it. Plain wrong. In fact the opposite is true; life is vastly complicated. In at least two ways. Consciousness, the ability to know and reflect upon ones own existence, is now understood by neuroscience to be ONLY the product of sufficiently complex clusters of neurons; it doesnt exist in any sense of self-ordering or self direction below a critical level of chemical organisation. Sure some things exist, reproduce and survive in a limited fashion outside this definition but it is provable that they have no sense of self and so do not live. Complexity is written into our DNA and we cannot ignore that we are massively complex aggregations of hugely complex chemical structures; very, very far away from simple. And that complexity is truly beautiful to know. Secondly, as regards simplicity, our lives in twenty-first century western economically sophisticated democracies are the most complex and interconnected systems yet devised in human history. The very opposite of simple. If nothing else, the way we live our lives now should teach us that it isnt even possible to dropout, opt-out or in some way disappear from the grid in search of a more simple life, free of modern complexity because we are poisoning the planet, the very basis of our existence. Its impossible to escape that influence and ecology is the ultimate in complex fractal systems amenable to human analysis. We live in a complex web of interdependencies impossible to ignore. It aint simple in any sense at all. 2. Be generous in your thoughts, deeds and things. Cant argue with that; humans are tribal creatures. We evolved from intensely communal group-oriented species. We respond best to kindnesses between each other. We need each other and only the fat tail remnant of the mental makeup distribution of human beings (between 2 and 4 % of us) are configured to work against communal goals; the sociopathic (those who dont like others) and the psychopathic (those who want to hurt others). Everyone else functions better with reciprocal altruism guiding his or her behaviour. 3. Remember that things go according to your karma whether you like it or not. Karma does not exist. Or rather I should say; We are best suited to act in our lives as if karma does not exist because all evidence to date suggests it has not and will not be found in the Universe. Same with fate, destiny and all other metaphysical bullshitteries; they were merely our first attempts at understanding what we now know to be complex coincidences that occur frequently in systems. In the same way that religion was our first attempt at a combined philosophy and ethics, karma is one

of the first attempts at understanding complexity. We need to move on however because we know better now. 4. Humbly obey the Law of the Universe (Tao). As if you had the choice to refrain from obeying the demonstrated laws of physics This is what is called a deepity; something that sounds profound and portentous but upon closed examination is meaningless waffle containing no substance at all cf most of what Deepak Chopra produces. 5. Be positive under any circumstances. I agree with this. So we are left with Be positive, be generous. That sounds like a good start to me!