Love and Transcendence, Louise Annarino,April 21,2014
“Can you prove you are self-aware?” is a question posed by Johnny Depp’s character in Transcendence, a film about Artificial Intelligence or AI. AI is developing right now in labs across the world (see THE FUTURE OF THE MIND, Michio Akaku,Doubleday,2014). The mind of a deceased scientist uploaded into a computer responds to his colleague played by Morgan Freeman’s question with one of his own, “Can you?”.
Since 1970 behavioral scientists have used the mirror test1 to measure self awareness in humans and other animals. It had been widely accepted that recognizing one’s self reflected in a mirror proved self-awareness. In some cases a mark is placed on the body. If the looker explores the mark and/or tries to remove it the subject proves self awareness. Maggie Koerth-Baker2 explains, however, that there are cultural reasons amid both human and animal groups why such a test does not always appear to work. For example, an elephant is used to adding mud, and carrying around birds and insects on its skin. Even if it recognizes itself, and a mark on its hide as foreign, it will ignore the mark as inconsequential. In social groups where interdependence is valued over independence children are taught not to disclose self, but to meld self into the whole. Freezing when they view their marked reflection in a mirror is an equally profound measure of self awareness, even if a child in such a culture makes no effort to respond to the reflection nor the mark placed on the body. Self-awareness is not always self-evident.
We must be careful in judging its existence and its strength. Try looking at your self in a mirror. Not to part your hair, check for moles, or practice flirting. Look into your eyes..for a long time…until it makes you so uncomfortable you must look away from your self. In that moment you are self-aware.
We spend too little time being self-aware.Only when we are self-aware are we truly able to recognize the self in others. And recognizing the self in others is how we begin to love them. Each of us longs to be seen. This is one reason the use of technology as a replacement for face-to-face interaction is so dissatisfying, and so dangerous. We can hide where self cannot be seen. The comments to posts on blogs,news sites and Facebook are evidence of of the shadow self we keep in hiding, unleashed in the secrecy of social media unaware of self. This lack of self-awareness in social media is destructive; and, allows us to be totally unaccountable. This is why the key question in Transcendence is not about the use of AI; but, about self-awareness.
To make the world more safe, we need to see deeper and to be seen better. We need to see into the self. For that we need to look into the eyes of one another. When we recognize the self in another, as we have done so in ourselves,we are acknowledging our connection to a higher self within each of us, one which transcends race,ethnicity,religious conviction,sexuality,culture. The irony is that becoming more self aware we can lose our self in love. Now, that is the real transcendence, the kind which can save the world, not destroy it. Only by loving each other can we save ourselves.
1. Developed by Gordon Gallup, Jr.in 1970.
2. Kids (and Animals) Who Fail Classic Mirror Tests May Still Have Sense of Self, Scientific American, Nov 29, 2010 By Maggie Koerth-Baker.
annarino writes 
Walking in Grace, Louise Annarino,9-27-2014
WALKING IN GRACE, Louise Annarino,9-27-2014
Being human is terrifying. Being aware carries the burden of striving to be correct. To err invites injury to ourselves, to those with whom we share the planet, and to the planet itself. We also fear others who err; and even more so, those who would do us harm. It is a scary world we live in, internally and externally. And yet, living in this the world is such an amazing experience, majestic and breathtakingly beautiful. Our world is of such beauty that we transcend our fears most of the time. How we do so is both delightful and comforting.
We laugh. What a gift. Laughter dismisses fear to such an extant that some of us lose muscle control and “fall down laughing”, making ourselves totally vulnerable to all the scary stuff we know surrounds us.
We cry. What a gift. Tears reduce us to a molten mass falling into one another’s arms with no fear of retaliation or control by the other. We are most vulnerable when we laugh and when we cry. Yet, these moments are often our most memorable, and most satisfying. These are moments of grace.
We can chose to live in grace,even when we are not experience the comforting joy of another’s comedic safety net for our fears, nor the calming security of another’s embrace. We can choose to live in grace when everything around us shouts “danger.” Living in grace allows us to transcend fear. I refuse to be afraid. I choose to live in grace.
When I was a prison social worker I worked in a women’s maximum security facility housing inmates whom society so feared that our courts locked these women away. Visiting those locked into the most restrictive cell block, maximum security, was discouraged. This short-term lock up was to isolate a particularly intractable inmate who had behaved too violently to remain within the general population. They were not permitted to leave the cell for any reason. They were left alone for days or weeks. As a social worker, I believed such an event was a “teachable moment”,when I could perhaps break through the bravado and masks of an inmate who normally would not welcome my company or conversation.
These women in max were starving for human contact. Thus began my frequent visits to max. The first day, the single guard on duty did not know what to do with me, having never received visitors before. But, he unlocked the corridor door and accompanied me to the first cell in which a woman from my caseload was locked up. After about five minutes of standing by the door he asked how long I would be. “Thirty minutes” was too long for him to stand around so I suggested he let me into the cell and he could then go back to his seat. His eyebrows shot to his head as he suggested to me it was not safe. I asked the woman, “He thinks you will hurt me if he lets me inside alone with you.Will you harm me?” After a short pause to consider, she said,”no.” The guard then locked me into the maximum security cell and I told him I would call him when I was ready to leave. After I left that cell, women from other case loads called out my name as I passed by asking to speak with me. I visited every woman in max that day and every few days after. The guard and I followed the same protocol each time: lock me inside, then come when I call to let me out.
The moments I spent locked into maximum security with the most violent offenders in the prison were moments of grace. We shared laughter and tears. We explored the pain and fear that led to the violence. I tried to “always leave them laughing,” and living in grace.
The write-ups for violence on my caseload diminished and extinguished. I was called in for a discussion with the Associate Director and charged with being too permissive. How else to explain why the women for whom I was responsible were no longer getting into trouble? Another bone of contention was my crisis intervention strategy. I had instructed my caseload to yell out “Call Annarino!” whenever they were about to become violent with a guard or other inmate, instead of letting the violent feelings flare into harmful words or actions. Before long the guards knew to call me and everyone waited somewhat peacefully and guardedly, until I arrived. At which time, I explained everyone involved would get a chance to tell their truth without interruption. I dismissed the usual onlookers hoping for a good fight, promising to stop by their work or class site later to fill them in on what happened after they left. This substantially reduced the risk of group pressure and blustering bravado which often led to mass violence. Once only the critical participants were left, the preaching the truth was followed my mediated conversation.
It did not occur to me that armed guards would find it embarrassing for a 22 year old woman weighing 102 pounds could protect them from harm with mere words. Just before I lost my job, I was told my job was not to empower inmates but to treat them as the “dog chained up in the back yard: when they howl, shut them up.” Instead I had given them a voice. It did not seem to matter that their voice was calm, peaceful and truth-seeking rather than violent curses accompanied by physical attacks. They had learned to live in grace, which seemed to scare people even more. This is the power of non-violence. When we let go of fear, we find truth and the truth is what sets us free.
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