Well if I may wade into the Starling issue, like jturbo68 I also remember recently reading something about scientists studying this group dynamic and discovering that millisecond pressure differentials can be transmitted across flocks of birds or schools of fish and can explain the amazing flock behavior. Or something to that effect.
So the physics of the motion probably has a "logical" explanation but I don’t see the reason for all the disagreement here because the consciousness that exists in all of our brains to be able to process that information is indeed "incomprehensible" to science. Same with our mass psychology. I will go out on a limb here and argue that technology / science will never be able to construct artificial biological intelligence, and be able to figure out how thoughts emerge from electrical signals, because it is a nonlinear phenomenon originating at the quatum level where cause-and-effect are no longer predictable. I think this is what James Dines was alluding to.
That’s the miracle of life. A true scientist, far from trivializing and reducing life to logical bits and bytes, is amazed by it and stands in wonder at how complex everything is and how it could possibly all come together in such perfect unison to culminate in what we see on Earth right now – the very same Earth we are quickly destroying with our maladapted mass stupidity psychopathic behavior. But this behavior is not totally unjustifiable because our brains simply did not evolve in an environment to be able to comprehend and responsibly interact with the information and stimuli we are now facing. We evolved in small groups of a few dozen or hundred individuals, and fought with our neighbours out of necessity, and our populations were kept in check by predators or other natural constraints. Our "growth" psychology was a necessary strategy of counteracting the natural constraints and hardships that tended to "decline" us. In all natural poluations a balance is struck between growth and reduction.
That’s where we came from and that’s how we are wired. I interpret what Chris says of the "journey inward and mastering yourself" to be in effect, moving your consciousness beyond those tribal involuntary and predictable knee jerk reactions that are "programmed" into us (both genetically and socially). Of course that can get into the topic of religion etc. which is a no-no on this site so let’s leave it at that.
But we haven’t been able to escape those natural constraints that used to keep us in check, which we also used to and continue to constantly fight in order to survive. But now the consequences of those behaviors are of the scale that could easily destroy the world, and based on our current trajectory, likely will, at least the world as we know it.
As I like to say, "If you aren’t amazed then you aren’t paying attention". If I wanted to take a more philosophical stance, I’d say we should take a step back in order to contemplate our rare opportunity to be able witness a historic period in the history of life on earth and contemplate why we are here right now armed with the knowledge to be able to make sense of it. There will be a lot of pain going forward but ife on earth will continue on regardless, we still have a few hundred million years left before the sun envelops us. We are just right in the center of all the action.
