We were not likely to see the sun much on Solstice along the 45th Parallel North. It dawned overcast and while the layer of clouds was high it was not going to yield to the blue beyond. The Îlot des Mouettes laid obscured under white skies in a white sea. Slag rounded up his stock of rebreathers and mouth masks - we had no idea whether the foul environment of the island was toxic but the Press was full of Bird Flu scare and we were going to be cautious if nothing else. You can see Thomas Aquinas filming behind the Captain. It was a warm June day up north; there was little wind and off shore the bay seemed welcoming. The omens were good and we were ready. We figured the TOI - Time On Island - would be a half-hour to 45 minutes. Just long enough to set the spike up, take some propaganda photos, and leave before the birds and the noise and the smell drove one of us or all of us over the edge.
Giacomo Rizzolatti was just as surprised as the monkey. He and his research Krew of Leonardo Fogassi, Vittorio Gallese and Luciano Fadiga were at the University of Parma in Italy in the early 1990s studying the brain's motor cortex and especially a region called F5 which has been associated with hand and mouth movements. Their goal was to learn how "commands to perform certain actions are encoded by the firing patterns of neurons." To do this they were wiring the skulls of Macaque Monkeys and watching/recording as the monkeys performed certain actions - like grasping after food or after a toy. No surprise here, things like this are routine in Neurology and they were able to get good clear images of sets of neurons discharging during the motor acts. There was no Nobel Prize for this - it was essentially Graduate Student work. Then they noticed something odd. Very odd. When one of the humans grabbed a piece of food "the monkey's neurons would fire in the same way as when the monkeys themselves grabbed the food." The neurons seemed to be "mirroring" the Italian's actions. They were able to rule out an "expectation reaction," that is, maybe the monkey was expecting to be fed. But that left only one explanation: "the pattern of neuron activity associated with the observed action was a true representation in the brain of the act itself, regardless of who was performing it."  But were these monkeys "understanding" these actions or simply visually registering it? There is a vast difference. So the clever Eyeties devised 2 series of experiments to find out. Monkey See, Monkey Do is only mindless imitation, right?
Is art just a form of imitation? If mirror neurons in the brain allow us to imitate others and their actions and monkeys have mirror neurons why don't they draw or sculpt? Or do they? There are famous cases of chimps and other animals being "trained" to put marks on paper etc. Is this art? If art is nothing but Monkey see, Monkey do, then what is Art really? Well certainly the concept of Intentions is involved, and more certainly the concept of Consciousness is involved. How does a Monkey, or a Man, or any Animal understand the intentions of others? The Eyeties were on to something potentially big. Very big. They were siezed by the Wut. First they decided to test whether the F5 mirror neurons could "recognize" actions merely by their sounds. They recorded the brain activity of a monkey while they tore up a piece of paper and then broke open a peanut shell. These actions were both visual and auditory. Then they presented the Monkey with just the sound, no visuals. "We found that many F5 mirror neurons that had responded to the visual observation of acts accompanied by sounds also responded to the sounds alone, and we dubbed these subsets audiovisual mirror neurons."
"Man is a creature composed of body and soul and made to the image and likeness of God." - Catechism Class
"Man is a rope suspended between animal and superman - a rope over an abyss." - Nietzsche
We got all of the gear and the deconstructed spike and the Island Away Team in 2 boats. Other boats were following with observers and elements of the Cinema Team. If you are a High-Functioning Autistic and you are reading this page I want you to look at that glowing mirror in the photo above. Don't touch the photo. I'm serious, Don't touch the photo. For the rest of us - notice how it nearly hurts to look into that mirror. The Shekhina is wildly reflected. The sky in the photo is a digital illusion - remember, I told you that the sky was white and featureless. Skippy created the false sky with its Hollywood blue & clouds in a Photoshop plug-in. He created that Lens Flare Effect too which is the glow and the Shekhina. He jacked up the saturation to make skintones warmer and the waters a bit greener. Nothing is as it seems on the surface. There is evidence which links Autism with deficient mirror neurons. If the Autistic among you did touch the picture - I know the rest of you didn't - I wonder if you were offended. Can there be morals and values without mirror neurons? If empathy and sympathy and seeing the world from another's point of view are traceable to functioning - or non-functionion mirror neurons - if, in short, we need mirror neurons to see Out of Ourselves, and if seeing Out of Ourselves is the mechanism for Self-Awareness and Self-Awareness can be judged by the ability of recognizing ourselves, out of ourselves, in a mirror . . . then is this the reason we are so easily fooled by imitation?
Elephants have joined the club: Dolphins, Great apes, Humans and now Elephants. The most distinguished club on earth is the Club of Self-Awareness. American researchers at Emory University did some mirror tests with elephants and they passed. The animals tried to look behind the mirror first, then sported and danced in front of the mirror trying to guess the image's "intentions." A dog will go this far too. But the pacyderms go beyond this mark. First a researcher painted a large white "X" on an elephant's forehead. Naturally, it could not see this mark on its own forehead. Then they led the animal to a large mirror where it saw the white "X" on the mirror image animal and immediately and repeatedly touched the real "X" on its forehead with its trunk. Not the virtual "X" on the mirror image. To test whether the elephant was reacting to a smell or touch sensation from the paint, they painted another mark on the beast but with colorless paint so that the elephants could not see it. They did not try and touch that mark. The mirror experiment is the acid test of self-awarness. Not all elephants pass the test. Not all chimps pass the test. Not all humans pass the test. Skippy's buddy Frans de Waal comments: "You have to know yourself to relate to others." Such gnosis is the key to living in social groups and the cornerstone of cooperation. Skippy is ready to bet the farm that elephants will be shown to possess mirror neuron nets.
Those who do not live on them do not understand the Great Lakes - a failure of mirror neurons perhaps. Once you leave the land far enough behind that you can no longer see it, you can begin to sense what it is the sea itself is thinking. Skippy, who used to teach in the Great Lakes Maritime Academy on board one of their ships which was used as a Sailing Classroom, has stories to tell about storms at sea. There are very few storms in salt oceans which can best the storms on the inland seas. Too much water too tightly contained is a recipe for tumolt & ruin when you add turbulence. Too much of anything too tightly contained is a recipe for chaos. In the Kabbalah there is this image: God needs to Empty itself into its Creations but it must have containers to keep the spirit together. So it goes Kenotic and pours its Divinity out. The top 3 containers hold and fill themselves with god. But the bottom 7 cannot and they burst and divinity pours out like a storm rushing everywhere in chaos. The material universe is the overflow and each part of it contains a broken shard of divinity. God has lost itself in matter and much of its spirit is caught there and the sum of the world is the sum of its yearning to merge and reunite with all the Lost Boys and the Watchers and yes, even Satan himself, who is the Führer of the Shards. God must be rescued, first from himself, and then - from his Shekhina. This is the Doctrine of the Broken Vessels.
"from the mode of Nature into the mode of Grace."
Tzim Tzum
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