Book Reviewed: Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

Mycelium Running This book explores the beneficial effects of the symbiotic fungi in the soil. Mycorrhizal fungi are microscopic organisms that partner with root systems of plants and sequester carbon in much more meaningful ways than human “carbon offsets” will ever achieve. Most of these soil fungi support plant health in elegant ways. They boost green immune function in plants and community-wide networking that forms the basis of ecosystem resiliency. The mycelium’s digestive power and its uses in the decomposition of toxic wastes and pollutants, remove pathogens from agricultural watersheds, control insect populations, and enhance the health of our forests. This book is at the intersection of social science, natural science, and humanities. The author reveals a range of things that goes in the soil of the forests that are ecologically relevant. It does not go into much biology or evolutionary issues but offers a broad range discussion about the beneficial effects of fungi.

Book Reviewed: Immortality, Inc.: Renegade Science, Silicon Valley Billions, and the Quest to Live Forever by Chip Walter

Technology and post-humanism Technology could make us immortal; The Six Million Dollar Man, Robocop and The Matrix share common DNA of human beings enhanced by technology. The technology will be used to extend longevity and enhance physical and cognitive performance. The goal is to overcome mind and body limitations by making an individual better than merely being human. Immortality has gone secular in the last two decades and unhooked from the realm of gods. It's now the subject of serious intellectual and financial investment in the Silicon Valley to make longevity possible. This book explores scientific pursuit of immortality with Silicon Valley visionaries. The champions of this radical cause include of molecular biologist and Apple chairman Arthur Levinson, genomics entrepreneur Craig Venter, futurist Ray Kurzweil, biologist Aubrey de Grey, and stem cell researcher Robert Hariri. This is the age of billionaires betting their fortunes on laboratory advances to prove aging is unnecessary, and death can be cured. This book does not go into the scientific and technological details behind aging research but provide a journalistic overview of how technocrats are changing the course of human endeavor.

Book Reviewed: The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns by Matty Weingast

Psalms of the Sisters – A celebration of the writings of Buddhist nuns in ancient India (four stars) This is the English translation of the verses of Elder Nuns (bhikkhunis) also known as the Therigatha in Buddhist literature. Some of these writings of Buddhist women were composed during the life of Buddha in 6th century B.C.E. They detail everything from their disenchantment with their roles in society to their struggles for spiritual freedom. Numerous voices are heard from; a mother whose child has died (Therigatha VI.1 and VI.2); a former sex worker who became a nun (Therigatha V.2); a wealthy heiress who abandoned her life of pleasure (Therigatha VI.5); and verses of Buddha's aunt Pajapati Gotami (Therigatha VI.6). These verses reaffirm the view that women are equal to men for spiritual attainment. They focus on status of women in ancient India, and these stories are told with heart-breaking honesty and beauty revealing the deeply human side of the nuns. This is the fullest expression of theological and spiritual aesthetics in a woman’s relationship in earthly realities. Therigatha was first composed orally in Magadhi, an ancient Indian language. The verses were passed on orally until about 80 B.C.E., when they were written down in the Buddhist language of Pali. A poetical expression of life is not only an assemblage of words that is pleasing to the intellect, but it also consists of beauty that is ideally structured causing delight in the beholder. The beauty is produced by the unification of a multiple of symmetrical constructions into a whole. A sixth-century Buddhist scholar named Dhammapala called them Udanas or inspired utterances. The English translation must reflect the beauty contained in these verses and capture the mind and heart of the poetess. There are several English translations of Therigatha in literature and a collation of one of the poems is given below: Translated by Caroline Rhys Davids, from Psalms of the Sisters (1909) The Elephant by Bhikkhuni Dantika Coming from noonday-rest on Vulture's Peak, I saw an elephant, his bathe performed, Forth from the river issue. And a man. Taking his goad, bade the great creature stretch His foot: 'Give me thy foot!' The elephant Obeyed, and to his neck the driver sprang. I saw the untamed tamed, I saw him bent To master's will; and marking inwardly, I passed into the forest depths and there I' faith I trained and ordered all my heart. ----- Translated by Thanisaro Bhikkhu (1995) Coming out from my day's abiding on Vulture Peak Mountain, I saw on the bank of a river an elephant emerged from its plunge. A man holding a hook requested: "Give me your foot." The elephant extended its foot. The man got up on the elephant. Seeing what was untrained now tamed brought under human control, with that I centered my mind — why I'd gone to the woods in the first place. -------- Translated by Bhikkhu Sujato (2019) Leaving my day’s meditation on Vulture’s Peak Mountain, I saw an elephant on the riverbank having just come up from his bath. A man, taking a pole with a hook, asked the elephant, “Give me your foot.” The elephant presented his foot, and the man mounted him. Seeing a wild beast so tamed, submitting to human control, my mind became serene: *that* is why I’ve gone to the forest! ------- Translated by Matty Weingast (2020), Author of this book While walking along the river After a long day meditating on Vulture Peak, I watched an elephant splashing its way out of the water and up the bank. Hello, my friend, a man waiting there said, scratching the elephant behind its ear. Did you have a good bath? The elephant stretched out its leg, the man climbed up, and the two rode off like that­ together. Seeing what had once been so wild now a friend and companion to this good man, I took a seat under the nearest tree and reached out a gentle hand to my own mind. Truly, I thought, this is why I came to the woods. ----- I recommend this book to readers interested in Buddhism, Buddhist nuns, and early feminist literature.

Book Reviewed: Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union by Richard Kreitner

Some reflections on the creation of United States of America America is in a state of crisis, says the author. After reflecting on precolonial days that lead to the American Revolution, and challenging times in building the nation, he observes that it is more polarized towards division rather than a union! He sees flaws in the founders’ wish to forge a democracy: The new world did not create American exceptionalism but produced radicalism and failed hopes. According to him, the puritans, native Americans, enslaved Africans, women with little rights, and new immigrants from Europe offers a picture of the messy years of American birth. The years of the American Revolution were times of changing loyalties, fierce battles and internecine feuds that provides a stage for his reinterpretation of the history. This is a very narrow approach to narrate the American history especially when he finds that the 2016 victory of Donald Trump has furthered the division of the union. This ignores the decades of mishandling of American affairs. It is a matter of choice to bring a new idea into the White House that did not include professional politicians who are corrupt and toxic to the bone! Formative years are always challenging to any nation, and I wished the author had a broader view in his analysis. When English colonists left Asia and Africa, these colonies faced the same challenges that United States faced in creating a union with serious domestic issues. Similar challenges were faced by East European countries and former territories of Soviet Union which collapsed in 1991. The author ignores key features that made United States as one of the strongest and powerful nations in the world. For example, the battles with Native Americans on the western and Southern frontier, and the bloody civil war that lost more than a million Americans. North prevailed in the Civil War ending slavery and giving the country a new birth of freedom. But many confederates found new opportunities in the West. Settlers from the East were pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican American War and the occupation of Native American lands created new racial hierarchies. The mining, cattle, and oil industries created wealth and neo-fiscal conservatives like Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. There is no crisis over our national identity. This is manufactured over decades by politicians. Divisions at local and regional areas are not new. They were always there, and politicians have manipulated the system to their advantage to divide people along economic, social, and racial barriers. This is heard every four years!

Book Reviewed: Future Minds: The Rise of Intelligence from the Big Bang to the End of the Universe by Richard Yonck

Intelligence in the universe Human beings may not be Earth’s most intelligent beings for much longer. In fact, some predict that artificial intelligence (AI) could advance to human-level intelligence. The late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking famously postulated that if AI itself begins designing better AI than human programmers, the result could be "machines whose intelligence exceeds ours by more than ours exceeds that of snails." Artificial General intelligence (AGI) is humanity's biggest existential threat, and there is an effort to create machines that can experience consciousness and grasps philosophical issues beneath the algorithms. The machine consciousness could become the byproduct of information processing and intelligence. The author looks at the future from the origin of the universe and draws on recent developments in bio-thermodynamics and the evolution of complexity in living cells. How structured and highly ordered cellular systems evolve that appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics. But they don’t, because they are not closed systems. But there is a connection between intelligence and entropy maximization. There are entropic forces that can cause two defining behaviors of the human cognitive niche; tool use, and social cooperation that leads to certain emergent properties. Intelligence is not necessarily a cognitive-based property. It is perhaps a manifestation of a much larger universal process, one that is initially dependent on probability, but with emergent properties, it is capable of self-directed volition over time. Emergent intelligence is driven by competition, thermodynamics, and entropy as a means of promoting future freedom of action. A general thermodynamic model of adaptive behavior in nonequilibrium process in open systems, the cognitive-adaptive organisms have an internal mental model of the environment they seek to adapt to. But from a probability-based perspective, high-entropy states should create the best conditions for evolution either for living species or machine intelligence. In other words, the more unrestricted the environment, the more options that can be explored. This concept of causal entropic forcing is critical to the origin of life, and machine intelligence. The author expresses his hope that future intelligence may find the purpose of this universe, this could be a wishful thinking that may never find an answer. The laws of physics are immutable, and the cosmos is limited by 4-dimesional spacetime. The natural and artificial intelligence include reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, learning, and perception. In advanced animal species, and robotics, additional requirements include the ability to move, manipulate objects and natural language processing is required. The underlying principles, besides the operation of the laws of physics and (chemistry in biological systems), is to achieve their goal through statistical mechanics, probability, information engineering, entropy, and economics. The author offers reasonable discussion in this book.