"The Soul of the Machine"

Do you remember the book by that title from the 80's, written by Tracy Kidder? It provided a behind-the-scenes look at the development of a new Data General mini-computer. It was a pretty good book, actually, as was Kidder's other book "House" (which provided a similar behind-the-scenes look at the plannning and construction of a custom home).

Note: I'm going to detour before getting to the question of machines and "souls."

Ah, the 80's ... the days of my early adulthood. When I look back on my life, I see a series of time slices framed by certain milestones:

• 1959 to @1963 -- early infancy, very few memories from this time era. I have one memory (in black and white, interestingly) of me in a playpen. I would imagine I was 2 or 3, but not older than that. I dimly recall TV coverage of one of the early Mercury space shots (whether it was Shepherd or Glenn I do not know), as well as the funeral of John F. Kennedy.
• 1964 to 1969 -- childhood, part one. The endpoint of this time frame (1969) was when my family moved from the suburbs of Detroit out to the country. These were relatively good times. I attended "Volney Smith Elementary School," which was located at the corner of Lexington and Vassar in Redford Township -- two blocks from home; I used to walk to school, even kindergarten. It was a relatively dense 1950's-era suburban development (small, 3 bedroom bungalows) with relatively low-traffic streets that afforded us an opportunity to ride out bikes with some freedom. We'd set out as a small group of kids on bikes, and pick up stragglers as we went. Once we accumulated nearly 30 kids on bikes, riding around like a wolfpack. My first love, Jill Garrett, came into my life when I was in the second grade. She sat next to me and was a pure angel. I demonstrated my affection for her as any 7 year old boy would -- I rode my bike over to where she lived, taunted her and threw rocks at her house. It was during this time era that the Frisbee was introduced, and my older brother was one of the first in the neighborhood to learn how to throw one. We used to spend hours out in the street throwing the Frisbee back and forth. We were fearless athletes in those days, sacrificing our bodies in crazy diving catches. Summers were a time of dream-like suspension: 8 weeks of no school and no structured activities. Each day would bring a new adventure. This era ended the summer after 4th grade, when my family moved out to Howell, Michigan.
• 1969 to @1973 -- childhood, part two. Howell was at that time a distant farming community, and my father took upon himself the crazy-for-that-time commute of 55 miles each way each day. Our move to the country was ostensibly to provide room for me and my five brothers and sisters to grow. This was admirably provided by the 12 room farmhouse with a barn and 70 acres of land. It was a much different world from tightly-packed Redford Township near Detroit. Bike riding became more difficult as the roads out in Cohoctah Township where I lived were largely unpaved. Houses were a quarter mile or more apart from one another. Still, it was a time of exploration of new things in a new setting. The barn was a place where by all rights I should have ended up dead, given my fearless (and foolish) activities there. It was a classic post-and-beam design (hand-hewn beams, built around 1870 we figured), and I'd scamper up the the beams like a monkey. Twenty feet up off a hard wood floor, I'd jump over to another beam and literally run across the 8 inches of the perch. Crazy stuff, but I'm still here, so the Lord clearly was looking out for me. Howell was then a small town, with a small town attitude ... which meant we were considerd "outsiders" to their protective enclave. This era ended with no hard milestone, but rather it melted into a kind of darkness ...
• @1973 to 1977 -- I mentioned earlier how the move to Howell was to ostensibly provide room for growth. Well, in reality the move was to provide an attempted fulfillment of a dream for my mother. One of the axioms of life is this: beware the fulfillment of long-cherished dreams. They do not live up to the expectations fostered in a period of desire. Such was the case here, when reality overtook my mother's picture of the idyllic life. The world went black (details intentionally withheld). This was time when I should have started developing a sense of emotional maturity -- ages 13 to 18. Instead, it was a period of intense withdrawal and a literal suspension of emotional growth. This end of this era was marked by my going off to college.
• 1977 to 1981 -- my undergraduate years. When I entered college (Michigan State University) I was chronologically 18 years old, but emotionally about 14. Worse, I looked tremendously young for my age. And I was in no way prepared for the rigors of higher education. My first term I pulled a 2.46 grade point average (out of 4.0). It was the five credit calculus class that killed me. I was a math whiz in high school, but the depth and pace of my high school education was nothing compared to what I experienced in the fall of 1977. Still, by spring term I'd pulled myself up and figured out how to deal with college. The process of maturation postponed in Howell started to take place here. This era ended with two events the roughly coincided with one another: my first marriage and graduate school.
• 1981 to 1984 -- in September of 1981, at the ripe age of 21 years 11 months I got married. My motivation was purely the avoidance of being alone; in other words, driven by insecurity. Mary Kate was a very nice person, but even as I walked up the sidewalk to the church to get married I knew it was the wrong thing to do. Still, a promise was a promise and I went through with it. 1981 was a time of very bad economic times in Michigan, and graduating from college with and undergraduate degree offered virtually no opportunities. By the grace of God I was able to secure a summer internship in a warehouse where I earned $6/hour. It was the summer of 1981 I decided to go to graduate schoole, which was a decision driven pretty much by a lack of any alternative. Graduate school suited me far more than undergraduate, and I found the course work and topics much easier to handle. It was during this time that I ascended to the role of "supervisor" of the students working for the campus police doing traffic control and sports event parking. One of my most cherished accomplishments was the earning of respect and trust from the police commander. My term as supervisor came on the heels of a period when others had abused the position, padding the payroll and not doing the work needed. It was here that I learned the value of integrity. It was during this time that I met my first true love. Unfortunately, I was married to another. Kim was a tall beauty of Lithuanian descent, and due to my being married our initial interaction was absent any sexual or relationship overtones. I was also more relaxed in my demeanor because I didn't feel compelled to pursue her. Our friendship developed naturally, and we discovered a fairly deep bond between us. Kim worked for the campus police, and I was her supervisor. We'd spend hours after a work event drinking beer and talking. The realization of my attraction to her clashed with the hard fact of my being married to another woman. I truly loved Kim, like no woman before. I took the intimacy out of my marriage and gave it to Kim. But strictly speaking I never violated my marriage vows -- though the opportunity would have been there had I pursued it, I felt compelled to honor my marriage vows. This era ended when I moved to North Carolina to start my career with IBM. I was tormented over the dilemma of moving to NC with Mary Kate, or violating my promise to her and casting my lot with Kim. I stuck to my vows. The hardest thing I ever did was when I set out on the drive to North Carolina. I came to the corner where a left turn would have been to Kim, and a right turn to NC. I turned right. Though we exchanged letters for a bit, I lost contact with her in 1985. I still think of Kim, and I probably always will.
• 1984 to 1989 -- the start of my career at IBM. My first 18 months were spent in the manufacturing warehouse as a process analyst. I was out of my depth, but I managed to do a few things right. But the politics of the place drove me crazy, so I worked my way into software testing on the TPNS product. I prospered. I worked ridiculous hours: 12 hours a day, often 7 days a week -- all in pursuit of contentment and fulfillment. Remember what I said about "beware the realization of a dream?" It was here that I came to that moment: I'd acquired a house, a car, a career, success ... and it didn't satisfy the longing in my heart. That, and the lingering damage from my relationship with Kim, resulted in my getting divorced. My marriage to Mary Kate was never miserable; in fact, our parting was fairly amiable. Looking back, I now see that the problem was really a mis-match between expectation and reality. After we separated in the fall of 1988 and she moved back to Michigan, I met another in North Carolina. And then my world collapsed. In a panic I pulled the plug on my life in North Carolina and moved back to Michigan.
• 1989 to 1992 -- I was officially divorced in December of 1989. There was a time prior to that in which I harbored a fantasy of getting back together with Mary Kate and living happily ever after. That was a short lived fantasy, and the night that bubble popped was one of the darkest nights of my life. (Side note: my dog, with no prompting from me, jumped up on the sofa and very softly laid his head in my lap. It was a very clear reminder that things weren't quite as dark as I'd imagined. Someone once told me that dogs demonstrate better than anything else what God's grace is all about.) It was during this time that met Lisa, who lived in Atlanta at the time. This era came to a close when Lisa and I married.
• 1992 to 1994 -- living in Michigan with Lisa. This ended after Lisa endured a winter where we suffered through two straight weeks of -20 degrees F weather. It was so cold the salt failed to melt the ice on the roads. We moved to Washington D.C. as a way of getting her to someplace slightly warmer and near where she went to school (the University of Virginia).
• 1994 to 1997 -- the worst years of my IBM career. I spent a year as a networking sales specialist as the networking division fell apart, and I spent two years as an RS/6000 sales specialist during a time when that brand was suffering from poor performance and shoddy supply. Working in sales literally sucked the soul right out of me. By 1997 I was emotionally spent, literally unable to consider going on in that role. With only a distant history in mainframe work, I was hired on at the Washington Systems Center by a BUE who took a chance.
• 1998 to 2005 -- the halcyon days of my WSC work. Net.Commerce, HTTP Server, WebSphere ... things were going great. Except a hole in my heart still existed. It was during this time that I received a spark from God and started seeking Him in earnest. I gave myself to him in 2002, and have been trying to get a foothold to grow in Grace ever since. This era ended when Lisa and I moved to Tucson.
• 2005 to ??? -- and so here I am, in Tucson, looking back across the epochs of my life. It's been an interesting journey so far. I have no idea where things will go from here. I sense a change, but I can't put my finger on exactly what that will look like. I have to keep reminding myself to look to the Lord, to pray and most of all to trust in him.

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Thanks for indulging me my detour! :-)

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The question of what a "soul" is really is one of the deep questions of our existence, isn't it? I'm presently reading a book by Dallas Willard called "The Divine Conspiracy." Willard is a sincere Christian, a college professor, deep thinker and well versed in the areas of philosophy and theology. In another of his books called "Renovation of the Heart," Willard writes:

The soul is that dimension of the person that interrelates all of the other dimensions [thoughts, feelings, will -- Willard calls this the heart or spirit, body and social context] so they form one life. It is like a meta-dimension or higher-level dimension because its direct field of play consists of the other dimensions, and through them it reaches ever deeper into the person's vast environment of God and his creation.

Because the soul encompasses and "organizes" the whole person, it is frequently taken to be the person. We naturally treat persons as "souls." But of course the soul is not the person. It is, rather, the deepest part of the self in terms of overall operations; and like the body, it has the capacity to operate (and does, largely, operate) without conscious supervision.

Note: both books -- Divine Conspiracy and Renovation of the Heart are very good books. Thoughtful, scholarly ... and, to my eye very insightful. I suspect Willard's view of the Christian life would appeal to you. It's somewhat revolutionary ... so much so that my suspicions are not yet fully satisfied that Willard is within the bounds of normally accepted reformed theology. My hunch is he's okay ... he's just using language differently from what I've seen others use. First and foremost, his assertion that Christ expects us to be disciples of his today, not just in the afterlife, seems to strike me as reasonably aligned with my impression of the Gospel message. The idea of Christianity being little more than an "insurance policy for admittance to heaven" is a very real problem with contemporary Christianity, and one I could never embrace. Willards puts the lie to that way of thinking and argues rather strongly that Christianity is not merely a sin management doctrine.

I won't claim to fully comprehend that ... I offer it as one person's considered view of the "soul." From Willard's description, I would find it hard to relate the "soul" back to some biochemical brain function. Feelings? Perhaps ... one could argue that happiness is due to one brain chemical; depression the lack of that chemical, etc. But the "soul," being a meta-dimension, seems to transcend that. I would think that a person's will (as Willard describes it, as the "heart" or "spirit" of a person) is also something beyond mere biochemical processes, though they may be part of that.

We're into a place where my lack of words and lack of knowledge hinders me. There is, no doubt, a deep mystery here ... a mystery beyond our comprehension. I doubt man will ever "discover" the will or the soul, though we'll see TIME magazine covers trumpeting some CAT-scan discovery purporting to have discovered it.

At the risk of getting into dangerous territory, an interesting question is whether other forms of life have a "will" and a "soul." Clearly some animals are of higher intelligence than others, and demonstrate what may be considered a "personality." My dog, now departed, had a very clear personality and a very stubborn will. There were times I very clearly saw him surrender that will to me, particularly in times where he was in considerable danger and required me. But what about a snail? Or an amoeba? Or a bacteria? Or a virus? It raises the question whether there are in fact degrees of awareness, degrees of a soul. I have no answers, only questions.

I am led to believe that there is something unique about humans, and that whatever it is that makes us unique is God-given. But that's a belief, unsubstantiated by anything other than an accumulation of reading and thinking. This is why I believe machines will never possess that, unless God himself grants it.

But that's my opinion.