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Deep Mind Painting

Deep Mind is a huge painting that explores the World Within, the Mind, and promptsquestions such as What are we? Who are we? Why are we here? How do we balance and

control the dichotomies within us of light/dark, human/animal, good/bad, peace/passion,joy/anger, love/hate, altruism/greed?

This indeed is an ambitious painting, my first attempt in Art to address the big questionabout Life, the Universe and Everything (the answer to which according to Douglas

Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is simply 42). I have painted a further versionbut a Loved One who is my most trenchant critic says that she loves this later version but

it looks better rotated 90 degrees - perhaps after 42 attempts (hard work painting hugepaintings this size!) I will find the Answer.

This reminds me of the Buddhist parable about an illiterate peasant who asks the Master:I am just an ordinary Man, I toil hard for a living, I am untutored and I do not know howto read how can I find the Answer? The Master replies Take a bag of rice on your backand climb to the top of the Mountain and you will find the Truth. The peasant does as he isinstructed, climbs the Mountain and finally reaches the top, casts down the bag of rice andtakes in the enormous view. The Master was Right he has Arrived.

Agnostic humanists such as myself approach Ontology (the Science of Being) through thePopperian Scientific Method involving the critical experimental testing of potentiallyfalsifiable hypotheses, refining our models of reality and then repeating the process.Theists give up on the objective, scientific approach to the Answer and typically accept

ancient stories from our ancestors as metaphors for reality. However Humanists, Theists

Gideon Polya/ MWC NEWS

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and Buddhists can find a common ground in Art which all three accept as validmetaphorical, poetical and Artistic attempts to get to the Truth of things.

Let me give you a Hitchhikers Guide to the World of Deep Mind.

Technically, this is a huge painting (1.3 metres by 2.7 metres) painted in acrylic on high

quality doubly-primed canvas. The dominant underlying geometry is a classical Golden

Rectangle employed by the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Egyptians and also widelyexploited by painters since the time of the Italian Renaissance. Arising from thisfundamental geometry (mathematically, a Fibonacci Sequence of 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13, 21, 34

; the Da Vinci Code) are elements including (1) the Divine Sections (that divide theGolden Rectangle to form a square and another Golden Rectangle, these Golden

Rectangles having the property that the Length is 1.618 or phi times the width); (2) 2dominant circles (encompassing the obverse dichotomies referred to in the first sentence

of this essay); (3) the central Vesica Pisces symbol from the overlapping of these Circles(a simultaneously sacred symbolism for the Christian fish, the Son of God in the Human

Womb, the Gothic Arch and profane symbolism for the female vulva and the male penisand thence phallic bombs, bullets and missiles); and (4) the Sacred Flowers from the

intersection of the Circles with the Diagonals of the Squares into which they fit exactly(these cruciform cross-like - structures are sacred in representing the Cross and the

Christian Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit plus the Blessed Virgin and profane inthat 4 is lucky and they resemble Paris quadrifolia or Truelove, the aphrodisiac and

poisonous European plant that was used to bring luck in Love in Chaucer s CanterburyTales and in Chaucers Medieval Europe) (see Sacred & Profane. The real Da Vinci Code

exposed on MWC News ).

However Deep Mind also draws upon the Artistic Metaphors of Islamic culture. Thus

underneath the classical Italian Renaissance Golden Rectangle symbolism is one of thepatterns used in the wonderful Tile Art patterns of Islamic Art from the Alhambra Palace

in Spain to the glories of Isfahan, Samarkand and Bokhara. There are generically 17 suchkinds of patterns (defined by my great uncle mathematician George Polya of the Swiss ETH

and Americas Stanford University as 17 plane symmetry groups and exploited by the greatDutch lithographer M.C Escher who was in correspondence with George Polya for many

years).

The Islamic Tile Art patterns were created when Muslim civilization was a light in the Worldat the time of the European Dark Ages. These patterns arose from the Biblical and Quranicprohibition of graven images and always included an Imperfection as a metaphor for ourimperfection as compared to the perfection of the Creator. I have described this culturalconflation by the acronym PEACE which stands for Polya, Escher, Alhambra CulturalEcumenism (see Alhambra Pollock on MWC News).

Yet Mans attempts to deal with the Inner Reality of the Mind and the Outer Reality of thephysical world date back to the figurative cave paintings by Europeans and IndigenousAustralian aboriginals of 20,000 years ago. Such figurative elements can be seen in DeepMind at various levels behind the complexity one can see large figures that in the upper,sunny, light, good zone are Ascendant and in the lower, darker, subterranean, oceandeep bad half of the painting are Descending like Fallen Angels. In addition there aresmaller figures that repeat this theme of Ascendant Good and Descending Bad, a

dichotomy first explored by the early agrarian Persian proto-Zoroastrians in Iran as earlyas 6000 BC.

On top of this complexity I have represented molecular, microscopic and macroscopicaspects of the reality of Deep Mind.

Thus at the molecular level (perceivable by highest resolution electron microscopy) we candiscern a dominant geometrical theme resembling a DNA double helix of the genes thatprogram our existence. The individual helical strands can represent the alpha-helices of theDNA-encoded proteins that make up most of our physical reality (together with water andthousands of other small and large molecules for a rapid guide to this complexity see myhuge pharmacological text Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds. Apharmacological reference guide to sites of action and biological effects).

At the microscopic level I have represented neuronal connectivities, the neuron cell bodies(the blobs) and the axons and dendrites connecting neurons to each other in such a waythat the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts. Indeed if the World survives

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George Bush, Bush-ite-driven global warming and the nuclear threat perhaps in a centurythere will be robots whose connectivities are such that we will have created true Supermanintelligences vastly superior to our own. These neural net representations are indeeddisturbingly anthropomorphic like the medieval Mandrake Roots to which great superstitionwas attached.

At the macroscopic level the two dominant circles represent the fundamental dichotomies

of Deep Mind - the light, human, good, peaceful, joyous, loving, altruistic Personshadowed by a dark, animal, bad, impassioned, angry, hateful, and greedy Alter Ego. Justas there is no escaping our shadow out in the sunlight, we cannot ignore the remnants ofour animal evolutionary history (Tyrannosaurus rex and ourselves have commonancestors). However our intellectual and moral evolution does not simply involve naturalselection of hard-wiring genes (DNA) it also involves the selection of memes, or ideasand cultural elements through societal selection of words, writing, music and art(seeRichard Dawkins The Selfish Gene).

Indeed Deep Mind illustrates this selection of memes, encompassing perceptions ofMind and Reality from 20,000 year old European and Aboriginal cave paintings,

Zoroastrian, Greek and Egyptian elements, Medieval and post-Medieval Islamic Art,Renaissance Italian Art and post-Renaissance European Art combined with molecular,

microscopic and macroscopic Scientific images of the Human Mind with the overall,order in chaos Big Picture resembling post-war American Jackson Pollock Abstract

Expressionism.

I have been invited to take part in a public panel discussion of Australian Humanists over

the question what does Humanism mean to me? In reading and thinking about thisquestion I stumbled upon this definition of the Humanist Ideal from leading Australian

philosopher Professor Brian Ellis: to respect equality in the dignity of everyone.Hopefully the silicon-and-steel (or possibly carbon-based Buckminsterfullerene-, organic

semiconductor- and carbon nanotube-constructed) Superman of the future, conscious ofhis ontogeny (the history of his development) will respect equality in the dignity of

everyone and obey Biochemist Isaac Asimovs First Law of Robotics: A robot may notinjure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Deep Mind is a cultural conflation of many views of the Human Mind that summarizes its

animal past and bubbling, interacting good/bad dichotomies. In a sense we have alreadyarrived at a version of the robotic Superman. Recent memes from the outstandingAustralian bioethicist Professor Peter Singer (author of Animal Liberation and now atPrinceton University, USA) instruct that human beings are obliged not to injure a humanbeing, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Indeed he hasextended this ethical imperative to not inflicting avoidable pain on any sentient creature.

However this First Law is being grossly violated in the 21st century - 16 million people dieavoidably from deprivation and disease every year (about 10 million being infants) on aSpaceship Earth with the First World in charge of the flight deck. The World ignores thehorrendous carnage of the racist Bush I plus Bush II Asian Wars, an Asian Holocaust that isstill continuing and which has already consumed 8 million people ( see Body Count. Globalavoidable mortality since 1950: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya and United StateTerrorism. 8 million deaths & media holocaust denial on MWC News ).

Send the image of Deep Mind to everyone you can with the message that Peace andLove is the only way, that we must try to understand ourselves and others and respectequality in the dignity of everyone.

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