HOW FEAR HELPS THE
GUN BUSINESS
This post is not about politics, it's about events in US
social history and the response within US society. The NRA and firearms industry
have fueled and capitalized on that response. All three need our attention -
how we respond to social problems; the NRA; and firearm makers and dealers. The
first is what most needs our attention - how we as an enlightened, humane
society respond to social problems and the conditions that cause them. It's the
best essay I've found on the subject of guns in modern US history. There may be
a pay wall so here are some excerpts.
"The story of how millions of Americans discovered the
urge to carry weapons—to join, in effect, a self-appointed, well-armed, lightly
trained militia—begins not in the Old West but in the nineteen-seventies. ...
In 1977, more than half of all American households had a gun in the house. By
2014, it was less than a third. Each gun owner now has an average of eight
guns, according to an industry trade association. ... In 1977, a third of all
adults lived in a house with at least one hunter, according to the General
Social Survey; by 2014, that statistic had been halved. [Gun dealer Mike]
Weisser said, 'The gun industry, which had been able to ride on an American
cultural motif of the West, and of hunting, is realizing that’s gone. Plus,
you’ve got the European guns coming in that are so good that the U.S. Army is
even using them. Jesus Christ Almighty, we’re fucked.' In 1998, an
advertisement in Shooting Sports Retailer warned, 'It’s not who your customers
will be in five years. It’s will there be any customers left.' Richard Feldman,
a high-ranking N.R.A. lobbyist in the eighties, who worked as a liaison to the
industry, told me that companies looked for ways to make up for the decline of
hunting: 'You’re selling whatever the market wants. It doesn’t matter where you
make your money. It’s irrelevant.' ... Much as the industry capitalized on the
Los Angeles riots, it has excelled, since 9/11, at tapping into the fear of
terrorism. ... In recent years, the gun industry’s product displays have become
so focussed on self-defense and 'tactical' gear that some hunters feel ignored.
After a trade show in January, David E. Petzal, a columnist for Field &
Stream, mocked the 'SEAL wannabes,' and wrote that 'you have to look fairly
hard for something designed to kill animals instead of people.' The contempt is
mutual; some concealed-carry activists call hunters 'Fudds,' as in Elmer. ...
The chances of being killed by a mass shooter are lower than the chances of
being struck by lightning, or of dying from tuberculosis. The chance of a
homicide by a firearm in the home nearly doubles the moment that a firearm
crosses the threshold."
++++++++++
Let's see if I correctly understand the recent article on
guns I posted. Many white folks in the US were alarmed over black folks and
their supporters demonstrating and rioting in the '60s and '70s. Many of these
people became fearful, judgmental, resentful, and blaming. Instead of seeking
an understanding of why blacks were complaining and rioting, and, if any of
their complaints had merit, what if anything might be done to address their
grievances, many whites decided to call the disturbances a law-and-order matter
with an often unspoken undertone of group-blame based on racial prejudice and
bias.
A large part of their response to this perceived threat to
their person, property, wealth and power was to buy guns and shoot blacks and
anyone else who might try to rob or harm them. This, such whites thought but
most would not say, would help protect themselves and their stuff, and slow
down or stop the ongoing erosion of their societal power and privilege.
Let's now consider what happened next. Most Republican
politicians and key fundamentalist Christian leaders quickly jumped in and
proclaimed their strong support for this kind of thinking and action.
Underneath it all they knew it was a quasi-law and order response yet they went
along with it and festooned it all with religious righteousness and patriotism.
Now, let's see how this response to America's social and
cultural evolution toward a more just, humane, rational society worked out.
Well, we now have a society where gun selling, buying and use are, for all
practical purposes, poorly controlled to the point that a significant number of
preventable deaths of innocent people cannot be stopped. Worst of all, the
majority of a major political party and their base of supporters are on the
verge of putting forward a vulgar, race-baiting, misogynist, laissez-faire
uber-capitalist for the US presidency.
How did all this happen? Go to the top of this post and the
essay and start over. What can we do? 1) Do not confirm Trump as the GOP
nominee. 2) If he's nominated, vote against him in November and encourage
others to do the same. What about the problem of choosing inappropriate
responses to social problems? Support people at all levels of society and
circumstances who offer societal and individual responses and solutions based
on reason, unbiased research evidence, and critical thinking; and oppose in all
forums and situations those who act on, feed into, racialize, politicize,
profit from, and supernaturally sanctify our emotions and fears.
~
RELIGION AND THE
SECULAR STATE
Here's another description of the complex relationship
between religion and secular states. And we think the US situation is a mess.
It seems the relationship between these two core cultural
domains, politics and religion, has become more complex and turbulent during
cultural evolutionary prehistory and history. This seems especially the case
following their institutionalization within pre-modern and modern nation-states
in the West such as Tudor England and late-19th century Italy.
In earlier, tribal or ethnic-centered societies, political
leaders were usually dominant and religious practitioners, military experts,
and other specialists and elders occupied subordinate positions on their
councils. There nevertheless was fractiousness early on. For example, when a
religious councilor sought to direct the forces of the supernatural or his kit
of potions and poisons against the leader, or a general sought the paramount
chieftaincy, or when the two conspired to usurp power.
It seems fractiousness, at all levels of social size and
complexity, has always been an inherent characteristic of the relationship
between the various cultural domains - politics, religion, military, economics,
technology & invention, etc. It seems it is yet another part of the price
we pay when individuals live in groups - a vying for dominance between the ambitions
of individuals and the need to live in groups for mutual enhancement and
protection from each other and other groups.
Your thoughts?
The dynamics of individual and group needs in cultural
evolution is a topic I addressed within a paper I wrote in the early 2000s on
African culture and personality - asq.africa.ufl.edu/files/Lassiter-Vol-3-Issue-3.pdf.
The study of cultural evolution has been in the news
recently. Some have pointed out what they see as an absence of a good
theoretical framework - Massimo Pigliucci https://platofootnote.wordpress.com/…/the-complexities-of-…/ and http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/…/why-is-ancient-philosophy-still…;
and others https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/…/how-darwinian-is-cul…/.
Still others are trying to step up efforts to establish such
a theory and method framework: https://evolution-institute.org/…/society-for-the-study-o…/….
Aside from Stanley Diamond's and Yuval Noah Harari's
respective books, does anyone have suggestions for good books or articles on
cultural evolution, especially theories, grand or particular?
++++++++++
"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and
unto God [er, no, again Caesar], the things that are God's" - Matthew 22:21
~
THE FAILURE OF
ATHEO-SCIENTISM
How you react to this essay is telling. If you can give
assent to it or not, with emotional detachment, your practice of Stoicism is
thriving. If you do give assent to it you are in a position to consider the
merits or shortcomings of the arguments the author makes; and based on that add
to or subtract from your understanding of what knowledge and truth should be,
and how they may be improved upon and expanded.
If you choose not to give assent to the essay, you have
refused to consider that the atheist-naturalist-materialist understanding of
all knowledge and truth and its means for obtaining them may be less than
necessary or sufficient.
In this essay, the strongest arguments for considering if the atheist-naturalist-materialist worldview is necessary and sufficient pertain to the cultural constructs, meanings and values of the ethnosphere - that totality of Humankind's mental accomplishments across space and time, so far:
"There is nothing in our experience of the world to
suggest that the physical world is the terminus of our experience and
cognition. In fact, the progress of science itself will likely render
scientific naturalism and its reductive tendencies obsolete. To develop a
complete model of the way in which human beings experience and interpret the
world, naturalists must reject the twentieth century model that science is the
world explaining itself to us in a special language. The model itself eerily
echoes the one promoted by Egyptian and Canaanite priests in the 1st millennium
BCE. Instead, they must look more closely at extended worlds, imagined worlds,
and non-physical reality which have provided both knowledge and meaning
necessary for human and cultural survival and progress. We have really just
begun to explore these worlds and do not possess a sufficient calculus or
language for the study, but as learning progresses, the fate of the
atheo-scientist, secure on his island of experimental knowledge, is unclear."
Your thoughts?
~
THE WAR ON STUPID
PEOPLE
Iain McGilchrist, in his 2010 book "The Master and His
Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World," claims
that we in the West have come to a point where we put too much emphasis on the
abilities of the left hemisphere. [This book is currently the topic of an Owl
& Ibis discussion (http://facebook.com/owlandibis)
led by Judith Moore.]
Here's how Wikipedia accurately describes the author's
approach to brain lateralization: "McGilchrist digests study after study,
replacing the popular and superficial notion of the hemispheres as respectively
logical and creative in nature with the idea that they pay attention in
fundamentally different ways, the left being detail-oriented, the right being
whole-oriented. These two modes of perception cascade into wildly different
hemispheric personalities, and in fact reflect yet a further asymmetry in their
status, that of the right's more immediate relationship with physical bodies
(our own as well as others) and external reality as represented by the senses,
a relationship that makes it the mediator, the first and last stop, of all
experience."
Now, below is a recent essay in The Atlantic that in a way
echoes McGilchrist's concern. Here's an excerpt:
"We must stop glorifying intelligence and treating our
society as a playground for the smart minority. We should instead begin shaping
our economy, our schools, even our culture with an eye to the abilities and
needs of the majority, and to the full range of human capacity. ... [T]he less
brainy are, according to studies and some business experts, less likely to be
oblivious of their own biases and flaws, to mistakenly assume that recent
trends will continue into the future, to be anxiety-ridden, and to be arrogant.
When Michael Young, a British sociologist, coined the term
'meritocracy' in 1958, it was in a dystopian satire. At the time, the world he
imagined, in which intelligence fully determined who thrived and who
languished, was understood to be predatory, pathological, far-fetched. Today,
however, we’ve almost finished installing such a system, and we have embraced
the idea of a meritocracy with few reservations, even treating it as virtuous.
That can’t be right. Smart people should feel entitled to make the most of
their gift. But they should not be permitted to reshape society so as to
instate giftedness as a universal yardstick of human worth."
Your thoughts?
~
BACKLASH AGAINST
IMMIGRANTS
First, there were those of African ancestry, then the
Catholics, Irish, Chinese, and Japanese. Now, the vilified and politically
exploited other or people of difference in the US are the LGBTs, Mexicans,
Muslims, progressives, humanists, and refugees. What group will be next? It
could be any of us as long as we continue to tolerate a politics of fear,
divide and exclude in order for some to retain power and privilege. That is
tyranny, not humane, principled democracy.
~
FREE EDUCATION FOR
ALL
Let's see, Republicans generally don't like people who don't
work and receive welfare. People who don't work and receive welfare, more often
than not, are not highly educated or trained. The more highly educated or
trained a person is, the more likely they will be employable and find work.
Those who find jobs don't take welfare. Republicans should be happy if as many
people as possible were educated, put into the nation's work force, and removed
from the welfare rolls.
To do this the US government could make a four-year
university education or equivalent training available to every American upon
their completion of high school.
This year, four million 17 year-olds will turn 18 and
complete high school. The US College Board says the national average cost for
four years of education at a public university in the US is $37,640. The total
cost to university-educate or otherwise train this year's 18 year-olds for four
years would be $152 billion, or $38 billion per year.
The federal budget for 2016 is $3.75trillion. The annual
cost to provide a university education or training to every US citizen who
completes high school would be 1% of the federal budget. That money could be
easily obtained through relatively small reductions within the federal budget.
The money could be taken, on a pro-rated basis, from the five major budget
categories - pensions, health care, education, defense, and welfare.
If implemented, this plan would totally transform the
society and culture of the US for the better.
Oh, but wait. The Republicans rely on the votes of a certain
group of relatively lower-educated, under-skilled Americans to stay in office.
Do they really want to fund education and training for everyone, including this
key constituency? I don't think so. Oh well, it sure seemed like a good idea.
Your thoughts?
~
HOW DISGUST MADE
HUMANS COOPERATE TO BUILD CIVILIZATIONS. REALLY!?
What a crock, especially the first half of the book excerpt
up to the advent of agriculture. There I identified at least a dozen
speculations about prehistoric behavior, "human nature," and the
social, moral and technological innovations that "must" have arisen
from our ancestors being disgusted. Here's the first and the rest are worse:
"Yet sometime deep in our past the same feeling that
makes us cringe at touching a dead animal or gag at a rancid odour became
embroiled in our most deeply held convictions – from ethics and religious
values to political views."
~
EVOLUTION SHOWS THAT
NURTURE AND LOVE ARE FUNDAMENTAL TO MENTAL HEALTH
We've all heard the adage "Spare the rod, spoil the
child." How about, "So you were abused or neglected by your parents?
Bullied, beaten at school? Get over it!"
Maybe we respond in these ways because we think someone is
asking for special treatment for the kind of harm life inflicts on a lot of us.
"Hey," we may say, "I had it rough too but I turned out
okay." Or, "I sucked it up and thrived without whining, harming
others or asking for special treatment." These responses may in many cases
contain some truth.
There's another way to look at it. Maybe the damage the
"complainers" incurred was an unnecessary part of life. Maybe what we
consider a weakling whining to be pampered is in fact a damaged person crying
out for help, love, or a simple reassurance that someone, anyone cares about
them.
Here's a very good essay on these matters by an
anthropologist using an evolutionary perspective to understand, explain, and
address these problems. An excerpt:
"So, children, born to be prosocial, just, brave,
loving, trusting, kind, helpful, and generous, can be turned into selfish,
nasty, destructive, hate filled, and even murderous creatures with no capacity
to love or empathy. All it takes is a cultural system that teaches that giving
pain is a sign of love, that morality must be punitive and unyielding, and that
transgressions of even the most minor kinds are to be met with the most ferocious
of punishments.
~
POETIC NATURALISM
A good review of a new book, The Big Picture: On the Origins
of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself by Caltech physicist Sean Carroll.
"Poetic naturalism is a philosophy of freedom and
responsibility. The raw materials of life are given to us by the natural world,
and we must work to understand them and accept the consequences. The move from
description to prescription, from saying what happens to passing judgment on
what should happen, is a creative one, a fundamentally human act. The
world is just the world, unfolding according to the patterns of nature, free of
any judgmental attributes. The world exists; beauty and goodness are things
that we bring to it.
...
"Human beings are not blank slates at birth, and our slates become increasingly rich and multidimensional as we grow and learn. We are bubbling cauldrons of preferences, wants, sentiments, aspirations, likes, feelings, attitudes, predilections, values, and devotions. We aren’t slaves to our desires; we have the capacity to reflect on them and strive to change them. But they make us who we are. It is from these inclinations within ourselves that we are able to construct purpose and meaning for our lives.
...
"Our emergence has brought meaning and mattering into the world." - Sean Carroll
...
"Human beings are not blank slates at birth, and our slates become increasingly rich and multidimensional as we grow and learn. We are bubbling cauldrons of preferences, wants, sentiments, aspirations, likes, feelings, attitudes, predilections, values, and devotions. We aren’t slaves to our desires; we have the capacity to reflect on them and strive to change them. But they make us who we are. It is from these inclinations within ourselves that we are able to construct purpose and meaning for our lives.
...
"Our emergence has brought meaning and mattering into the world." - Sean Carroll
~
DOES AFRICA NEED A
GOD?
Ever wonder why Africa is the most religious region of the
world? Poverty has a lot to do with it but there is more. Here is a short but
very useful treatment of the subject by George Ongere, Kenyan atheist,
humanist, and activist. Ongere also offers suggestions for increasing humanism
in Africa. I recommend this Kindle book, a quick easy introduction full of
useful information and insights on the power of religion and paucity of secular
Humanism in Africa.
~
TIME TO OUTGROW AYN
RAND AND ‘ATLAS SHRUGGED’
Some of the language in this essay is unnecessarily coarse
but he makes some good arguments against Rand's objectivism and laissez-faire
capitalism. Your thoughts?
~
THE CULT OF IGNORANCE
IN THE UNITED STATES: ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM AND THE ‘DUMBING DOWN’ OF AMERICA
~
YOUR BRAIN DOES NOT
PROCESS INFORMATION LIKE A COMPUTER
Despite the misleading title, here’s a convincing argument
on how the brain does not work:
"Senses, reflexes and learning mechanisms – this is
what we start with, and it is quite a lot, when you think about it. If we
lacked any of these capabilities at birth, we would probably have trouble
surviving.
"But here is what we are not born with: information,
data, rules, software, knowledge, lexicons, representations, algorithms, programs,
models, memories, images, processors, subroutines, encoders, decoders, symbols,
or buffers – design elements that allow digital computers to behave somewhat
intelligently. Not only are we not born with such things, we also don’t develop
them – ever.
"We don’t store words or the rules that tell us how to
manipulate them. We don’t create representations of visual stimuli, store them
in a short-term memory buffer, and then transfer the representation into a
long-term memory device. We don’t retrieve information or images or words from
memory registers. Computers do all of these things, but organisms do not."
...
"The idea, advanced by several scientists, that specific memories are somehow stored in individual neurons is preposterous; if anything, that assertion just pushes the problem of memory to an even more challenging level: how and where, after all, is the memory stored in the cell?"
...
"As we navigate through the world, we are changed by a variety of experiences. Of special note are experiences of three types: (1) we observe what is happening around us (other people behaving, sounds of music, instructions directed at us, words on pages, images on screens); (2) we are exposed to the pairing of unimportant stimuli (such as sirens) with important stimuli (such as the appearance of police cars); (3) we are punished or rewarded for behaving in certain ways."
...
"The idea, advanced by several scientists, that specific memories are somehow stored in individual neurons is preposterous; if anything, that assertion just pushes the problem of memory to an even more challenging level: how and where, after all, is the memory stored in the cell?"
...
"As we navigate through the world, we are changed by a variety of experiences. Of special note are experiences of three types: (1) we observe what is happening around us (other people behaving, sounds of music, instructions directed at us, words on pages, images on screens); (2) we are exposed to the pairing of unimportant stimuli (such as sirens) with important stimuli (such as the appearance of police cars); (3) we are punished or rewarded for behaving in certain ways."
~
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S
SPEECH AT HIROSHIMA, MAY 2016
An indictment of the moral shortcomings of religion,
nationalism, and science. The following is an example of wise and courageous
leadership toward a global morality and civilization:
"How often does material advancement or social
innovation blind us to this truth? How easily we learn to justify violence in
the name of some higher cause.
"Every great religion promises a pathway to love and
peace and righteousness, and yet no religion has been spared from believers who
have claimed their faith as a license to kill.
"Nations arise telling a story that binds people
together in sacrifice and cooperation, allowing for remarkable feats. But those
same stories have so often been used to oppress and dehumanize those who are
different.
"Science allows us to communicate across the seas and
fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos, but those same
discoveries can be turned into ever more efficient killing machines.
"The wars of the modern age teach us this truth.
Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent
progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led
to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well."
...
"We must change our mind-set about war itself. To prevent conflict through diplomacy and strive to end conflicts after they’ve begun. To see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation and not violent competition. To define our nations not by our capacity to destroy but by what we build. And perhaps, above all, we must reimagine our connection to one another as members of one human race.
...
"We must change our mind-set about war itself. To prevent conflict through diplomacy and strive to end conflicts after they’ve begun. To see our growing interdependence as a cause for peaceful cooperation and not violent competition. To define our nations not by our capacity to destroy but by what we build. And perhaps, above all, we must reimagine our connection to one another as members of one human race.
"For this, too, is what makes our species unique. We’re
not bound by genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We
can choose. We can tell our children a different story, one that describes a
common humanity, one that makes war less likely and cruelty less easily
accepted."
~
A HISTORY OF U.S.
SECULARISM
~
THE WORLD NEEDS A
SECULAR COMMUNITY REVOLUTION
~
DONALD TRUMP AND THE
GOVERNING CANCER OF OUR TIME
~
TOOLS. WE’VE COME A
LONG WAY
Tools. We've come a long way, very fast. Imagine a future
when the real-time language translators in this link might become inexpensive
brain or under the skin implants. Or when such an implant might allow us to
actually speak and understand any language directly. Both possibilities might
be gateways toward a sustainable global morality and civilization. After all,
the first step toward empathy, true understanding and cooperation, toward
finding common ground among the world's diversity of meanings, beliefs, values,
and behaviors, is truly understanding what each of us is saying.
~
LIBERTY, COURAGE, AND
TOLERANCE
On liberty, courage, and tolerance. A comparison of
Christopher Hitchens and Isaiah Berlin. My mind, my incredulous view of most
religions, and my sense of humor, yes humor, cannot help but embrace
Hitchens. But my heart is with Berlin.
I addressed Berlin's tolerance and pluralism in a postscript
to a blog post in 2011: http://jameselassiter.blogspot.com/…/secularism-theism-and-…
Below is a good short essay comparing Hitchens and Berlin.
Here are excerpts:
"The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not
too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to
understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the
spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias. Who can
doubt that Berlin was filled with that spirit of liberty? But Hitchens was
filled with a spirit of liberty too."
...
"Hitchens exemplified courage; Berlin, tolerance. Hitchens was outspoken, outrageous, never afraid to offend, impressively undeterred by Islamist death threats. ... But he was brave, and utterly consistent in his defense of free speech.
...
"Berlin was not notable for his courage. Yet Berlin was one of the most eloquent, consistent defenders of a liberalism which creates and defends the spaces in which people subscribing to different values, holding incompatible views, pursuing irreconcilable political projects — in short, the Hitchenses and the anti-Hitchenses — can battle it out in freedom, without violence. Berlin personified not merely tolerance but also an extraordinary gift for empathy, that ability to get inside very different heads and hearts which is a distinguishing mark of the liberal imagination."
...
"Hitchens exemplified courage; Berlin, tolerance. Hitchens was outspoken, outrageous, never afraid to offend, impressively undeterred by Islamist death threats. ... But he was brave, and utterly consistent in his defense of free speech.
...
"Berlin was not notable for his courage. Yet Berlin was one of the most eloquent, consistent defenders of a liberalism which creates and defends the spaces in which people subscribing to different values, holding incompatible views, pursuing irreconcilable political projects — in short, the Hitchenses and the anti-Hitchenses — can battle it out in freedom, without violence. Berlin personified not merely tolerance but also an extraordinary gift for empathy, that ability to get inside very different heads and hearts which is a distinguishing mark of the liberal imagination."
~
HUMAN MIGRATION FOR
HIGH SCHOOLERS
Here's a very good book on human evolution and migration for
high schoolers. I was a pro bono consultant for the later drafts of the book.
Part of my review is printed on the back cover. The publisher says the book is
for 12-15 year-olds but I think the book's vocabulary and the topics listed in
the contents, glossary and index indicate it would also be a very worthwhile
read for 16-18 year-olds. It was published by Nomad Press in Vermont and
printed in Canada. I highly recommend it.
~
ANGER AND FORGIVENESS
On anger and forgiveness, a review of brilliant philosopher
Martha Nussbaum's latest book.
"We’ve got to be as clear-headed about human beings as
possible, because we are still each other’s only hope.” - James Baldwin
...
"[D]espite anger’s long cultural history of being seen as morally justifiable and as a useful signal that wrongdoing has taken place, it is a normatively faulty response that masks deeper, more difficult emotions and stands in the way of resolving them. Consequently, forgiveness — which [philosopher Martha] Nussbaum defines as 'a change of heart on the part of the victim, who gives up anger and resentment in response to the offender’s confession and contrition' — is also warped into a transactional proposition wherein the wrongdoer must earn, through confession and apology, the wronged person’s morally superior grace."
...
"[D]espite anger’s long cultural history of being seen as morally justifiable and as a useful signal that wrongdoing has taken place, it is a normatively faulty response that masks deeper, more difficult emotions and stands in the way of resolving them. Consequently, forgiveness — which [philosopher Martha] Nussbaum defines as 'a change of heart on the part of the victim, who gives up anger and resentment in response to the offender’s confession and contrition' — is also warped into a transactional proposition wherein the wrongdoer must earn, through confession and apology, the wronged person’s morally superior grace."
~
THE OTHER SLAVERY
"What is profound about Reséndez's argument isn’t
simply that there was a kind of slavery older, more widespread and more
pernicious than African slavery (or that it continued longer) but that there is
a clear and direct relationship between the two. 'In 1865-1866,' he writes,
'southern states enacted the infamous Black Codes aimed at restricting the
freedom of former slaves. Adopting tried-and-true tactics such as vagrancy
laws, convict leasing, and debts, white southerners sought to nullify the
provisions of the Thirteenth Amendment.' The tactics he lists were pulled from
the playbook that had kept Indians in servitude in the West and in Mexico long
after slavery had been made illegal."
...
"[T]here is a larger point hiding in these pages that has everything to do with the world in which we live today: The institution of 'the other slavery' — the thinking behind it, the ways in which laws were passed and interpreted, how the practice of slavery itself took on many different guises — is alive today and in a world where the richest people exercise so much authority (in the form of political influence, economic power, and cultural capital) over a vast (and growing) underclass; where more and more jobs are in the service sector; where the poor are subjected to so many disproportionately onerous taxes and fines and fees. To think about the enslavement of Indians over the last 500 years can help us think about the ways in which people are enslaved today."
...
"[T]here is a larger point hiding in these pages that has everything to do with the world in which we live today: The institution of 'the other slavery' — the thinking behind it, the ways in which laws were passed and interpreted, how the practice of slavery itself took on many different guises — is alive today and in a world where the richest people exercise so much authority (in the form of political influence, economic power, and cultural capital) over a vast (and growing) underclass; where more and more jobs are in the service sector; where the poor are subjected to so many disproportionately onerous taxes and fines and fees. To think about the enslavement of Indians over the last 500 years can help us think about the ways in which people are enslaved today."
~
YES, YOU CAN TRUST
YOUR “SELF”
Yes you can. It's about far more than YOU and your brain.
"[W]e really have no clue what we’re talking about,
even when we think we do, and so on."
If this and what the rest of this hyperbolic essay claims represent
an necessary and essential truth about the totality of human experience, our
species would have become extinct long ago. There is more to it than found in
this essay.
Human brain anatomy and physiology and their attendant
psycho-social functioning have proven necessary and sufficient for over 200,000
years despite the shortcomings and inaccuracies this writer seems to enjoy
pointing out. I'll take what we have, warts and all, over a construct of
Humankind as narrow as the one he would like us to accept.
The sum of our physical, psychological and social existence
through time, as individuals and as groups, is far more than our individual
neurological misperceptions and inaccurate and incomplete understandings. A
view of Humankind such as this writer's may be intended in part to objectively
show our inefficiencies and this is always a good thing to keep in mind. But
fortunately the side of the ledger with our individual and group successes at
flourishing far outweighs our neurological shortcomings.
How can that be, that we flourish despite our physical
foibles, one might ask? Remember, biological evolution works on bodies. But it,
and cultural evolution especially, also works on groups and ideas. If humans
lived simply as an aggravate of bodies reliant solely on our sometimes
inefficient brains and senses, we would indeed be a pitiful, vulnerable mob of
creatures. Fortunately, we have, since the evolutionary emergence of language,
cultural transmission, and cooperation nearly a quarter of a million years ago,
become extremely efficient at compensating for the inefficiencies of our senses
and brains. What we miss as individual globs of meat is made up for by the
corrections and accommodations made by the content of the accumulated and
shared knowledge of the ethnosphere.
Cheer up, "We" have and will continue to flourish despite the limits of our anatomy and physiology. There is far more to understanding the human condition than that provided by neuroscience alone.
~
AMERICA IS RIPE FOR
TYRANNY
This is the best analysis of contemporary politics in the US
I have read. Frightening, whether you are a Democrat, Independent or
Republican, a liberal or conservative. It reinforces my dark vision of an
unavoidable bad time ahead and leaves me with a feeling of powerlessness to do
anything to stop it.
I am an eternal optimist based on our cultural evolutionary
track record of relying on reason and mutually beneficial cooperation over
brute force, unfettered emotion and selfishness. But sadly I have lately become
more and more convinced things in US society, and subsequently the rest of the
world, are going to get worse, much worse, before they get better.
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full
of passionate intensity."
- Yeats
- Yeats
I don't expect a Second Coming but I do now expect dire
circumstances ahead for Humankind. That is, if we continue to indulge and act
on our emotions and our fear, and our blame and hatred of the other. Perhaps
this is the beginning of the time of Humankind when a catastrophe is about to
happen - that pivotal disaster where the center of our Humanity will fail to
bind us any longer. That destruction and pain I and others have long and often
thought necessary if reason, cooperation, compassion and compromise were ever
abandoned. A truly cataclysmic social upheaval before there could finally be,
from within our crippled state of societal collapse, a true awakening. That
being a national and global rebirth of clarity and focus where we come to our
senses about who and what we and the planet really are, and what needs to be
done to maximize human and Earth flourishing and avoid extinction.
One night before I left Swaziland Southern Africa in 1983,
after teaching at a rural high school in that kingdom for over three years, I
enjoyed numerous bottles of beer and calabashes of homemade millet brew under
the moonlight. I was sitting on the ground behind our tiny local bottle store
overlooking an expansive valley of Swazi subsistence homesteads. I was with a
small group of my best African guy friends. Finally, after hours of raucous
banter and levity I asked my friends what message they would most like me to
take back to my US compatriots. The atmosphere turned solemn as each of them
thought. After a moment one friend, a Zulu refugee artist and musician from
South Africa, said: "Tell them to continue with their pursuit of wealth
and their efforts at global domination until they are finally satisfied. Just
hurry and get it over with. Maybe then something better will come about in the
world." Maybe this is what it will take when reason and compassion fail
us, or we fail them. My friend has since passed away but his sad and sobering
message of resignation, his wish and vision, still inspires my hope and
optimism.
~
UNDERSTANDING THE
FLOW OF TIME
"The flow of time is certainly one of the most
immediate aspects of our waking experience. It is essential to how we see
ourselves and to how we think we should live our lives. Our memories help fix
who we are; other thoughts reach forward to what we might become. Surely our
modern scientific sense of time, as it grows ever more sophisticated, should
provide meaningful insights here.
...
"Is our experience of time’s flow akin to watching a live play, where things occur in the moment but not before or after, a flickering in and out of existence around the ‘now’? Or, is it like watching a movie, where all eternity is already in the can, and we are watching a discrete sequence of static images, fooled by our limited perceptual apparatus into thinking the action flows smoothly?
...
"For most of the past few centuries, conscious awareness has been considered beyond the pale for physics, a problem too hard to tackle, postponed while we dealt with other urgent business. As scientists drove ever deeper into the nucleus and out to the stars, the conscious mind itself, and the glaring contrast between our experience of time’s flow and our eternalised mathematical theories, was left hanging. How did that come to pass? Isn’t science supposed to test itself against the ground of experience? This disconnect might help to explain why so many students not only don’t ‘get’ physics, but are positively repulsed by it. Where are they in the world picture drawn by physicists? Where is life, and where is death? Where is the flow of time?"
...
"Is our experience of time’s flow akin to watching a live play, where things occur in the moment but not before or after, a flickering in and out of existence around the ‘now’? Or, is it like watching a movie, where all eternity is already in the can, and we are watching a discrete sequence of static images, fooled by our limited perceptual apparatus into thinking the action flows smoothly?
...
"For most of the past few centuries, conscious awareness has been considered beyond the pale for physics, a problem too hard to tackle, postponed while we dealt with other urgent business. As scientists drove ever deeper into the nucleus and out to the stars, the conscious mind itself, and the glaring contrast between our experience of time’s flow and our eternalised mathematical theories, was left hanging. How did that come to pass? Isn’t science supposed to test itself against the ground of experience? This disconnect might help to explain why so many students not only don’t ‘get’ physics, but are positively repulsed by it. Where are they in the world picture drawn by physicists? Where is life, and where is death? Where is the flow of time?"
~
SPINOZA’S VIEWS OF
GOD, RELIGION AND SOCIETY
"Spinoza’s views on God, religion and society have lost
none of their relevance. At a time when Americans seem willing to bargain away
their freedoms for security, when politicians talk of banning people of a
certain faith from our shores, and when religious zealotry exercises greater
influence on matters of law and public policy, Spinoza’s philosophy –
especially his defence of democracy, liberty, secularity and toleration – has
never been more timely."
~
ORIGINS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
"[N]ew theories and evidence arriving from modern
research suggest that the heart of our experiencing self, the unique natural
phenomenon we have called ‘consciousness’, is more than an incidental emergence
in the human animal, it reflects something fundamental about the way reality is
organized. ... The self-realizing, self-referential qualities unique to
consciousness may also be necessary to explain why anything at all exists. ...
There is a profound and consequential distinction between the old materialist
view, in which we are isolated fragments of illusory experience in a doomed and
meaningless universe, and the now emerging view, in which we are each of us
truly conscious participators in an on-going unfoldment of cosmic
creativity."
This short essay is fuzzy and unconvincing. At certain points it reads like woo. But it's ideas about the self, consciousness, and the nature of reality are appealing to me. They appeal to my respect for yet skepticism about materialism and my conviction that the self is not simply an illusion that materialism will eventually reduce to biochemistry. Surely, consciousness was not inevitable in our universe though it is essential to our understanding of the universe. Maybe in his new book Adrian Nelson explains how consciousness is an integral part of or is in any way connected to the quantum physics of the cosmos. Nelson is not alone in looking into this. There are nearly 4,000 books at Amazon.com under the search topic "quantum consciousness." For now, I'm very skeptical.
This short essay is fuzzy and unconvincing. At certain points it reads like woo. But it's ideas about the self, consciousness, and the nature of reality are appealing to me. They appeal to my respect for yet skepticism about materialism and my conviction that the self is not simply an illusion that materialism will eventually reduce to biochemistry. Surely, consciousness was not inevitable in our universe though it is essential to our understanding of the universe. Maybe in his new book Adrian Nelson explains how consciousness is an integral part of or is in any way connected to the quantum physics of the cosmos. Nelson is not alone in looking into this. There are nearly 4,000 books at Amazon.com under the search topic "quantum consciousness." For now, I'm very skeptical.
~
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE AND KANT’S IS/OUGHT PROBLEM
Maybe work in the AI field of robot ethics can help provide
a means of overcoming Kant's is-ought proscription against using science to
inform and guide the development of moral systems, in particular, the knotty
problem of coming up with a global yet pluralistic morality to guide a global
worldview and civilization.
I agree with and have often written about and supported
Michael Shermer and Sam Harris's respective but similar views that such a
science-informed morality is possible and desirable. And that arriving at such
a world unifying morality and civilization is likely to be the only option for
our species' survival and a sustainable future of human and planet flourishing.
The following essay is encouraging. What do you think about any of this?
"[T]hough we may not want to leave the most advanced
ethical decisions to machines just yet, work on robotic ethics is advancing our
own understanding of morality. ... [J]ust as computers advanced the
philosophical understanding of the mind, the same will become true for robots
and the study of ethics. ... [T]he history of ethics shows a steadily building
consensus—and work on robot ethics can contribute to refining moral reasoning.
~
COMPARING BLACK
PEOPLE TO MONKEYS, A LONG, DARK HISTORY
~
BASIC INCOME FOR ALL
Here's a novel approach to inequality and the current and
widely popular yet unsustainable economic growth model. Makes good sense to me.
But can you imagine throwing this slab-of-red-meat idea into the Republican
election primary cage match they're having? They'd go wild! Can you visualize
them climbing all over each other to be the one to scream loudest about the
increases in taxes, socialism, illegal immigration, etc., such an approach to
poverty and welfare would cause? I can. Such a thought would be funny if not
ludicrous but it's really not - nearly half our country thinks like those
candidates do and seems incapable of thinking any differently even when it just
might be for their own good. What a selfish, hateful, willfully misguided lot
they are, IMHO. Thoughts?
~
OBAMA MOST POLARIZING
PRESIDENT?
This is not a partisan political post. It is about society,
culture, and humanistic freethinking.
In terms of the Enlightenment principles we humanists adhere
to - individual freedom and dignity, justice, human progress, and a preference
for objective reasoning and the secular-scientific assessment of all things -
would someone kindly explain to me how anyone can legitimately claim that
Barack Obama is the most divisive president ever? Even somewhat objective CNN
calls him such (see report below and Marco Rubio's post-SOTU assessment
reported separately).
Why is divisiveness laid at Obama's doorstep based solely on
poll data showing how many Democrats versus Republicans support him? I think a
good case can be made for better measures of divisiveness/inclusion/exclusion -
1) Women, progressive-thinking white males, blacks, Latinos, Asians, recent
immigrants, the young, the poor, and wealthy progressives have all found common
ground among themselves as a result of Obama's unifying leadership; and 2)
Conservative Republicans have chosen to distance themselves not been pushed
away by Obama, and have abandoned humanist thinking as well, for that matter.
Maybe Wittgenstein was right, we are all victims of the
meaning- and symbol-bending language games we culture-bearing primates depend
on. These are the very games members of the verbally skilled and powerful
political class use to manipulate and control us. All politicians are masters
of these games but conservative Republicans are the most egregious and obvious
distorters of language, meanings, and symbols. Where's my baloney/BS detection kit?
Thoughts anyone?
~
RACE AND RACISM AFTER
OBAMA
This is a great essay on racism in US society and culture,
and how it is expressed politically. Regrettably, things are likely to get much
worse before getting better, IMHO. But, I feel confident they will eventually
get better, if not by a gradual spread of informed, reasoned thinking about
human nature then by attrition and the eventual dying off of racists.
We are a better species and worthy of a future ruled
significantly more by our intellectual powers than our emotions of fear
and anger. The condition of racialized, white privilege-protecting politics we
currently suffer from is inhumane and therefore contrary to what we are capable
of in our nature.
Happily, the good we are capable of has triumphed more often
than not over evil in our evolutionary history. The current state of political
affairs in the US will one day in the future be looked back upon as part of a
still very primitive stage in our growth and development as a species. I hope
we all live long enough to be here when that assessment is made.
"By well into Obama’s second term – in other words, now
– went the thinking back then, the country should find itself beyond race.
Obama’s presence in the Oval Office, and his demonstrated competence as the
nation’s chief executive, would make whites more comfortable with blacks. As a
result, racism would begin to fade away, eventually disappearing.
"It hasn’t happened."
~
MATERIALISM,
COMPLEXITY, EMERGENCE, AGENCY
Another perspective on a discussion I've had with many of
you - ultra-reductionism/determinism vs complexity, emergence, agency.
Massimo's articles on this in Human Prospect and TPM (linked
in this essay) are also worth reading
"Yes, of course biological organisms are made of
molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of subatomic particles, the
behavior of which can be explained in physical terms. But it is equally obvious
to any biologist that if you simply describe the physical-chemical
behavior of living organisms and their parts without also asking why they are
the way they are, you are missing the entire point of doing biology."
...
"Teleonomy is the appearance of purposefulness that results from some type of natural process, chiefly (exclusively, really) natural selection. That’s where the difference between physics and biology resides, as Darwin explained: physical systems are not teleonomic, while biological ones are. And then there are conscious agents like us, who are not just teleonomic, but capable of teleology: when we make an object, a machine, we do it with a purpose in mind, not just the appearance of a purpose. And that is what further separates biology from the social sciences (psychology, sociology, economics): in the latter one cannot make sense of things without invoking purpose."
...
"Teleonomy is the appearance of purposefulness that results from some type of natural process, chiefly (exclusively, really) natural selection. That’s where the difference between physics and biology resides, as Darwin explained: physical systems are not teleonomic, while biological ones are. And then there are conscious agents like us, who are not just teleonomic, but capable of teleology: when we make an object, a machine, we do it with a purpose in mind, not just the appearance of a purpose. And that is what further separates biology from the social sciences (psychology, sociology, economics): in the latter one cannot make sense of things without invoking purpose."
~
THE EMOTIONAL AND
REASONING PRIMATE
Here’s a good antidote to the ultra-reductionists,
especially Jonathan Haidt and his insistence that emotion rules and reasoning
is for the most part post-hoc rationalization. Seems, yes, emotions get things
started but, fortunately, they are mediated by reasoning as a precursor to
action. Imagine yourself on the African savanna in the late Pleistocene. A lion
startles you. You tense up and prepare to run, your eyes fixated on the lion's
eyes. As your legs, driven by emotion alone, tense up and begin to flex,
you begin to move away as your reasoning instantaneously begins telling you
"Yep, she's looking at and moving toward and in fact stalking only me.
Better speed up my retreat or do something." Emotion is adaptive as a
warning and prep mechanism. Reasoning decides on the appropriateness of
action/no action and what specific action is taken if action is judged to be
warranted. This conscious reasoning process is informed by the emotional
warning alarm and facilitated by the pre-action bodily potential emotion sets
in motion. If it was emotion in charge we'd be in an almost constant state of
flight or fight in response to everything we encounter in the course of our
daily lives on this rough and tumble planet, including the often bizarre and
freaky behavior of our fellow humans. Looks like a very good book.
~
MALAISE IN ENGLISH
LITERARY CRITICISM? MEH.
"I have spoken with many young [English literature]
academics who say that their theoretical training has left them benumbed. After
a few years in the profession, they can hardly locate the part of themselves
that can be moved by a poem or novel. It is as if their souls have gone into
hiding, to await tenure or some other deliverance."
This essay focuses on the current state of English literary
criticism. It is an indictment of an ongoing debasement of the self, humanism,
and love that the writer says is widespread within the humanities.
Post-modernism is troubling in that it is destructive to our
humanity yet, in exchange, offers nothing. The PM assault on modernity -
science, humanism, progress, individualism, the self and morality - is misplaced.
Their target should be the perverted misuse of these core Enlightenment ideas.
That is, the exploitative, earth-degrading pursuit and projection of private
wealth and nation-state power. PM's approach is a throwing out of the baby -
our basic human nature of reliance on culture, the body/group/planet-embedded
self, and consensual, collaborative morality - with the dirty bath water of
self-destructive economic and political pursuits. PM is akin to an enraged mob
intent on destroying itself.
PM's attack on the excesses of modernity is justified and in
many ways potentially corrective, but it's attack on our primary evolutionary
adaptive strategy, our humanity, is neither just nor helpful.
If this essay is an indicator of the future of a humanism
sans the self and morality, then the academy, and maybe Western civilization
itself, has a much worse problem than I thought.
Have a look...
~
ANTHROPOLOGY AND
CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES
Seems to me the use of anthropology in missionizing is
somewhat like physics and the Manhattan Project. In both the pursuit of a
science of Humankind and a science of matter one has little to no control over
how the religiously and politically powerful will use your methods and
knowledge and to what end. Talk about going from an "is" to an
"ought!" It is doable but only if you use a belief or values
"filter."
Thanks to Ronald Boyd for informing me of these two. Below
is another example, a book I bought not long ago at a yard sale in good old
Fayette County! Grrrr!
~
STOICISM AND TERROR
"Like the ancient Romans in the aftermath of the
Germanic invasions, many of us today in the West now live in an atmosphere of
fear and anger. The desire to eliminate threats to our physical safety and to
punish those who assault us is natural. As the ancient Stoics admonish us,
however, we must not allow primordial passions to guide our thinking, but
reason and practical wisdom. Stoics recognize the need to take a step back from
our emotions, examine the representations of reality they create, and
analyze their accuracy before formulating a reasoned response."
...
"The greatest individual contribution a Stoic could make toward establishing world peace would be to cast aside his or her own fears and welcome all those now fleeing from violence and terror in the Middle East. The presence of the refugees already here, as well as the fact that many more are on the way, are matters that lie beyond our personal control. What is up to us, however (no matter how we believe the refugee crisis should ultimately be addressed), is to show them the kindness all Stoics are expected to show every inhabitant of this planet. As Marcus Aurelius said, Adapt yourself to the environment in which your lot has been cast, and show true love to the fellow-mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you. True, some terrorists may have hid themselves among the refugees. Reason nevertheless dictates that the majority of them have fled their homes because their lives were threatened. The few cases who might pose a danger to us are a matter for the authorities. Meanwhile, In order to live with the uncertainty, we need to have the courage of our convictions."
...
"The greatest individual contribution a Stoic could make toward establishing world peace would be to cast aside his or her own fears and welcome all those now fleeing from violence and terror in the Middle East. The presence of the refugees already here, as well as the fact that many more are on the way, are matters that lie beyond our personal control. What is up to us, however (no matter how we believe the refugee crisis should ultimately be addressed), is to show them the kindness all Stoics are expected to show every inhabitant of this planet. As Marcus Aurelius said, Adapt yourself to the environment in which your lot has been cast, and show true love to the fellow-mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you. True, some terrorists may have hid themselves among the refugees. Reason nevertheless dictates that the majority of them have fled their homes because their lives were threatened. The few cases who might pose a danger to us are a matter for the authorities. Meanwhile, In order to live with the uncertainty, we need to have the courage of our convictions."
~
MORALITY AND
MIGRATION IN THE PLEISTOCENE?
~
ARE YOU AN ILLUSION?
A very good book on the self and the need for a pluralistic
approach to discovery, explanation, and knowledge.
"Midgley argues powerfully and persuasively that the
rich variety of our imaginative life cannot be contained in the narrow bounds
of a highly puritanical materialism that simply equates brain and self.
Engaging with the work of prominent thinkers, Midgley investigates the source
of our current attitudes to the self and reveals how ideas, traditions and
myths have been twisted to fit in, seemingly naturally, with science’s current
preoccupation with the physical and, in doing so, have made many other valuable
activities and ideas appear as anti-scientific. Midgley shows that the
subjective sources of thought – our own experiences – are every bit as
necessary in helping to explain the world as the objective ones such as brain
cells.
"Are You an Illusion? offers a salutary analysis of
science’s claim to have done away with the self and a characteristic injection
of common sense from one of our most respected philosophers into a debate
increasingly in need of it." - [From the back cover of the book.]
~
MORE ON A FUTURE
GLOBAL PLURALISM, MORALITY, AND CIVILIZATION
Despite my hopeful blog posts about a future global
pluralism, morality, and civilization (Being Human - Our Past, Present, and
Future in Nature), I'm not generally in favor of grand, teleological social
theories of Humankind. But the way the Western leaders responded after 9/11 and
again after Paris they're taking us in the grand-theory direction ISIS wants, a
clash of civilizations. The strength and value of Huntington's essay (earlier
post) is not so much in it's predictive power, rather in its foreboding of
things to come if Humankind continues with its currently favored worldview and
strategy - nationalism over globalism led by military-enforced quests for
evermore hegemonic power and wealth. Here's a more recent take on this problem
by another writer:
"American politicians just don’t have a basic
understanding of the threat that we face,” Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy, told Al Monitor. ISIS,
he said, “wants to provoke a clash of civilizations. That’s the intent. So when
we use similar language, we’re falling into their trap.”
~
HUMAN RIGHTS WITHOUT
HUMANISM
I am in many ways against postmodernism. But the approach to
human rights attributed to French postmodernist philosopher Michel Foucault in
this essay strongly appeals to me. It also makes me question the notions of
"human nature" and "humanism." I would greatly appreciate
hearing from my fellow secular humanists and other friends on this.
On the one hand, I like the idea that human rights are
inherent and flow naturally from our being human. We can clearly see in the
fossils and archeological record that our ancestors established a new, unique
and emergent adaptive strategy and ecological niche - a predominant reliance on
language-based symbolic thought and communication, sociality, and
trans-generational learning. The power of this evolutionary adaptive strategy
continues to grow and the application of which has not been even remotely
equaled or approximated by any other earthly life form.
But on the other hand, the well-evidenced dynamic plasticity
of cultural beliefs and values, including our notions of our rights, within a
society and between societies, and over immense spans of time, make it hard to
lock in once and for all what human nature and humanism are. Even the West's
preeminent source of factual knowledge, science, when at its best, provides
provisional versus absolute methods and conclusions for understanding all
natural phenomena, including humans and our behavior. Given these cultural and
scientific realities, shouldn't our notions of human nature and humanism also
be dynamic, malleable, and provisional?
Here are some excerpts from the essay:
"Are human rights really universal? Or are they merely
the narrow inheritance of the Western Enlightenment or European modernity? Do
they reflect ‘Asian Values’? Or Islamic values? Can they be derived from
Confucianism or Ubuntu as readily as they can from the works of Locke or of
Kant?
...
"As far as Foucault was concerned, it was possible to be a supporter of human rights whilst contesting any notion of a universal human essence. ... Foucault struggles to defend and articulate a political conception of rights and of human rights that is open, contingent and revisable — and that does not rely for its moral or normative legitimacy on the idea of a universal human essence beyond power or politics.
...
"As far as Foucault was concerned, it was possible to be a supporter of human rights whilst contesting any notion of a universal human essence. ... Foucault struggles to defend and articulate a political conception of rights and of human rights that is open, contingent and revisable — and that does not rely for its moral or normative legitimacy on the idea of a universal human essence beyond power or politics.
"Foucault adopts a concept of human rights that does
not start with a pre-given idea of 'the human' whose innate dignity (or reason,
or interests) demands universal protection but rather sees the meaning and
value of 'humanity' as something that is very much open and that shifts in
response to (among other things) ongoing and unpredictable political struggles
over the jurisdiction of human rights. Political struggles over what human
rights include and what they exclude themselves define the content of 'the
human' in whose name these rights are claimed.
From the perspective of many rights theorists this
insistence of Foucault’s on the contingency of 'the human' of human rights
deprives them of a solid normative grounding. But for Foucault it is clear that
the political promise of human rights would be utterly exhausted if we ever
arrived at a definitive and enduring statement of humanity and its rights.
'[W]e can’t say that freedom or human rights has to be limited at certain frontiers,'
Foucault warns in a late interview. It is precisely this claim to limit the
meaning of humanity and of human rights that concerns him: 'What I am afraid of
about humanism is that it presents a certain form of our ethics as a universal
model for any kind of freedom. I think that there are more secrets, more
possible freedoms, and more inventions in our future than we can imagine in
humanism as it is dogmatically represented on every side of the political
rainbow.' It is in this creative and political spirit, in this aspiration to
invention rather than dogmatism, that Foucault claims to speak of human rights
without finally knowing what humanism means."
~
ECONOMICS IS NOT A
SCIENCE
Totally agree with this essay! A Nobel Prize for economics
has been given since 1969. For what? Alan Greenspan's leadership of the Fed
certainly didn't benefit from Nobel laureate wisdom. Or, maybe it did and
that's what he was following then later admitted his guiding ideology was
wrong. Ai yai yai!
~
FERAL CHILDREN
Feral children, adaptive alternatives to the human
socialized, enculturated self. Photos are staged, subjects' stories are true.
~
THE HUMANISM OF PAUL
KURTZ
"On the humanist side, [Paul] Kurtz pursued his philosophical
interest in finding moral alternatives to the dogmatic ethics of organized
religion. He refused to believe that nihilism—the cliff of free choice where
atheism gets you—was the only possible outcome of unbelief, and he opposed the
use of ridicule as a means of argumentation. In fact, I learned from Paul that
there is no need to be unkind to people who disagree with you...."
~
NEUROPHILOSOPHY VS.
NEUROMANIA?
~
THERE’S NO THEORY OF
EVERYTHING
And then there's this that claims there is no scientific or
other grand theory of everything, that what is most needed are
"multifarious descriptions of many things."
~
THE SELF AND THE END
OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AS WE KNOW IT
Understanding the self or person is a "What is
it?" question that has not been consistently and there sufficiently
answered by natural and social scientists. Here's a good argument by analogy
supporting my earlier post(s) on why the self is much more than what happens in
brain meat. A particular self or person results from the interaction between
the self the brain produces and the psychological elaboration of that
brain-self through language. This symbolic activity of the conscious mind is
based on an understanding of a cultural definition of the self. This
brain-mind-meaning self resides within a body inhabiting the biosphere. It also
lives within and using the social structures and functions of society in which
it may or may not thrive and survive. The, or a, self is a very complicated,
multidimensional "what" that requires very complicated,
multidimensional approaches, including and beyond neuroscience, for answering
"how it (the self) works" questions.
~
LIFE AS A STORY IS A
DANGEROUS IDEA?
And then there's this
on the self: http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/the-dangerous-idea-that-life-is-a-story/
~
THREE NOTIONS OF THE SELF PERSON
It can be argued that there are at least three popular, contradictory notions of the self or person. First, a major tenet of Western philosophy is the existence and importance of a self - the Delphic dictum "know thyself," Socrates's "the unexamined life (of a person) is not worth living," and the Stoic's emphasis on cultivating personal virtues as a means to achieve individual happiness and social harmony. The Enlightenment notion of individuals (persons) not only existing but having certain rights must also be included here.
Second, Buddhism also acknowledges the existence of the self
but this religion's path to happiness and social flourishing involves
meditation emphasizing an abandonment or transcendence of self, or a submerging
of one's self into Nature.
Finally, the idea that the self is an "illusion"
is a popular notion promoted by neuroscientists and a few psychologists and
philosophers. That is, the self is an illusion arising from the brain (where
does it exist and who/what is having this illusion?) that the "owner of a
brain" (another interesting notion), and other brains and their language
facilities and bodily speech organs, falsely claim is a self.
I fully accept that the self or person is somehow a product
of and exists initially within the electro-chemical workings of brain tissue.
That the self is neither a ghost nor homunculus in the cranium nor an eternal
soul existing independent of the living embodied brain.
But I cannot accept that the self is only or merely an
"illusion" as that term is favored by many neuroscientists and
writers and as defined by the OED: "a thing that is or is likely to be
wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses; a deceptive appearance or
impression; a false idea or belief."
This brings us to the psychological, social, and humanities
notions of self or person. To claim that the self is essentially an unreal
illusion produced by the brain requires that one also show that everything that
is derived from this illusion is also illusionary. That the psychological,
social, selves portrayed in nonfiction and literature, using our definition
above, are things that are likely to be wrongly perceived or interpreted by the
senses; a deceptive appearance or impression; or a false idea or belief.
Yes, the selves of psychology, sociology, and literature may
be wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses. And, yes, they may give rise
to deceptive appearances or impressions. But, no, they definitely are not false
ideas or beliefs. They are real.
That the self is produced by the brain does make it an
illusionary epiphenomenon. And this certainly does not support the claim that
this supposed illusion gives good evidence for the materialist claim that brain
electro-chemical activity should therefore be considered the only real entity
and activity wherein the human experience can be found and definitively
understood. And, finally, the claim of self as an illusion produced by the
brain does not negate the truth that the self is real in a psychological and
social sense.
If you believe it does, and think you are on or supporting
the cutting edge of contemporary thinking, that explanations of what we
"really" are, psychologically, socially, historically and otherwise,
are most fruitfully pursued by only studying brains, you are mistaken. You are
supporting a way of thinking and approach to discovery and knowledge that
denigrates and denies what is perhaps the most important and meaning-laden
aspects of the entirety of the human evolutionary experience. That being our
ability to create credible, functioning persons who find meaning in who we are
and what we do as individuals, and in what we do in the company of our fellow
humans.
Neuroscience is great. I'm all for it and am certain it will
continue to help us understand many things about the human experience.
Understanding in detail how the brain produces consciousness, mind, and the
self at that level of complexity/analysis, if neuroscientists ever do, will be
a monumental and I suspect very surprising discovery. However, humanness is not
only and at bottom what our brains are and do. Most significantly, from an
evolutionary and almost every other standpoint, our humanness is that which we
think we are and aspire to, and it is the good we do and the things we achieve
as one person among other persons. In human evolutionary terms, brains only really
matter in terms of their ability to help create enough mentally healthy and
socially adept persons to sustain our human way of life, add to our well-being,
and contribute to our survival.
~
HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD
Good essay. Offers some reasonable suggestions for the problem that good ideas abound but sustainable solutions to societal and global problems and making progress are rare and hard won.
~
