Warren Ockrassa wrote: > I think what Kevin was intimating -- and definitely what I was > thinking > -- is that human nature, which wants things to be polar and simple, is > rebelling against all these fuzzy logics.
Sort of, although I wouldn't go so far as to say that we want everything to be polar. I'm just saying that in terms of history and current events, our current world views and belief systems are much less important than the instincts and behaviors that were hard-wired into our brains at conception. Any true and lasting change in our society (the permanent elimination of poverty or war, for instance) will probably require some kind of physical change in our brains first. We need to take charge of our own evolution, in other words. As long as we have the same instincts as our savanna dwelling ancestors, there may be periods of peace and prosperity here and there, but the main thrust of human history will always be marked by war and social stratification. In regard to the current American political situation with its split between "red" and "blue" states, I agree with you. The division between teams of Us and Them probably has more to do with basic human nature than the political philosophies practiced by each party. It probably doesn't have to be binary, though - just fractured. Imo, it's the senseless nature of the debate (where what the candidates say matters much less than what team they lead) that reflects our instinctive need to be a member of the winning primate tribe, and the current split between two parties has more to do with American history and economics. There could just as easily be five political parties, and as long as people intinctively support their party no matter what the leaders do or say, that's human nature at work. Nick Arnett: > Let me take a shot at saying this another way. I think we are wired to talk and think about things with categories. > Over the centuries, we have been learning to use more categories. In medieval thinking, the truth was one category; > everything else was false. In modern thinking, truth belongs to no single person or institution, authority emerges from > the tension and feedback between pairs of competing categories. Today, we are recognizing that authority can emerge > from many interactions among categories, but we are just beginning to develop the cognitive models and skills to use > that notion. I agree wholeheartedly with your first statement, but I'm not so sure about the second. It's certainly true that we need to label and group things when thinking about them, but is it really true that western civilization started with two categories of thought (truth and falsehood) and has been expanding its range since then? I'm not qualified to judge that statement, but my gut feeling is that things were never so simple. For instance, why would western thought regress from the complexities of classical Greek or Roman world views to a simple binary system? Imo, the history of our intellectual development is sort of like a two track railway - one track is this crazy looping roller coaster that represents the different philosophies and world views developed by people who think about such things, philosophers, scientists, leaders, artists and the like (they've been developing our mental software) - and the other track, representing the worldview held by the majority of the species, is arrow straight. For most people truth has always been a matter of instinct. They pick a team (or a team is picked for them by their family or social group) and that team is by definition right and everything it does is correct. That's human nature. Kevin Street -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.8.5 - Release Date: 2/3/2005 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
