From: Christoph Reuss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Those individuals who were best at pulling rivets out of the
>> spaceship hull -- the "Pullocrats" -- had the most political
>> power because they controlled the most sex.
>
>Now we know why "Slick Willie" is so powerful...
You are right Chris, it's ALL about sex and power with the
human brain serving as press agent:
----
[From The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life
(Vintage Books). Copyright 1994 by Robert Wright.]
Excerpt from CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
DECEPTION AND SELF-DECEPTION
"But a famous series of experiments shows (in a quite different
context) how oblivious the conscious mind can be to its real
motivation, and how busily it sets about justifying the products
of that motivation.
"The experiments were conducted on 'split-brain' patients --
people who have had the link between left and right hemispheres
cut to stop severe epileptic seizures. The surgery has
surprisingly little effect on everyday behavior, but under
contrived conditions, strange things can happen. If the word
'nut' is flashed before the left eye (which leads to the right
hemisphere), but not the right eye (which leads to the left),
the subject reports no conscious awareness of the signal; the
information never enters the left hemisphere, which in most
people controls language and seems to dominate consciousness.
Meanwhile, though, the subject's left hand--controlled by the
right hemisphere--will, if allowed to rummage through a box of
objects, seize on a nut. The subject reports no awareness of
this fact unless allowed to see what his left hand is up to.
"When it comes time for the subject to justify his behavior,
the left brain passes from professed ignorance into unknowing
dishonesty. One example: the command 'Walk' is sent to a man's
right brain, and he complies. When asked where he's going, his
left brain, not privy to the real reason, comes up with another
one: he's going to get a soda, he says, convinced. Another
example: a nude image is flashed to the right brain of a woman,
who then lets loose an embarrassed laugh. Asked what's so funny,
she gives an answer that's less racy than the truth.
"Michael Gazzaniga, who conducted some of the split-brain
experiments, has said that language is merely the 'press agent'
for other parts of the mind; it justifies whatever acts they
induce, convincing the world that the actor is a reasonable,
rational, upstanding person. It may be that the realm of
consciousness itself is in large part such a press agent -- the
place where our unconsciously written press releases are infused
with the conviction that gives them force. Consciousness cloaks
the cold and self-serving logic of the genes in a variety of
innocent guises. The Darwinian anthropologist Jerome Barkow has
written, 'It is possible to argue that the primary evolutionary
function of the self is to be the organ of impression management
(rather than, as our folk psychology would have it, a
decision-maker).'"
Jay
