At 09:27 AM 11/7/97 -0500, "Thomas Lunde" wrote:
>In acknowledging Jay's post, I find the only discrepancy is the postulation
>of Ms Honesty who doesn't exist any longer, if she ever did. I am
>currently reading America Inc which was published in 1972. Current topics
>on the Hill are still dealing with reform of election financing in the same
>obtuse manner as in the 60's.
In a sense I disagree with you Thomas. Some people run
for office intending to be honest -- I did. On the other
hand, intending to be honest is not nearly enough.
I believe that honesty and objectively of the kind needed
to govern for the common good is beyond individual human
capability.
If civil society has any chance at all to survive the
coming century (damned unlikely), it involves setting
aside fairy tales left over from the 18th century
Enlightenment -- it involves understanding the true
nature of humans and learning to govern for the common
good. Thus, the key to our collective survival lies in
the new discipline of Evolutionary Psychology.
See "Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer" at:
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.htm
I have thought about the governance issue on-and-off ever
since I was part of government. I realized that two of
the big problems were ambiguity in our language and
internally-inconsitant laws.
I imagined a system of laws based upon some mathematical
language (I am familiar with Boolean Algebra) which could
be interpreted by computers.
Now that humanity has exceeded the carrying capacity of
the planet -- and the entire future of humanity is now
on the table -- there are "right" and "wrong" political
decisions. The right political decisions will tend to
lengthen civil society by reducing negative impacts on
our collective life-support and social systems. The wrong
political decisions will tend hasten our collective demise.
If a population of inherently-corrupt animals -- far over
carrying capacity -- wants its civilization to survive,
it will have to establish a political system where laws
can ONLY be crafted by scientists -- and ONLY administered
by computers.
I was going to teach myself Set Theory, but I dropped the
project when I realized there was no way to get there from
here. The people in power like the system exactly the way
it is -- it WORKS just fine for them.
Jay -- http://dieoff.org/page1.htm
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"… 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).'"
[ http://www.clark.net/pub/wright/chapthir.htm ]
