From: Durant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> One would tend to conclude that the human animal is genetically
>> incapable of dealing effectively with reality.
>
>Come now, such pessimism won't do, besides it is b.s.
>People become so dominant species because they
>are very good at observing, realising patterns, planning
>and acting on reality. The tendency is to do it
Come on now Eva, you consistently criticize evolutionary
theory while at the same time admitting you wont even make
the effort to read a book on the subject.
People become the dominant species because they are so
good at destroying everything in their path. In order to
accomplish this total destruction, people have developed
a mind that denies the reality of their actions and makes
up excuses (e.g., Marx's dementia served as an excuse for
the wholesale slaughter of 30 million(?) by Stalin).
In short, the human mind attempts to rationalize it's
brutal existence by constantly cooking-up new metaphysical
soup (good luck charms, gods, astrology, economic theories,
flying saucers, bla bla bla).
Here is some of that empiricism (science) I mentioned
earlier:
-------------------------------------------------------------
>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
