ILLITERACY STINGS
A Spokesman Review report on 9/3/04, p. A8, tells us that many people are fighting back in court when their credit reports are used by others to make decisions about them when they apply for rental properties, auto insurance and jobs. Look, we all know that sometimes, people fall on hard times when sudden adversity hits them in the pocket book. Put those unfortunates out of the equation, but. . . .
From now on people must be forewarned to manage their finances better. Anyone the least bit literate must have read by know about the increasing use of credit reports in making all sorts of decisions about them. Have they not read a book or paper lately? The illiterate are becoming the uninformed, and the uninformed are being squeezed out of our fast paced, information based economy. Another report I came across recently estimated that 2 in 3 citizens of the globe may soon be living in grinding poverty without potable water, adequate food or sufficient housing. I don’t know what we’re going to do, but compassion won’t be enough to meet the needs of so many people squeezed out of our modern world. Read, damnit, read!
WHEN NOTHING ELSE HAS BEEN TRIED, PRAY
A report from the school hostage situation in which hundreds died amazes me, specially since it came from Russia where praying ought to be suspect. One woman survivor reported that some of the hostages prayed and if some “did not know how to pray, we taught them.” How interesting. And while these captives prayed away the hours, what were they doing to help the more rational among them try to figure a way out, a way to defeat their captors? And the praying may have been effective in some cases but why not in all cases? Were the unfortunates who died actually praying to the Moslem god? Why is prayer such a hit and miss proposition? Atheists have that answer down pat. Why don’t you?
STICKING WITH THE POLITICIAN WHO’S BEHIND
Sometimes the act of rooting for a candidate is pretty painful, specially if, like me, America’s destiny really matters to you. The other day, when I came across the information that Bush’s lavishly staged convention drama had swung five percent of the voters in his direction (a ten point swing), I was in a lot of pain. It’s hard to be in a minority for some of us, very hard for a small percentage of us. I’m one of the latter. Then, I was thinking about what I’ve learned about the human psyche, how some of us love to be with a winner, and I realized that some Americans (5%?) are unable to stick to their guns when the going gets tough. They’ll swing like a tower bell in the slightest breeze. My own pain convinced me that some human animals might easily give in only not to feel like an outsider or a minority. There’s a tremendous pressure to give in when pain knots its bony fingers around your heart and squeezes. I have a wonderful admiration for those who are in a minority by other than choice. We must all hope that America will always be a place which treasures its minorities and makes them welcome and protects them with the Bill of Rights.
DOGMA GETS IN EVERYWHERE
Came across the program called MAMA—Mothers Against Meth Addiction. The woman who started it says that the more traditional “twelve step” programs have “watered god down” until god means little in the program. She claims her Christian program has 80% success while traditional twelve step programs have only 20% to 30% success. I challenge her to back up her statistics. I think they’re bogus and unfounded. People in twelve step recovery programs know that many a man and woman with 20 and 30 years in recovery will go out and use again. I want to see what the statistics are when each of her graduates comes to the end of their trail.
Historically, many religion-based programs have tried to wean the sick from their addictions. In AA, the saying goes that real alcoholics can’t recover with mere religious instruction. If religion were a real cure-all, why are there so many religious pedophiles! Some people do recover with only religious instruction, but the success rate is minimal for religious programs, and even those who do recover through religious instruction, often end up with the still grandiose ideas and distorted psychologies of their alcoholism. Many recovered alcoholics recognize Bush’s fantasy that his god speaks through him as a classic case of what they call a dry drunk.
Humility is a key trait that fully recovered alcoholics demonstrate. You’d not find one of them claiming that god speaks through them. When they do, they are usually in an asylum after a slip. Only a dry drunk can believe such an idea without slipping.
And I also see in MAMA’s program an old evil which undermines every program the religious try to offer to people, the evil purpose which does not put first the recovery of the sufferer but attempts to make converts of them. Eventually, the intelligent sufferer sees through the bogus aim and goes elsewhere, many to antidepressants which have a much greater success rate in removing depression than does religion.
Since religion itself is the chief cause of unhappy adjustments to the real world, people made crazy by religion may be quite susceptible to religious conversion and recovery.
I don’t know. . .
Just like many murderers admit to their Christianity on death row, maybe it’s the same case with drunks and addicts. Killers were always Christians who just became drunks for awhile in an attempt to escape the oppression and distortion of reality which are so much a part of religions everywhere. Then when the course of their drinking has petered out, they return to the fold they never really left. In the final analysis, AA is always happy to see a recovered addict and so tips it hat to anybody who manages to get real drunks sober and addicts clean. We’re all in the same business and shouldn’t fight among ourselves and ought to compliment the other’s successes rather than belittle them as our momma of the meths does.
————————————————————————————
"Only the mediocre are always at their best." —Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944)
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
BERGMAN ON THE INFANTILE IN THE ARTIST
“Like all other children, it seems to me I remember deciding to go out into the forest and lie there and pretend to be dead until everyone was sorry. Everyone knows that all their lives artists—particularly if they’re the sort that function as I do—retain a strongly infantile streak; or, to put it better, the creative streak is so deeply tied up with a sort of infantility, or a leftover of the child’s attitude to the world about him, that the artist also retains a lot of marginal behavior traits.” (Bergman on Bergman, p. 83)
WHO’S THE REAL GIRLY-MAN?
Arnold Schwartzensomething has a lot of nerve calling other real men, “girly-men”. This oiled up, perfumed, curly-haired little big man who wants all other males to look at and admire his body had better stare into his own mirror. Who is more narcissistic than a body builder? What type of man is more body obsessed than a female cover girl model than a body builder? What kind of male is so sissified inside that he has to build up a huge exterior to cover up that sissy side? Remember the guy on the beach who always got sand kicked in his face until he built his body up to hide the little guy on the beach inside? I think the real girly-man is Arnold Schwartenyoumaycallit himself. And, you all know, if a man’s got to tell you he’s a real man by putting down your manhood, we know what that means, don’t we?
FROM BERGMAN TO SCHWATRZENEGER TO DENNETT: or
FROM GREAT ARTIST TO DUMBBELL TO INTELLIGENT
Dennett (the last of him for awhile) in Freedom Evolves (p. 287) summarizes threats to freedom. “The real threats to freedom are not metaphysical but political and social. As we learn more about the conditions of human decision-making, we will have to devise, and agree upon, systems of government and law that are not hostage to false myths about human nature, that are robust in the face of further scientific discovery and technological advances. Are we freer than we want to be? We now have more power than ever to create the conditions under which we and our descendants will lead our lives.”
Dennett is onto the real thing for humankind. We must develop a value system that is based on real men and real women and on how their biology ticks and not on a value system based upon some pie in the sky hypothetical superbeing's mumblings about this and that coming from four or so millenia ago.
YOUR BIG REPUBLICAN BROTHER IS WATCHING
You think we don’t live in a fascist state yet? Well, don’t hold your breath. What are we to make of Republican efforts that smack of Nazi dirty tricks to suppress and intimidate voters all across this land?(Read it.)
In Florida, Republicans tried to remove Democratic voters from he rolls by insinuating they were criminals. Republicans in Kentucky intend to send “poll watchers” to harass voters by pretending to check into voting credentials of black voters. Who gave them this right and duty? In other places, Republicans have sent out false fliers about times and places of elections to confuse Democrat voters. A Republican in Michigan spoke of the need to “ ‘suppress the Detroit vote’. Detroit is 83 percent black.” In South Dakota, Native Americans were turned away from the polls in a special election by Republicans who demanded they have picture ID.
Let me tell you, these Republicans are nasty and dirty street fighters without a shred of democracy running throught their veins. Real intelligence like Kerry's won't make the grade. We'll have to get as fascist as Republicans are before we'll retake American democracy and put it back on the right track. (This information is from a longer report by Jo Becker, Washington Post, as it appeared in the Spokesman Review, Thursday August 26, 2004.)
___________________________________________________
"Only the mediocre are always at their best." —Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944)
“Like all other children, it seems to me I remember deciding to go out into the forest and lie there and pretend to be dead until everyone was sorry. Everyone knows that all their lives artists—particularly if they’re the sort that function as I do—retain a strongly infantile streak; or, to put it better, the creative streak is so deeply tied up with a sort of infantility, or a leftover of the child’s attitude to the world about him, that the artist also retains a lot of marginal behavior traits.” (Bergman on Bergman, p. 83)
WHO’S THE REAL GIRLY-MAN?
Arnold Schwartzensomething has a lot of nerve calling other real men, “girly-men”. This oiled up, perfumed, curly-haired little big man who wants all other males to look at and admire his body had better stare into his own mirror. Who is more narcissistic than a body builder? What type of man is more body obsessed than a female cover girl model than a body builder? What kind of male is so sissified inside that he has to build up a huge exterior to cover up that sissy side? Remember the guy on the beach who always got sand kicked in his face until he built his body up to hide the little guy on the beach inside? I think the real girly-man is Arnold Schwartenyoumaycallit himself. And, you all know, if a man’s got to tell you he’s a real man by putting down your manhood, we know what that means, don’t we?
FROM BERGMAN TO SCHWATRZENEGER TO DENNETT: or
FROM GREAT ARTIST TO DUMBBELL TO INTELLIGENT
Dennett (the last of him for awhile) in Freedom Evolves (p. 287) summarizes threats to freedom. “The real threats to freedom are not metaphysical but political and social. As we learn more about the conditions of human decision-making, we will have to devise, and agree upon, systems of government and law that are not hostage to false myths about human nature, that are robust in the face of further scientific discovery and technological advances. Are we freer than we want to be? We now have more power than ever to create the conditions under which we and our descendants will lead our lives.”
Dennett is onto the real thing for humankind. We must develop a value system that is based on real men and real women and on how their biology ticks and not on a value system based upon some pie in the sky hypothetical superbeing's mumblings about this and that coming from four or so millenia ago.
YOUR BIG REPUBLICAN BROTHER IS WATCHING
You think we don’t live in a fascist state yet? Well, don’t hold your breath. What are we to make of Republican efforts that smack of Nazi dirty tricks to suppress and intimidate voters all across this land?(Read it.)
In Florida, Republicans tried to remove Democratic voters from he rolls by insinuating they were criminals. Republicans in Kentucky intend to send “poll watchers” to harass voters by pretending to check into voting credentials of black voters. Who gave them this right and duty? In other places, Republicans have sent out false fliers about times and places of elections to confuse Democrat voters. A Republican in Michigan spoke of the need to “ ‘suppress the Detroit vote’. Detroit is 83 percent black.” In South Dakota, Native Americans were turned away from the polls in a special election by Republicans who demanded they have picture ID.
Let me tell you, these Republicans are nasty and dirty street fighters without a shred of democracy running throught their veins. Real intelligence like Kerry's won't make the grade. We'll have to get as fascist as Republicans are before we'll retake American democracy and put it back on the right track. (This information is from a longer report by Jo Becker, Washington Post, as it appeared in the Spokesman Review, Thursday August 26, 2004.)
___________________________________________________
"Only the mediocre are always at their best." —Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944)
Monday, September 13, 2004
FREE OR “LUCKY” TO BE FREE???
More from Dennett’s “Freedom Evolves” to open this post: “If you are free, are you responsible for being free? As we saw in Chapter 7, cooperators capable of solving commitment problems and establishing their reputation as moral agents get to enjoy the many benefits of being a trusted member of he community, but if you have not yet achieved that status, what hope, if any, is there for you? Should we regard the frequent defectors among us with contempt or compassion?” (p. 271)
In response to Dennett, I say maybe we should regard them with complete emotional and benign detachment and put them out of their misery. I didn’t really say that; I just thought it.
But what if some people are determined, by their genetic makeup, to be always outsiders, miserably and/or violently dangerous to themselves and society? What will we realistically do about their and our situation with them?
Then Dennett adds, “Those whom we end up punishing are really paying a double price, for they are scapegoats, deliberately harmed by society in order to set a vivid example for the more ably self-controlled, but not really responsible for the deeds we piously declare them to have committed of their own free will.” (p. 272)
Thus are the victims doubly victimized by the genetically lucky, those of us who are by our genetics more or less easily self-controlled.
COMMUNICATION—PATHWAY TO BELONGING
More from Dennett: “. . . if not by a miraculous leap of self-creation, did you get here (moral agency) from there (the amoral unfreedom of an infant)?
“The first threshold on the path to personhood, then, is simply whether or not one’s caregivers succeed in kindling a communicator. Those whose fires of reason just won’t light for one reason or other [the retarded] are consigned to a lower status, uncontroversially. It’s not their fault, it’s just their bad luck. . . . But while we’re on the topic of luck, let’s first try to calibrate our scales. Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back billions of generations, and those winners were, in every generation, the luckiest of the lucky, one out of a hundred or a thousand or even a million. So however unlucky you may be on some occasion today, your presence on the planet testifies to the role luck has played in your past.” (Dennett, Freedom Evolves, p. 272)
MORE BERGMAN ON HIS CHRISTIAN UPBRINGING
“If I’ve objected strongly to Christianity, it has been because Christianity is deeply branded by a very virulent humiliation motif. One of its main tenets is ‘I, a miserable sinner, born in sin, who have sinned all my days, etc.’ Our way of living and behaving under this punishment is completely atavistic. I could go on talking about this humiliation business for ever.” (p. 81 of Bergman on Bergman)
_________________________________________________________
"The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory." —Paul Fix
More from Dennett’s “Freedom Evolves” to open this post: “If you are free, are you responsible for being free? As we saw in Chapter 7, cooperators capable of solving commitment problems and establishing their reputation as moral agents get to enjoy the many benefits of being a trusted member of he community, but if you have not yet achieved that status, what hope, if any, is there for you? Should we regard the frequent defectors among us with contempt or compassion?” (p. 271)
In response to Dennett, I say maybe we should regard them with complete emotional and benign detachment and put them out of their misery. I didn’t really say that; I just thought it.
But what if some people are determined, by their genetic makeup, to be always outsiders, miserably and/or violently dangerous to themselves and society? What will we realistically do about their and our situation with them?
Then Dennett adds, “Those whom we end up punishing are really paying a double price, for they are scapegoats, deliberately harmed by society in order to set a vivid example for the more ably self-controlled, but not really responsible for the deeds we piously declare them to have committed of their own free will.” (p. 272)
Thus are the victims doubly victimized by the genetically lucky, those of us who are by our genetics more or less easily self-controlled.
COMMUNICATION—PATHWAY TO BELONGING
More from Dennett: “. . . if not by a miraculous leap of self-creation, did you get here (moral agency) from there (the amoral unfreedom of an infant)?
“The first threshold on the path to personhood, then, is simply whether or not one’s caregivers succeed in kindling a communicator. Those whose fires of reason just won’t light for one reason or other [the retarded] are consigned to a lower status, uncontroversially. It’s not their fault, it’s just their bad luck. . . . But while we’re on the topic of luck, let’s first try to calibrate our scales. Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back billions of generations, and those winners were, in every generation, the luckiest of the lucky, one out of a hundred or a thousand or even a million. So however unlucky you may be on some occasion today, your presence on the planet testifies to the role luck has played in your past.” (Dennett, Freedom Evolves, p. 272)
MORE BERGMAN ON HIS CHRISTIAN UPBRINGING
“If I’ve objected strongly to Christianity, it has been because Christianity is deeply branded by a very virulent humiliation motif. One of its main tenets is ‘I, a miserable sinner, born in sin, who have sinned all my days, etc.’ Our way of living and behaving under this punishment is completely atavistic. I could go on talking about this humiliation business for ever.” (p. 81 of Bergman on Bergman)
_________________________________________________________
"The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory." —Paul Fix
Saturday, September 11, 2004
IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM
Again, I've missed a day. That's because I was sick with some strange bacteria in my colon who got the upper hand becuase I was taking some antibiotics to combat the bacteria causing a sinus infection in my nose. Help! Help! They're swarming in from all directions.
DONE DENNETT TO DEATH
Today, September 1, 2004, I finished Daniel Dennett's “Freedom Evolves”. (Yes—it took that long! And, no, I don’t understand everything that I read!) I’ve got several more things to include in this Blog from Dennett’s book. In the final pages (pp. 303-304), Dennett presents a hopeful prognosis for the spread of freedom:
“The freedom of thought and action that is necessary for discovering truth is a precursor, as we have seen, to the more expansive ideal of political or civil freedom, a meme that spreads easily, apparently. It is much more infectious than fanaticism, thank goodness. The cat is out of the bag. There is no way that enforced ignorance can win in the long run. [Although, I must remind Dennett that Islam has done a pretty good job of stuffing the cat more than halfway back into the bag, and the know-nothing Christian fundamentalists are doing their best with home schooling to pretend to educated their children free from the nasty influence of current scientific truths.] You can’t readily uneducate people. As communications technology makes it harder and harder for leaders to shield their people from outside information, and as the economic realities of the twenty-first century make it clearer and clearer that education is the most important investment any parent can make in a child, the floodgates will open all over the world, with tumultuous results. All the flotsam and jetsam of popular culture, all the trash and scum that accumulates in the corners of a free society, will inundate these relatively pristine regions along with the treasures of modern education, equal rights for women, better health care, worker’s rights, democratic ideals, and openness to the cultures of others. As the experience in the former Soviet Union shows only too clearly, the worst features of capitalism and high-tech are among the most robust replicators in this population explosion of memes, and there will be plenty of grounds for xenophobia, Luddism, and the tempting ‘hygiene’ of backward looking fundamentalism.
“. . . In the next century it will be our [freedom] memes, both tonic and toxic, that will wreak havoc on the unprepared world. Our capacity to tolerate the toxic excesses of freedom cannot be assumed in others, or simply exported as one more commodity. The practically unlimited educability of any human being gives us hope of success, but designing and implementing the cultural inoculation necessary to fend off disaster, while respecting the rights of those in need of inoculation, will be an urgent task of great complexity. . . .”
CONSCIOUSNESS, LANGUAGE AND MORALITY
“Human consciousness was made for sharing ideas. That is to say, the human user-interface was created by evolution, both biological and cultural, and it arose in response to a behavioral innovation; the activities of communicating beliefs and plans and comparing notes. This turned many brains into many minds, and the distribution of authorship made possible by this interconnectedness is the source of not only our huge technological edge over the rest of nature but our morality. The last step required to complete my naturalistic account of free will and moral responsibility is to explain the R&D that has given us each a perspective on ourselves, a place from which to take responsibility. The name for this Archimedean perch is the self. This is something about us humans that sets us apart as potential moral agents, and it is no surprise that language is involved. What is harder to see is how language, when it is installed in a human brain, brings with it the construction of a new cognitive architecture that creates a new kind of consciousness—and morality.” (Dennett, pp. 259-260)
A BIT OF A DISAGREEMENT WITH DENNETT
On page 260 of “Freedom Evolves”, Dennett writes that “. . . the point of morality is manifestly not restricted to ‘the good of the species’ or ‘the survival of our genes’ or anything like that.”
At this place in his book, Dennett tries to free moral behavior from deterministic and, therefore, selfish motives, but, his argument demonstrates that he hasn’t been down in the trenches of self-destruction as I have where one learns, to his eternal sadness, that every action is selfish, even an altruistic one. But, actually, coming to lose this innocence is the beginning of real happiness and useful living.
Morality is merely another playground for those seeking power. First, look to early priest craft where magic led to power. Next, one need only look to televangelists to see morality put to money-grubbing purposes. Also, people try to emulate the mores of those around them to prove their worthiness to be mates and comrades. Morality shows our worthiness to be trusted and to fit in and ultimately to survive. I wonder if Dennett has carefully observed the youthful religious and seen how each young man tries to put his morality on display in order to win like-minded women to his side. Morality on display is part of the courtship ritual. And, in the rare case that the young religious is pursuing his religious persuasions for personal fulfillment only, he is doing it to try and find peace within his own heart—again, a selfish motive. No more selfish person ever existed than Mother Theresa.
Finally, even criminals live by codes of behavior, values and morality. They’re just not my codes of value. Some of them more rigorously than others. So I would challenge Dennett’s attempt to free moral behavior from selfish, survival motives.
_______________________________________________________
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." —Unknown
Again, I've missed a day. That's because I was sick with some strange bacteria in my colon who got the upper hand becuase I was taking some antibiotics to combat the bacteria causing a sinus infection in my nose. Help! Help! They're swarming in from all directions.
DONE DENNETT TO DEATH
Today, September 1, 2004, I finished Daniel Dennett's “Freedom Evolves”. (Yes—it took that long! And, no, I don’t understand everything that I read!) I’ve got several more things to include in this Blog from Dennett’s book. In the final pages (pp. 303-304), Dennett presents a hopeful prognosis for the spread of freedom:
“The freedom of thought and action that is necessary for discovering truth is a precursor, as we have seen, to the more expansive ideal of political or civil freedom, a meme that spreads easily, apparently. It is much more infectious than fanaticism, thank goodness. The cat is out of the bag. There is no way that enforced ignorance can win in the long run. [Although, I must remind Dennett that Islam has done a pretty good job of stuffing the cat more than halfway back into the bag, and the know-nothing Christian fundamentalists are doing their best with home schooling to pretend to educated their children free from the nasty influence of current scientific truths.] You can’t readily uneducate people. As communications technology makes it harder and harder for leaders to shield their people from outside information, and as the economic realities of the twenty-first century make it clearer and clearer that education is the most important investment any parent can make in a child, the floodgates will open all over the world, with tumultuous results. All the flotsam and jetsam of popular culture, all the trash and scum that accumulates in the corners of a free society, will inundate these relatively pristine regions along with the treasures of modern education, equal rights for women, better health care, worker’s rights, democratic ideals, and openness to the cultures of others. As the experience in the former Soviet Union shows only too clearly, the worst features of capitalism and high-tech are among the most robust replicators in this population explosion of memes, and there will be plenty of grounds for xenophobia, Luddism, and the tempting ‘hygiene’ of backward looking fundamentalism.
“. . . In the next century it will be our [freedom] memes, both tonic and toxic, that will wreak havoc on the unprepared world. Our capacity to tolerate the toxic excesses of freedom cannot be assumed in others, or simply exported as one more commodity. The practically unlimited educability of any human being gives us hope of success, but designing and implementing the cultural inoculation necessary to fend off disaster, while respecting the rights of those in need of inoculation, will be an urgent task of great complexity. . . .”
CONSCIOUSNESS, LANGUAGE AND MORALITY
“Human consciousness was made for sharing ideas. That is to say, the human user-interface was created by evolution, both biological and cultural, and it arose in response to a behavioral innovation; the activities of communicating beliefs and plans and comparing notes. This turned many brains into many minds, and the distribution of authorship made possible by this interconnectedness is the source of not only our huge technological edge over the rest of nature but our morality. The last step required to complete my naturalistic account of free will and moral responsibility is to explain the R&D that has given us each a perspective on ourselves, a place from which to take responsibility. The name for this Archimedean perch is the self. This is something about us humans that sets us apart as potential moral agents, and it is no surprise that language is involved. What is harder to see is how language, when it is installed in a human brain, brings with it the construction of a new cognitive architecture that creates a new kind of consciousness—and morality.” (Dennett, pp. 259-260)
A BIT OF A DISAGREEMENT WITH DENNETT
On page 260 of “Freedom Evolves”, Dennett writes that “. . . the point of morality is manifestly not restricted to ‘the good of the species’ or ‘the survival of our genes’ or anything like that.”
At this place in his book, Dennett tries to free moral behavior from deterministic and, therefore, selfish motives, but, his argument demonstrates that he hasn’t been down in the trenches of self-destruction as I have where one learns, to his eternal sadness, that every action is selfish, even an altruistic one. But, actually, coming to lose this innocence is the beginning of real happiness and useful living.
Morality is merely another playground for those seeking power. First, look to early priest craft where magic led to power. Next, one need only look to televangelists to see morality put to money-grubbing purposes. Also, people try to emulate the mores of those around them to prove their worthiness to be mates and comrades. Morality shows our worthiness to be trusted and to fit in and ultimately to survive. I wonder if Dennett has carefully observed the youthful religious and seen how each young man tries to put his morality on display in order to win like-minded women to his side. Morality on display is part of the courtship ritual. And, in the rare case that the young religious is pursuing his religious persuasions for personal fulfillment only, he is doing it to try and find peace within his own heart—again, a selfish motive. No more selfish person ever existed than Mother Theresa.
Finally, even criminals live by codes of behavior, values and morality. They’re just not my codes of value. Some of them more rigorously than others. So I would challenge Dennett’s attempt to free moral behavior from selfish, survival motives.
_______________________________________________________
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." —Unknown
Thursday, September 09, 2004
MISSING FOR AWHILE
The blogspot wasn't working properly so I've missed a few days, but we're back up and running now.
REPUBLICAN SWIFTIES MISS THE BOAT
The question we ought to be asking the Republican Swift boat boys is why they support atrocities.
By railing against men who told the truth about the atrocities which were widespread in Nam but not universal, the Republican swifties show their support for those who commit atrocities. One can only imagine what would go on if they had anything to do with the Abu Ghraib prison atrocities. Imagine what they think of the young reservist whose conscience made him spill the beans about Abu Ghraib? Do they even respect his act of conscience?
One really must ask why these swifties can’t put Vietnam behind them and get on with their lives. So many vets I admire have been able to do that but not without facing some real truths about Vietnam and themselves and what happened to them there. These Republican swifties seem to be haunted with what I’d call a “bad conscience”. That’s why they can’t move on with their lives and put Vietnam behind them. You’d almost think they have something to hide, the way they hate those who tell the truth about Vietnam atrocities. Such hatred can only come from suppressed and hidden fears of revelation.
NOW. . . ON TO REALLY IMPORTANT MATTERS: CONSCIOUSNESS
Believe it or not, I am approaching the end of Daniel Dennett’s “Freedom Evolves”. I know my reading seems slow, but I read daily newspapers and weekly newsmagazines and try to get in “The Humanist” and “FreeThought” magazines and just about anything else my eye falls upon. I’m still stuck at Chapter Eight with Camille Paglia. Recently I started to read a book of interviews with the film director Ingmar Bergman and sent away by interlibrary loan to Washington State University for three novels by Samuel Beckett which bore me now. When I first read Beckett, I was entranced. I believe he, like so many existentialist writers of the early 20th Century, altered my own consciousness. I’m so very pleased with what these men did for me, though, at the time, I suffered a great deal, shedding my romantic skin of despair and defeat and embattlement. I’m sending back the Beckett novels without reading more than a few pages of them.
Anyhow, here’s some more from writer Daniel Wegner who makes a strong case for “determinism” in his book, “The Illusion of Conscious Will” (2002) which I also recently used interlibrary loan to send away for:
“The unique human convenience of conscious thoughts that preview our actions gives us the privilege of feeling we willfully cause what we do. In fact, unconscious and inscrutable mechanisms create both conscious thought about action and the action, and also produce the sense of will we experience by perceiving the thought as the cause of the action. So while our thoughts may have deep, important, and unconscious causal connections to our actions, the experience of conscious will arises from a process that interprets these connections, not from the connections themselves. . . . (p. 98)
“Consciousness and action seem to play a cat-and mouse game over time. Although we may be conscious of whole vistas of action before the doings get underway, it is as though the conscious mind then slips out of touch. A microanalysis of the time interval before and after action indicates that consciousness pops in and out of the picture and doesn’t really do anything. . . .” (p. 59)
______________________________________________
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." —G.B. Shaw
I include Shaw's conundrum to give a contrasting way of talking about free will as compared to the scientific way of discussing free will. Shaw is stuck in the moral world rather than the real world. Even the way that Dennett allows for free will, won't make much room for such a strong statement as George Bernard Shaw makes. I say that as long as people stay in this moral, judgmental world view, we'll have violence and war which spring out of the sense of being wronged. Even the bad guy, unless a sociopath born without conscience, usually strikes from a feeling of having been wronged. How many a man is killed in a barroom fight just because another man feels wronged, feels from his moral sense rather than his common sense?
The blogspot wasn't working properly so I've missed a few days, but we're back up and running now.
REPUBLICAN SWIFTIES MISS THE BOAT
The question we ought to be asking the Republican Swift boat boys is why they support atrocities.
By railing against men who told the truth about the atrocities which were widespread in Nam but not universal, the Republican swifties show their support for those who commit atrocities. One can only imagine what would go on if they had anything to do with the Abu Ghraib prison atrocities. Imagine what they think of the young reservist whose conscience made him spill the beans about Abu Ghraib? Do they even respect his act of conscience?
One really must ask why these swifties can’t put Vietnam behind them and get on with their lives. So many vets I admire have been able to do that but not without facing some real truths about Vietnam and themselves and what happened to them there. These Republican swifties seem to be haunted with what I’d call a “bad conscience”. That’s why they can’t move on with their lives and put Vietnam behind them. You’d almost think they have something to hide, the way they hate those who tell the truth about Vietnam atrocities. Such hatred can only come from suppressed and hidden fears of revelation.
NOW. . . ON TO REALLY IMPORTANT MATTERS: CONSCIOUSNESS
Believe it or not, I am approaching the end of Daniel Dennett’s “Freedom Evolves”. I know my reading seems slow, but I read daily newspapers and weekly newsmagazines and try to get in “The Humanist” and “FreeThought” magazines and just about anything else my eye falls upon. I’m still stuck at Chapter Eight with Camille Paglia. Recently I started to read a book of interviews with the film director Ingmar Bergman and sent away by interlibrary loan to Washington State University for three novels by Samuel Beckett which bore me now. When I first read Beckett, I was entranced. I believe he, like so many existentialist writers of the early 20th Century, altered my own consciousness. I’m so very pleased with what these men did for me, though, at the time, I suffered a great deal, shedding my romantic skin of despair and defeat and embattlement. I’m sending back the Beckett novels without reading more than a few pages of them.
Anyhow, here’s some more from writer Daniel Wegner who makes a strong case for “determinism” in his book, “The Illusion of Conscious Will” (2002) which I also recently used interlibrary loan to send away for:
“The unique human convenience of conscious thoughts that preview our actions gives us the privilege of feeling we willfully cause what we do. In fact, unconscious and inscrutable mechanisms create both conscious thought about action and the action, and also produce the sense of will we experience by perceiving the thought as the cause of the action. So while our thoughts may have deep, important, and unconscious causal connections to our actions, the experience of conscious will arises from a process that interprets these connections, not from the connections themselves. . . . (p. 98)
“Consciousness and action seem to play a cat-and mouse game over time. Although we may be conscious of whole vistas of action before the doings get underway, it is as though the conscious mind then slips out of touch. A microanalysis of the time interval before and after action indicates that consciousness pops in and out of the picture and doesn’t really do anything. . . .” (p. 59)
______________________________________________
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." —G.B. Shaw
I include Shaw's conundrum to give a contrasting way of talking about free will as compared to the scientific way of discussing free will. Shaw is stuck in the moral world rather than the real world. Even the way that Dennett allows for free will, won't make much room for such a strong statement as George Bernard Shaw makes. I say that as long as people stay in this moral, judgmental world view, we'll have violence and war which spring out of the sense of being wronged. Even the bad guy, unless a sociopath born without conscience, usually strikes from a feeling of having been wronged. How many a man is killed in a barroom fight just because another man feels wronged, feels from his moral sense rather than his common sense?
Monday, September 06, 2004
TRIPPING IN CANADA
One afternoon as I leaned against the edge of the medium hot, large pool at the Ainsworth Hot Springs Resort in Canada, I thought about my recent trip around the U.S. and pictured a similar, but cool water pool at the Holiday Inn in Key West. I was feeling perfectly at ease surrounded by Canadians and their more laid back style of life. I saw no one acting out or exhibiting “look at me folks” behavior. I saw no driven behaviors, no one trying to show off or draw attention to themselves. Families seemed at peace and unified. The Americans I watched at the Holiday Inn less than three months ago were loud, insecure and medicating themselves with alcohol. It’s as if each was calling out for attention and “love”?
What Michael Moore observed in “Bowling For Columbine” seemed true enough that afternoon in Canada. As he pointed out, Canadians own more guns per capita than Americans, yet Canada’s murder rate is miniscule compared to America’s. Michael Moore agreed with the NRA in one important point—guns have nothing to do with America’s murderous rate, but... (here Michael differs), America’s paranoia and insecurity do. As he asks, “Should paranoid Americans be allowed to own so many guns?”
Now that we’ve got this Bush guy in charge of America, who thinks nothing of starting wars and killing people, we can definitely see Moore’s point. If I were the people of the world, I’d be arming myself to the teeth in preparation for George’s next depredation.
POLITICAL REFUGEE
I joked with my wife as we crossed the border into Canada that I ought to tell the border guard that we were political refugees from Bush’s America. She didn’t think it was too funny and, of course, you never know what sort of sense of humor someone with a gun on their hip might demonstrate, so I saved the joke for later.
Frequently, thereafter, I’d tell Canadians that my wife and I were escapees from Bush’s repressive regime in America. Not one Canadian failed to appreciate the joke and understand it. In Kaslo, one woman told us that we’d be right at home, there, if we wanted to settle in Canada. She said lots of draft dodgers from the Vietnam era settled in that region and still lived there. No wonder I experienced a marvelous inner peace during our couple of days in Canada and felt rather depressed upon reentering America.
Canadians truly understand freedom of belief and leaving one’s neighbors’ religions and attitudes alone. Under Bush’s faith-based regime and, in his own words, his wish to convert everyone to his Protestantism, America is in danger of losing its own Constitutional desire for separation of church and state and the harmony and peace that separation has given us over the few brief centuries of our nation’s history. One need look no further than Bush’s religious intolerance to understand why America is currently torn by such divisive hatreds. I have no trouble identifying the source of my hatred and fear of George Bush. It all flows from my understanding of the intolerance in his religious mandate, openly expressed, to convert others to his beliefs rather than leaving them alone to practice their own beliefs. History tells the sad tale of the pain and suffering caused by missionary zeal when it flows from the ambitions of national leadership.
____________________________________
"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible hardly anything." —Goethe
One afternoon as I leaned against the edge of the medium hot, large pool at the Ainsworth Hot Springs Resort in Canada, I thought about my recent trip around the U.S. and pictured a similar, but cool water pool at the Holiday Inn in Key West. I was feeling perfectly at ease surrounded by Canadians and their more laid back style of life. I saw no one acting out or exhibiting “look at me folks” behavior. I saw no driven behaviors, no one trying to show off or draw attention to themselves. Families seemed at peace and unified. The Americans I watched at the Holiday Inn less than three months ago were loud, insecure and medicating themselves with alcohol. It’s as if each was calling out for attention and “love”?
What Michael Moore observed in “Bowling For Columbine” seemed true enough that afternoon in Canada. As he pointed out, Canadians own more guns per capita than Americans, yet Canada’s murder rate is miniscule compared to America’s. Michael Moore agreed with the NRA in one important point—guns have nothing to do with America’s murderous rate, but... (here Michael differs), America’s paranoia and insecurity do. As he asks, “Should paranoid Americans be allowed to own so many guns?”
Now that we’ve got this Bush guy in charge of America, who thinks nothing of starting wars and killing people, we can definitely see Moore’s point. If I were the people of the world, I’d be arming myself to the teeth in preparation for George’s next depredation.
POLITICAL REFUGEE
I joked with my wife as we crossed the border into Canada that I ought to tell the border guard that we were political refugees from Bush’s America. She didn’t think it was too funny and, of course, you never know what sort of sense of humor someone with a gun on their hip might demonstrate, so I saved the joke for later.
Frequently, thereafter, I’d tell Canadians that my wife and I were escapees from Bush’s repressive regime in America. Not one Canadian failed to appreciate the joke and understand it. In Kaslo, one woman told us that we’d be right at home, there, if we wanted to settle in Canada. She said lots of draft dodgers from the Vietnam era settled in that region and still lived there. No wonder I experienced a marvelous inner peace during our couple of days in Canada and felt rather depressed upon reentering America.
Canadians truly understand freedom of belief and leaving one’s neighbors’ religions and attitudes alone. Under Bush’s faith-based regime and, in his own words, his wish to convert everyone to his Protestantism, America is in danger of losing its own Constitutional desire for separation of church and state and the harmony and peace that separation has given us over the few brief centuries of our nation’s history. One need look no further than Bush’s religious intolerance to understand why America is currently torn by such divisive hatreds. I have no trouble identifying the source of my hatred and fear of George Bush. It all flows from my understanding of the intolerance in his religious mandate, openly expressed, to convert others to his beliefs rather than leaving them alone to practice their own beliefs. History tells the sad tale of the pain and suffering caused by missionary zeal when it flows from the ambitions of national leadership.
____________________________________
"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible hardly anything." —Goethe
Saturday, September 04, 2004
VOLUNTEER LINKS KERRY AD TO BUSH CAMPAIGN
This links Bush with Swift Boat Traitors.
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) — A volunteer for John Kerry said Friday he picked up a flier in a Bush-Cheney campaign office in Gainesville, Fla., promoting Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group the Bush campaign has insisted for weeks it has no connection to.
The Kerry campaign e-mailed the flier to news organizations Friday, declaring that the Bush-Cheney campaign was "busted" for coordinating "in their smear campaign against John Kerry."
At Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters outside Washington, spokesman Steve Schmidt said: "The Bush-Cheney campaign has nothing to do with that piece of paper. ... I don't know how it showed up at the campaign headquarters."
"The Bush-Cheney campaign would object to any flier like this being displayed in any Republican headquarters," said Schmidt. He characterized the campaign operation in Gainesville where the flier was found as county GOP offices used by Bush-Cheney volunteers.
The flier distributed at Alachua County Republican Party headquarters promotes a weekend rally sponsored by "Swift Boat Vets for Truth" and other groups.
Bill Shilling, a Kerry volunteer in Gainesville, says he went to the GOP offices there Thursday and picked up the flier from a pile of literature on the table.
"The flier they gave me was on the same table as some Bush-Cheney bumper stickers," said Shilling. "I asked them if the Swift boat veterans were coming to Gainesville, and the woman I talked to said yes."
Shilling said he went back to Kerry headquarters and turned over the flier.
"I thought there was supposed to be some separation between Bush-Cheney and the Swift boat controversy but I didn't understand there was a big deal about this," said Shilling. "I think this whole thing attacking Kerry's war record is a diversion by Bush-Cheney from the real issues of the campaign."
Financed by a Texas businessman with longtime ties to prominent Republicans in the state, including President Bush, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth sponsored an ad featuring several Vietnam veterans who accuse Kerry of lying about the circumstances surrounding events for which he won his medals. Kerry received a Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts while in Vietnam.
The anti-Kerry group distributed a second commercial to the news media and said it would begin airing the ad next week in Pennsylvania, Nevada and New Mexico, the last a state Bush plans to visit next Thursday. The ad intersperses clips of a youthful Kerry talking about war atrocities during an appearance before Congress in 1971 with images of veterans condemning his testimony.
The Kerry campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was illegally coordinating its efforts with the Bush-Cheney campaign.
The Kerry campaign cited recent press reports and the group's own statements. The Bush campaign denied the allegation, as did the organization that aired the ad.
SO MANY THINGS TO BE SAID OVER AND OVER
Fareed Zakaria wrote an informative piece about America's oil problems in this week's Newsweek (September 6, 2004, p. 55) It's becoming obvious that the largest pressure for higher oil prices is a "massive increase in demand," he says. "American demand is the gorilla fueling high oil prices—more than instability or the rise of China or anything else. . . the global trade in oil increased by 9.5 billion barrels" between 1990 and 2000, and American demand accounted for half of the increase.
America's insatiable demand for oil is explained quite simply, Zakaria says. "The reason is simple: three letters—SUV. . . . Today they make up 55 percent" of American cars.
When I see an SUV with an American flag, a dove, or some patriotic slogan applied to it, I just laugh. How many more times will these sentiments have to appear on this blog? Who knows? Almost a thousand men and women have died for these SUVs. How many more must follow?
___________________________________________________
"The minute we want to be something, we are no longer free." —J. Krishnamurti
This links Bush with Swift Boat Traitors.
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) — A volunteer for John Kerry said Friday he picked up a flier in a Bush-Cheney campaign office in Gainesville, Fla., promoting Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group the Bush campaign has insisted for weeks it has no connection to.
The Kerry campaign e-mailed the flier to news organizations Friday, declaring that the Bush-Cheney campaign was "busted" for coordinating "in their smear campaign against John Kerry."
At Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters outside Washington, spokesman Steve Schmidt said: "The Bush-Cheney campaign has nothing to do with that piece of paper. ... I don't know how it showed up at the campaign headquarters."
"The Bush-Cheney campaign would object to any flier like this being displayed in any Republican headquarters," said Schmidt. He characterized the campaign operation in Gainesville where the flier was found as county GOP offices used by Bush-Cheney volunteers.
The flier distributed at Alachua County Republican Party headquarters promotes a weekend rally sponsored by "Swift Boat Vets for Truth" and other groups.
Bill Shilling, a Kerry volunteer in Gainesville, says he went to the GOP offices there Thursday and picked up the flier from a pile of literature on the table.
"The flier they gave me was on the same table as some Bush-Cheney bumper stickers," said Shilling. "I asked them if the Swift boat veterans were coming to Gainesville, and the woman I talked to said yes."
Shilling said he went back to Kerry headquarters and turned over the flier.
"I thought there was supposed to be some separation between Bush-Cheney and the Swift boat controversy but I didn't understand there was a big deal about this," said Shilling. "I think this whole thing attacking Kerry's war record is a diversion by Bush-Cheney from the real issues of the campaign."
Financed by a Texas businessman with longtime ties to prominent Republicans in the state, including President Bush, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth sponsored an ad featuring several Vietnam veterans who accuse Kerry of lying about the circumstances surrounding events for which he won his medals. Kerry received a Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts while in Vietnam.
The anti-Kerry group distributed a second commercial to the news media and said it would begin airing the ad next week in Pennsylvania, Nevada and New Mexico, the last a state Bush plans to visit next Thursday. The ad intersperses clips of a youthful Kerry talking about war atrocities during an appearance before Congress in 1971 with images of veterans condemning his testimony.
The Kerry campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was illegally coordinating its efforts with the Bush-Cheney campaign.
The Kerry campaign cited recent press reports and the group's own statements. The Bush campaign denied the allegation, as did the organization that aired the ad.
SO MANY THINGS TO BE SAID OVER AND OVER
Fareed Zakaria wrote an informative piece about America's oil problems in this week's Newsweek (September 6, 2004, p. 55) It's becoming obvious that the largest pressure for higher oil prices is a "massive increase in demand," he says. "American demand is the gorilla fueling high oil prices—more than instability or the rise of China or anything else. . . the global trade in oil increased by 9.5 billion barrels" between 1990 and 2000, and American demand accounted for half of the increase.
America's insatiable demand for oil is explained quite simply, Zakaria says. "The reason is simple: three letters—SUV. . . . Today they make up 55 percent" of American cars.
When I see an SUV with an American flag, a dove, or some patriotic slogan applied to it, I just laugh. How many more times will these sentiments have to appear on this blog? Who knows? Almost a thousand men and women have died for these SUVs. How many more must follow?
___________________________________________________
"The minute we want to be something, we are no longer free." —J. Krishnamurti
Friday, September 03, 2004
COMPLIMENTING A COUPLE OF GREAT EDITORIALS
I wrote the following letter to compliment the Spokesman Review's editorial board yesterday after they wrote a couple of nice editorials about how out of hand the election nonsense has been getting. Later I realized this is a sort of pocket summary of my view of consciousness and its relation to reality in the Universe. Also I realized that Buddhism has been dealing with the unreality of the supposedly real world for thousands of years. If only they'd remove all references to "spiritual" principles, we'd have a religion for the modern age.
Dear Editorial Board,
I thank you for your fine editorials in today’s paper (September 2, 2004), specially the lead one which deals with our nasty evolutionary and animal penchant for self interest above all else. Unfortunately, as far into the future as my mind can imagine, I see no hope for the human animal on that head, and this is why:
Even though Dostoevsky’s protagonist in Notes From the Underground cries out “. . . that to be too conscious is an illness. . . ,” I think the matter is entirely the opposite. If anything, most of humankind is still too unconscious. Let me tell you about an experiment that points up two pretty unsettling conclusions about the human condition.
Some unfortunate humans suffer from seizures so frequent and severe that no medication or treatment can relieve their pain and mental anguish. The only relief these people found was in having their corpus callosums severed, thus separating their left hemispheres from their right. Two things came to light when scientists studied these people after their operations. (I don’t know the source for the original experimental data, but I came across the experiment in books by Daniel Dennett and Stephen Pinker, two highly regarded researches and philosophers in the area of consciousness. Pinker was in Time’s 100 most influential people list last year.)
The first surprise is that there is no evidence of a single unifying soul inside the human body. Two distinct personalities, unaware of the other, became present in the person. Each hemisphere was capable of functioning and taking care of itself without need for the other. Two people now inhabited one body. Either no soul exists or some supernatural act sent in a second soul to one of the halves of the severed brain. The second finding has more to do with your generous and hopeful essay.
Researches found that they could give orders to the right brain which that body would carry out while the left brain (or other person) had to go along with the activity. For example, they’d tell the right brain to get up and walk, keeping the left brain out of the loop, and, later, they’d ask the left brain why it had just gotten up and walked. Researchers quickly discovered that the person “in” the left hemisphere had a strange habit of making up a reason for the action it had been involved in. When asked, the left brain would say, “I went to get a Coke.” Note, it won’t say, “I don’t know why I got up and walked” or “I’ve been part of these experiments for years now, and I often find myself doing things I can’t explain.” No, the left brain is, as Stephen Pinker says, a “spinmeister”; it invariably makes excuses or makes up reasons for the activity it observes in itself. In short, the left brain can justify any behavior or thought the brain can think. The left brain’s chief function is to make sense of the universe it experiences.
I first noticed this ambiguity in myself when I was a young man, arguing Catholic philosophy at the University of Dayton with the brothers. I soon observed that my mind would justify (rationalize) any act or belief I liked. Generalizing from that insight, I eventually came to know that our emotions or our animal instincts are still in control and that almost all human thoughts are mental gymnastics by our left hemispheres to justify anything our animal emotions and instincts want to feel and act on unless fear intervenes. In those awarenesses were the roots of my current existentialism which displays, according to Walter Kaufmann in Existentialism: from Dostoevsky to Sartre, a “. . . repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever.”
At first, this loss of old, comfortable rationalizations about existence is scary and depressing, but later, after years of growing old with it, I now recognize such complete consciousness of one’s epistemological dilemma as the only source of true human freedom. So when we observe people believing all these outrageous political charges about politicians they fear or love, we can recognize the old “spinmeister’ at work, justifying to ourselves our fears, our loves, protecting with irrationality our most precious beliefs, our deepest instincts, our animal selves.
None of us can truly divorce ourselves from this mental quirk. All we can do is become aware of how absolutely relative most of anything we believe is. We must all become more agnostic than most of us are. As an atheist, let me tell you, when I look around me at this irrational world where people believe in nonexistent beings like ghosts and angels, in astrology, in holistic medicines, in luck, in omens, in gods and demons and all sorts of made up explanations for what is going on around and inside them, I can scare myself pretty good, specially when I realize that these same irrational beings also control mighty weapons of mass destruction.
Of course, we should not expect everyone to give up their favorite beliefs right away, but we should ask only that they accept the fact that their beliefs are things made up by the left hemisphere in order to explain and make sense of the data arriving from the scary reality outside the body itself. Take everything with this grain of salt and no cause could rise to sufficient enough pitch to create war ever again.
Thank you again for your editorials today, and sorry this is longer than I wanted it to be,
Geo
PS: Doug Floyd, by the way, this experiment, and the considerations about the human condition which come out of it, is another example of the information and implications that a responsible newspaper should be introducing to its readership. Think how many people are still operating out of false, completely unscientific beliefs which are more than 2000 years out of date. They’re living in a entirely different, outmoded and unrealistic world than modern humans live in, yet they influence the future for all of us.
--
George Thomas
I wrote the following letter to compliment the Spokesman Review's editorial board yesterday after they wrote a couple of nice editorials about how out of hand the election nonsense has been getting. Later I realized this is a sort of pocket summary of my view of consciousness and its relation to reality in the Universe. Also I realized that Buddhism has been dealing with the unreality of the supposedly real world for thousands of years. If only they'd remove all references to "spiritual" principles, we'd have a religion for the modern age.
Dear Editorial Board,
I thank you for your fine editorials in today’s paper (September 2, 2004), specially the lead one which deals with our nasty evolutionary and animal penchant for self interest above all else. Unfortunately, as far into the future as my mind can imagine, I see no hope for the human animal on that head, and this is why:
Even though Dostoevsky’s protagonist in Notes From the Underground cries out “. . . that to be too conscious is an illness. . . ,” I think the matter is entirely the opposite. If anything, most of humankind is still too unconscious. Let me tell you about an experiment that points up two pretty unsettling conclusions about the human condition.
Some unfortunate humans suffer from seizures so frequent and severe that no medication or treatment can relieve their pain and mental anguish. The only relief these people found was in having their corpus callosums severed, thus separating their left hemispheres from their right. Two things came to light when scientists studied these people after their operations. (I don’t know the source for the original experimental data, but I came across the experiment in books by Daniel Dennett and Stephen Pinker, two highly regarded researches and philosophers in the area of consciousness. Pinker was in Time’s 100 most influential people list last year.)
The first surprise is that there is no evidence of a single unifying soul inside the human body. Two distinct personalities, unaware of the other, became present in the person. Each hemisphere was capable of functioning and taking care of itself without need for the other. Two people now inhabited one body. Either no soul exists or some supernatural act sent in a second soul to one of the halves of the severed brain. The second finding has more to do with your generous and hopeful essay.
Researches found that they could give orders to the right brain which that body would carry out while the left brain (or other person) had to go along with the activity. For example, they’d tell the right brain to get up and walk, keeping the left brain out of the loop, and, later, they’d ask the left brain why it had just gotten up and walked. Researchers quickly discovered that the person “in” the left hemisphere had a strange habit of making up a reason for the action it had been involved in. When asked, the left brain would say, “I went to get a Coke.” Note, it won’t say, “I don’t know why I got up and walked” or “I’ve been part of these experiments for years now, and I often find myself doing things I can’t explain.” No, the left brain is, as Stephen Pinker says, a “spinmeister”; it invariably makes excuses or makes up reasons for the activity it observes in itself. In short, the left brain can justify any behavior or thought the brain can think. The left brain’s chief function is to make sense of the universe it experiences.
I first noticed this ambiguity in myself when I was a young man, arguing Catholic philosophy at the University of Dayton with the brothers. I soon observed that my mind would justify (rationalize) any act or belief I liked. Generalizing from that insight, I eventually came to know that our emotions or our animal instincts are still in control and that almost all human thoughts are mental gymnastics by our left hemispheres to justify anything our animal emotions and instincts want to feel and act on unless fear intervenes. In those awarenesses were the roots of my current existentialism which displays, according to Walter Kaufmann in Existentialism: from Dostoevsky to Sartre, a “. . . repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever.”
At first, this loss of old, comfortable rationalizations about existence is scary and depressing, but later, after years of growing old with it, I now recognize such complete consciousness of one’s epistemological dilemma as the only source of true human freedom. So when we observe people believing all these outrageous political charges about politicians they fear or love, we can recognize the old “spinmeister’ at work, justifying to ourselves our fears, our loves, protecting with irrationality our most precious beliefs, our deepest instincts, our animal selves.
None of us can truly divorce ourselves from this mental quirk. All we can do is become aware of how absolutely relative most of anything we believe is. We must all become more agnostic than most of us are. As an atheist, let me tell you, when I look around me at this irrational world where people believe in nonexistent beings like ghosts and angels, in astrology, in holistic medicines, in luck, in omens, in gods and demons and all sorts of made up explanations for what is going on around and inside them, I can scare myself pretty good, specially when I realize that these same irrational beings also control mighty weapons of mass destruction.
Of course, we should not expect everyone to give up their favorite beliefs right away, but we should ask only that they accept the fact that their beliefs are things made up by the left hemisphere in order to explain and make sense of the data arriving from the scary reality outside the body itself. Take everything with this grain of salt and no cause could rise to sufficient enough pitch to create war ever again.
Thank you again for your editorials today, and sorry this is longer than I wanted it to be,
Geo
PS: Doug Floyd, by the way, this experiment, and the considerations about the human condition which come out of it, is another example of the information and implications that a responsible newspaper should be introducing to its readership. Think how many people are still operating out of false, completely unscientific beliefs which are more than 2000 years out of date. They’re living in a entirely different, outmoded and unrealistic world than modern humans live in, yet they influence the future for all of us.
--
George Thomas
Thursday, September 02, 2004
INCREASING POVERTY? WHERE?
Among the lies we’ve come to expect from the Bush administration (this time concerning American health care), I came across some more information about poverty which I’m sure the Bush people don’t want to be part of the presidential debates.
First, a little exposure of the lies: “Health experts inside and out of the Bush administration say many of the assertions Bush makes about his first-term health care record and his health proposals for a second term are exaggerated, incomplete or contrary to widely accepted analyses.
“On the campaign trail, the president trumpets last year's enactment of a Medicare prescription drug package as his signature health achievement.
“ ‘Leaders in both political parties had promised prescription drug coverage for years.’ Bush said last month. ‘We got it done. More than 4 million seniors have signed up for drug discount cards that provide real savings.’
“Left unsaid is that 2.9 million of them had no choice – they were enrolled automatically. And full implementation of the drug benefits will not occur until 2006.
“Since Bush took office, the number of Americans without health insurance has climbed by 4 million to nearly 44 million.”
Enough said? The biggest lie, to me, in this Bush fluff, is his claim that more Americans are covered by government health programs since he took office as if it’s due to his compassion. The truth is that “... total enrollment in the two government health programs has risen during Bush's tenure by about 7.5 million. But for the vast majority, coverage was required by law, not the result of any policy change:
" ‘Part of the reason more people were covered is the economy got so bad that people lost income,’ Rowland said. ‘There were more low-income people under Bush than previously, so they became eligible for public programs.’ "
That’s right! Bush’s economy is so bad that more people live in poverty and qualify for government programs; then, he has the balls to claim that his programs now cover more people than before he was anointed to power. You can read more by looking up this story by Ceci Connolly in the Washington Post, August 23, 2004
HERE’S SOME MORE TRUTH ABOUT KERRY
CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago Tribune editor who was on the Vietnam mission for which John Kerry received the Silver Star is backing up Kerry's account of the incident.
William Rood, a night city editor for the Chicago Tribune, served with John Kerry during the Vietnam War.
William Rood, 61, said he decided to break his silence about the Feb. 28, 1969, mission because reports by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are incorrect and darken the reputations of veterans who served with Kerry, according to a report in the Tribune's Sunday editions.
Rood, an editor on the Tribune's metropolitan desk, said the allegations that Kerry's accomplishments were overblown are untrue. Kerry came up with an attack strategy that was praised by their superiors, Rood said.
"The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us," Rood said in a 1,700-word first-person account published in the newspaper. "It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there."
According to the Tribune, Rood's recollection of what happened that day in South Vietnam was backed by military documents, including his citation for a Bronze Star and a report written by then-Capt. Roy Hoffmann, who commanded his and Kerry's task force and is now a critic of the Democratic candidate.
The mission has become a focal point of a political and media firestorm fueled by the Swift Boat Veterans.
One of the group's leaders, John O'Neill, succeeded Kerry in command of a swift boat. O'Neill is co-author of the book Unfit for Command, which accuses Kerry of lying about his wartime record and betraying comrades when he returned from Vietnam by alleging widespread atrocities by U.S. troops. The Swift Boat Veterans have repeated the accusations in TV ads.
The Kerry campaign filed a complaint Friday with the Federal Election Commission, alleging the Swift Boat Veterans are coordinating their ads with the Bush campaign. The Bush campaign has denied the claim but refused to condemn the book or the group's TV ads.
Rood wrote that Kerry recently contacted him and other crew members, requesting that they go public with their accounts of what happened that February day.
"I can't pretend those calls (from Kerry) had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this," Rood said. "What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it."
Rood declined requests from a Tribune reporter to be interviewed. The Tribune's deputy managing editor for news, George de Lama, told The Associated Press on Saturday that Rood would not publicly discuss the issue.
When the Tribune asked O'Neill for his response to Rood's account, O'Neill argued that the former swift boat skipper's version of events is not substantially different from what appeared in his book.
A message left with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was not immediately returned Saturday.
________________________________________________________
"The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it."
—Biologist P. B. Medawar
Among the lies we’ve come to expect from the Bush administration (this time concerning American health care), I came across some more information about poverty which I’m sure the Bush people don’t want to be part of the presidential debates.
First, a little exposure of the lies: “Health experts inside and out of the Bush administration say many of the assertions Bush makes about his first-term health care record and his health proposals for a second term are exaggerated, incomplete or contrary to widely accepted analyses.
“On the campaign trail, the president trumpets last year's enactment of a Medicare prescription drug package as his signature health achievement.
“ ‘Leaders in both political parties had promised prescription drug coverage for years.’ Bush said last month. ‘We got it done. More than 4 million seniors have signed up for drug discount cards that provide real savings.’
“Left unsaid is that 2.9 million of them had no choice – they were enrolled automatically. And full implementation of the drug benefits will not occur until 2006.
“Since Bush took office, the number of Americans without health insurance has climbed by 4 million to nearly 44 million.”
Enough said? The biggest lie, to me, in this Bush fluff, is his claim that more Americans are covered by government health programs since he took office as if it’s due to his compassion. The truth is that “... total enrollment in the two government health programs has risen during Bush's tenure by about 7.5 million. But for the vast majority, coverage was required by law, not the result of any policy change:
" ‘Part of the reason more people were covered is the economy got so bad that people lost income,’ Rowland said. ‘There were more low-income people under Bush than previously, so they became eligible for public programs.’ "
That’s right! Bush’s economy is so bad that more people live in poverty and qualify for government programs; then, he has the balls to claim that his programs now cover more people than before he was anointed to power. You can read more by looking up this story by Ceci Connolly in the Washington Post, August 23, 2004
HERE’S SOME MORE TRUTH ABOUT KERRY
CHICAGO (AP) — A Chicago Tribune editor who was on the Vietnam mission for which John Kerry received the Silver Star is backing up Kerry's account of the incident.
William Rood, a night city editor for the Chicago Tribune, served with John Kerry during the Vietnam War.
William Rood, 61, said he decided to break his silence about the Feb. 28, 1969, mission because reports by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are incorrect and darken the reputations of veterans who served with Kerry, according to a report in the Tribune's Sunday editions.
Rood, an editor on the Tribune's metropolitan desk, said the allegations that Kerry's accomplishments were overblown are untrue. Kerry came up with an attack strategy that was praised by their superiors, Rood said.
"The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us," Rood said in a 1,700-word first-person account published in the newspaper. "It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there."
According to the Tribune, Rood's recollection of what happened that day in South Vietnam was backed by military documents, including his citation for a Bronze Star and a report written by then-Capt. Roy Hoffmann, who commanded his and Kerry's task force and is now a critic of the Democratic candidate.
The mission has become a focal point of a political and media firestorm fueled by the Swift Boat Veterans.
One of the group's leaders, John O'Neill, succeeded Kerry in command of a swift boat. O'Neill is co-author of the book Unfit for Command, which accuses Kerry of lying about his wartime record and betraying comrades when he returned from Vietnam by alleging widespread atrocities by U.S. troops. The Swift Boat Veterans have repeated the accusations in TV ads.
The Kerry campaign filed a complaint Friday with the Federal Election Commission, alleging the Swift Boat Veterans are coordinating their ads with the Bush campaign. The Bush campaign has denied the claim but refused to condemn the book or the group's TV ads.
Rood wrote that Kerry recently contacted him and other crew members, requesting that they go public with their accounts of what happened that February day.
"I can't pretend those calls (from Kerry) had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this," Rood said. "What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it."
Rood declined requests from a Tribune reporter to be interviewed. The Tribune's deputy managing editor for news, George de Lama, told The Associated Press on Saturday that Rood would not publicly discuss the issue.
When the Tribune asked O'Neill for his response to Rood's account, O'Neill argued that the former swift boat skipper's version of events is not substantially different from what appeared in his book.
A message left with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was not immediately returned Saturday.
________________________________________________________
"The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it."
—Biologist P. B. Medawar
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
William B. Rood
Chicago Tribune
August 24, 2004
KERRY ASKS BUSH TO END SWIFT BOAT LIES
At a fund-raiser attended by about 750 people, Kerry said the attacks by a group of Vietnam veterans and former Swift Boat commanders have intensified "because in the last months they have seen me climbing in America's understanding that I know how to fight a smarter and more effective war" against terrorists.
"That's why they're attacking my credibility. That's why they've personally gone after me. The president needs to stand up and stop that. The president needs to have the courage to talk about it."
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group funded in part by a top GOP donor in Texas, has been running ads featuring veterans who served in Vietnam at the same time as Kerry and question his wartime record.
Group leader John O'Neill continued the attack Sunday on ABC's This Week show, saying that Kerry did not deserve his bravery medals because the swift boat under Kerry's command fled up river during an assault.
Kerry backer John Podesta fired back on the show, saying, " It’s lie and deny, the story keeps changing and changing…John Kerry served with distinction in Vietnam."
The White House and the Bush campaign have denied any direct connection with the Swift Boat group. "The president has made it repeatedly clear that he wants to see an end to all" advertising from outside groups, said Brian Jones, a Bush campaign spokesman.
But on Saturday, a former POW, retired Col. Ken Cordier, resigned as a volunteer from the Bush campaign's veterans' steering committee after it was learned that he participated in an anti-Kerry ad sponsored by the Swift Boat group. The ad criticizes Kerry's congressional anti-war testimony in the 1970s alleging U.S. troops engaged in atrocities in Vietnam.
"Col. Cordier did not inform the campaign of his involvement in the advertisement," the Bush campaign said in a statement. "Because of his involvement (with the group) Col. Cordier will no longer participate as a volunteer for Bush-Cheney '04."
Earlier on Saturday, Kerry's campaign released a video comparing the controversy over Kerry's Vietnam service to attacks on John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries.
The video, sent via e-mail to supporters, says, "George Bush is up to his old tricks" and shows then-Texas Gov. Bush and Arizona Sen. John McCain at a debate in February 2000.
McCain, sitting next to Bush, says that when "fringe veterans groups" attacked him at a Bush campaign function, Bush stood by and didn't say a word. McCain says a group of senators wrote Bush a letter that said: "Apologize. You should be ashamed."
McCain, also a Vietnam veteran, says Bush "really went over the line."
"I don't know how you can understand this, George, but that really hurts," McCain says.
The Swift Boat group also was being challenged by a Chicago Tribune editor who was on the Feb. 28, 1969, mission for which Kerry received the Silver Star. William Rood, 61, said he decided to break his silence about the mission because recent reports of Kerry's actions in that battle are incorrect and darken the reputations of veterans who served with Kerry.
"The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us," Rood said in a 1,700-word first-person account published in Sunday's edition of the Tribune. "It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there."
Rood said the allegations that Kerry's accomplishments were overblown are untrue and that Kerry came up with an attack strategy that was praised by their superiors. According to the Tribune, Rood's recollection of what happened that day in South Vietnam was backed by military documents.
Rood wrote that Kerry recently contacted him and other crew members, requesting that they go public with their accounts of what happened.
"I can't pretend those calls (from Kerry) had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this," Rood said. "What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it."
Kerry also picked up support from Wayne Langhofer, who told The Washington Post he was manning a machine gun in a boat behind Kerry's and saw firing from both banks of a river as Kerry dived in to rescue Special Forces soldier James Rassmann, the basis for Kerry's Bronze Star.
Until now, the Post noted on its Web site, Kerry's version of acting under fire had come from crewmen on his own boat. It quoted Langhofer as saying he was approached by leaders of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth several months ago but declined to join them in speaking against Kerry.
In Roanoke, Va., on Saturday, Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards also called on Bush to end the Swift Boat Veterans ads.
"This is a moment of truth for George W. Bush," Edwards said at a Democratic rally. "We're going to see what kind of man he is and what kind of leader he is. ... We want to hear three words: Stop these ads."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
RESARCH SUGGESTS LANGUAGE HAS A BEARING ON COGNITION
David Brown
Washington Post
August 24, 2004
"Does language sometimes define the content of thought? Are there people who cannot entertain certain ideas because their language does not have the words to express them? Are there concepts that cannot be translated into some languages?
"These questions have vexed linguists and neuroscientists for years. The general feeling has been that language does not limit cognition. However, a new study in the online version of Science suggests that the prevailing notion might not be correct.
"Peter Gordon, a behavioral scientist at Columbia University, conducted an unusual set of experiments with seven adults of the 200-member Piraha tribe of Amazonian Indians in Brazil.
"The tribe's counting system consists of three words – one that means 'roughly one,' one that means 'a small quantity' and one that means 'many.'
"Gordon asked the Piraha subjects to perform various tasks in which performance would be greatly enhanced by the ability to count. These included laying out the same number of nuts or sticks that he had laid out; distinguishing two boxes whose only difference was the number of fish drawn on their tops; and knowing when a tin can was empty after watching the researcher put nuts into the can and then withdraw them.
"Gordon found the Piraha were incapable of following or accounting for more than three objects. He attributed this finding to the fact the Piraha 'have no privileged name for the singular quantity'– in other words, no one, no notion of an integer."
I believe several times on this Blog site, I've mentioned that Christians who are Bible literalists don't have the language for the modern world nor for science, that they live in a world 2,000 years out of date. That's why they are so angry and uncomfortable with the world they find their out of date language trying to cope with. This bit of information further confirms it.
____________________________________________________
"My atheism. . . is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests." —George Santayana (Philosopher)
Chicago Tribune
August 24, 2004
KERRY ASKS BUSH TO END SWIFT BOAT LIES
At a fund-raiser attended by about 750 people, Kerry said the attacks by a group of Vietnam veterans and former Swift Boat commanders have intensified "because in the last months they have seen me climbing in America's understanding that I know how to fight a smarter and more effective war" against terrorists.
"That's why they're attacking my credibility. That's why they've personally gone after me. The president needs to stand up and stop that. The president needs to have the courage to talk about it."
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group funded in part by a top GOP donor in Texas, has been running ads featuring veterans who served in Vietnam at the same time as Kerry and question his wartime record.
Group leader John O'Neill continued the attack Sunday on ABC's This Week show, saying that Kerry did not deserve his bravery medals because the swift boat under Kerry's command fled up river during an assault.
Kerry backer John Podesta fired back on the show, saying, " It’s lie and deny, the story keeps changing and changing…John Kerry served with distinction in Vietnam."
The White House and the Bush campaign have denied any direct connection with the Swift Boat group. "The president has made it repeatedly clear that he wants to see an end to all" advertising from outside groups, said Brian Jones, a Bush campaign spokesman.
But on Saturday, a former POW, retired Col. Ken Cordier, resigned as a volunteer from the Bush campaign's veterans' steering committee after it was learned that he participated in an anti-Kerry ad sponsored by the Swift Boat group. The ad criticizes Kerry's congressional anti-war testimony in the 1970s alleging U.S. troops engaged in atrocities in Vietnam.
"Col. Cordier did not inform the campaign of his involvement in the advertisement," the Bush campaign said in a statement. "Because of his involvement (with the group) Col. Cordier will no longer participate as a volunteer for Bush-Cheney '04."
Earlier on Saturday, Kerry's campaign released a video comparing the controversy over Kerry's Vietnam service to attacks on John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries.
The video, sent via e-mail to supporters, says, "George Bush is up to his old tricks" and shows then-Texas Gov. Bush and Arizona Sen. John McCain at a debate in February 2000.
McCain, sitting next to Bush, says that when "fringe veterans groups" attacked him at a Bush campaign function, Bush stood by and didn't say a word. McCain says a group of senators wrote Bush a letter that said: "Apologize. You should be ashamed."
McCain, also a Vietnam veteran, says Bush "really went over the line."
"I don't know how you can understand this, George, but that really hurts," McCain says.
The Swift Boat group also was being challenged by a Chicago Tribune editor who was on the Feb. 28, 1969, mission for which Kerry received the Silver Star. William Rood, 61, said he decided to break his silence about the mission because recent reports of Kerry's actions in that battle are incorrect and darken the reputations of veterans who served with Kerry.
"The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us," Rood said in a 1,700-word first-person account published in Sunday's edition of the Tribune. "It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there."
Rood said the allegations that Kerry's accomplishments were overblown are untrue and that Kerry came up with an attack strategy that was praised by their superiors. According to the Tribune, Rood's recollection of what happened that day in South Vietnam was backed by military documents.
Rood wrote that Kerry recently contacted him and other crew members, requesting that they go public with their accounts of what happened.
"I can't pretend those calls (from Kerry) had no effect on me, but that is not why I am writing this," Rood said. "What matters most to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not public figures and who deserved to be honored for what they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it."
Kerry also picked up support from Wayne Langhofer, who told The Washington Post he was manning a machine gun in a boat behind Kerry's and saw firing from both banks of a river as Kerry dived in to rescue Special Forces soldier James Rassmann, the basis for Kerry's Bronze Star.
Until now, the Post noted on its Web site, Kerry's version of acting under fire had come from crewmen on his own boat. It quoted Langhofer as saying he was approached by leaders of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth several months ago but declined to join them in speaking against Kerry.
In Roanoke, Va., on Saturday, Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards also called on Bush to end the Swift Boat Veterans ads.
"This is a moment of truth for George W. Bush," Edwards said at a Democratic rally. "We're going to see what kind of man he is and what kind of leader he is. ... We want to hear three words: Stop these ads."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
RESARCH SUGGESTS LANGUAGE HAS A BEARING ON COGNITION
David Brown
Washington Post
August 24, 2004
"Does language sometimes define the content of thought? Are there people who cannot entertain certain ideas because their language does not have the words to express them? Are there concepts that cannot be translated into some languages?
"These questions have vexed linguists and neuroscientists for years. The general feeling has been that language does not limit cognition. However, a new study in the online version of Science suggests that the prevailing notion might not be correct.
"Peter Gordon, a behavioral scientist at Columbia University, conducted an unusual set of experiments with seven adults of the 200-member Piraha tribe of Amazonian Indians in Brazil.
"The tribe's counting system consists of three words – one that means 'roughly one,' one that means 'a small quantity' and one that means 'many.'
"Gordon asked the Piraha subjects to perform various tasks in which performance would be greatly enhanced by the ability to count. These included laying out the same number of nuts or sticks that he had laid out; distinguishing two boxes whose only difference was the number of fish drawn on their tops; and knowing when a tin can was empty after watching the researcher put nuts into the can and then withdraw them.
"Gordon found the Piraha were incapable of following or accounting for more than three objects. He attributed this finding to the fact the Piraha 'have no privileged name for the singular quantity'– in other words, no one, no notion of an integer."
I believe several times on this Blog site, I've mentioned that Christians who are Bible literalists don't have the language for the modern world nor for science, that they live in a world 2,000 years out of date. That's why they are so angry and uncomfortable with the world they find their out of date language trying to cope with. This bit of information further confirms it.
____________________________________________________
"My atheism. . . is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests." —George Santayana (Philosopher)
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