A REAL FACT OF EXISTENCE FOR ME
The following arises from my discussions on the WPM website:
Paul, you write "George, I'm glad you retracted the "remarkable naivete" comment. The "Paul you are truly disturbed" comment is also way off the mark. I could respond by speculating on the psychological reasons why you seem so obsessively attached to the idea that you and all the rest of us are robots, why you seem compelled to raise the topic is almost every discussion you visit, but I won't. Ad hominem arguments have no bearing on the merits of the arguments here."
Here's why I think (obsess ?) about the problem of free will. If free will is only an illusion, then how can we continue to thin the human herd of dangerous, more aggressive and less inhibited human animals if they are not truly free to be other than they are? I think we have faith in free will because it allows us to rid ourselves of dangerous predators among us without the qualm of conscience biting us. However, since our reactions to dangerous humans among us is also not a free will action and is also determined by psychological factors beyond our control, then the two considerations cancel each other out. But, further, it's pleasant and realistic to hold in memory the idea that the Universe is an amoral and benignly indifferent place to live in. That contact with reality is, to me, a better stance than an idealist, romantic or religious stance that offers comfort through a lie. Better discomfort through the truth than comfort through a lie. Having once been an implacable romantic most of my life, arriving at the truth about free will has brought me a peaceful resolution to my battle with reality. I've now accepted reality and no longer fight it.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Saturday, October 02, 2010
RESPONSE TO A QUESTION ON THE PANTHEISM WEBSITE
"Some of us may use the phrase "The Earth is Sacred, the Universe is Divine" or similar phrases to express our Pantheism.
But what does a Pantheist really mean by using these words?
Although the Pantheist Credo (the WPM Belief statement) states "We revere and celebrate the Universe as the totality of being, past, present and future" and speaks of " our aesthetic and religious feelings about reality", nowhere does it contain the words "sacred" or "divine".
This discussion forum is the place for us to discuss whether the terms "sacred" and "divine" are meaningful in the context of Naturalistic Pantheism, and if they are, just what do they mean.
And my response is?
I have never been a friend of creeds of any kind, and when you ask me about "words" in relation to my behavior system, I'm brought into a personal struggle. As far as I can see, my affiliations have never been based in a shared belief system. I'm a regular on this website because I recognize the intelligence here. I'm a member of the Greater Portland Humanists, but I barely tolerate the reading of Humanist principles with which we begin our Sunday meetings 52 times a year. I identify with the people I see there and with whom I share interesting lunchtime discussions. I love interacting with people who have reached a certain level of self-awareness and Cosmic consciousness even though so many of them leave my piddling consciousness in the dust.
Since I believe that the human animal is a robot whose language life is an adaption for survival by passing on basic information but which plays little role in the minute to minute regulation of human behavior, I guess I act as if intellectual life is really of little importance, and, so, I pay little attention to creeds while I do pay close attention to human behaviors. Thus my infatuation with evolutionary psychology rather then in the study of religious beliefs and creeds.
The study of creeds and the emphasis on creeds would, I think, tend to make someone more or less rigid in his behavior. He would be emphasizing the intellectual rules for his behavior rather than his behavior itself. He could quote from and believe in Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount and, yet, in all his behavior act in a very different manner. A recent study showed that atheists know more about the Bible than do Christians. This is good for us atheists, because it means most Christians are decent folk generally interested in their neighbors rather than in the dogmas of their multitudinous faiths. The dangerous dogmatists are those TV evangelical folk who spend all their time awash in the language of the Bible looking for meaning there rather than in the daily life of America among fellow citizens who all love the Constitution.
I don't know why I am as I am when it comes to my inability to orient my life toward the words of creeds or dogmas as opposed to feeling my way along, because I do delight in a good debate, but when you ask me about the words sacred and divine in the context of pantheism, the question is hard for my brain to get its synapses around.
PS: I mean no disrespect by my response. I am truly puzzled by my interest in debate while not being so much interested in the material with which to debate.
"Some of us may use the phrase "The Earth is Sacred, the Universe is Divine" or similar phrases to express our Pantheism.
But what does a Pantheist really mean by using these words?
Although the Pantheist Credo (the WPM Belief statement) states "We revere and celebrate the Universe as the totality of being, past, present and future" and speaks of " our aesthetic and religious feelings about reality", nowhere does it contain the words "sacred" or "divine".
This discussion forum is the place for us to discuss whether the terms "sacred" and "divine" are meaningful in the context of Naturalistic Pantheism, and if they are, just what do they mean.
And my response is?
I have never been a friend of creeds of any kind, and when you ask me about "words" in relation to my behavior system, I'm brought into a personal struggle. As far as I can see, my affiliations have never been based in a shared belief system. I'm a regular on this website because I recognize the intelligence here. I'm a member of the Greater Portland Humanists, but I barely tolerate the reading of Humanist principles with which we begin our Sunday meetings 52 times a year. I identify with the people I see there and with whom I share interesting lunchtime discussions. I love interacting with people who have reached a certain level of self-awareness and Cosmic consciousness even though so many of them leave my piddling consciousness in the dust.
Since I believe that the human animal is a robot whose language life is an adaption for survival by passing on basic information but which plays little role in the minute to minute regulation of human behavior, I guess I act as if intellectual life is really of little importance, and, so, I pay little attention to creeds while I do pay close attention to human behaviors. Thus my infatuation with evolutionary psychology rather then in the study of religious beliefs and creeds.
The study of creeds and the emphasis on creeds would, I think, tend to make someone more or less rigid in his behavior. He would be emphasizing the intellectual rules for his behavior rather than his behavior itself. He could quote from and believe in Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount and, yet, in all his behavior act in a very different manner. A recent study showed that atheists know more about the Bible than do Christians. This is good for us atheists, because it means most Christians are decent folk generally interested in their neighbors rather than in the dogmas of their multitudinous faiths. The dangerous dogmatists are those TV evangelical folk who spend all their time awash in the language of the Bible looking for meaning there rather than in the daily life of America among fellow citizens who all love the Constitution.
I don't know why I am as I am when it comes to my inability to orient my life toward the words of creeds or dogmas as opposed to feeling my way along, because I do delight in a good debate, but when you ask me about the words sacred and divine in the context of pantheism, the question is hard for my brain to get its synapses around.
PS: I mean no disrespect by my response. I am truly puzzled by my interest in debate while not being so much interested in the material with which to debate.
Friday, October 01, 2010
MY VANITY WAS FINALLY DEFEATED
After 7 decades of being too vain to use the vanity press to self-publish, (think about the paradox of it) I have self-published a short book of some poetry that I wrote at a specific period in my life in the early 1990s. This was after my third divorce and after a couple of years of one on one counseling and getting to see myself in all my male charm in an honest and forthright way.
The book is called Gray House By Cold Mountain. You can buy it at Amazon or AuthorHouse. If you're embarrassed by sexual matter, the 2nd half of the book is not for you. If you consider sex to be a natural part of the human experience, you'll enjoy the second half of the book.
After 7 decades of being too vain to use the vanity press to self-publish, (think about the paradox of it) I have self-published a short book of some poetry that I wrote at a specific period in my life in the early 1990s. This was after my third divorce and after a couple of years of one on one counseling and getting to see myself in all my male charm in an honest and forthright way.
The book is called Gray House By Cold Mountain. You can buy it at Amazon or AuthorHouse. If you're embarrassed by sexual matter, the 2nd half of the book is not for you. If you consider sex to be a natural part of the human experience, you'll enjoy the second half of the book.
PECKING ORDER or DOMINANCE HIERARCHIES
My following comments also appear on the World Panthiesm Movement website:
Most of the statistics I go by are contained in the 1st and 2nd editions of The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology ed. Buss which is filled with overviews of the literature in that field.
From analyzing my own situation in and struggles against reality as it is conceived of in the brains of my fellow animals of the human species, I think there's a basic disagreement among us about what a pecking order is. It's not a political structure; it's a sense within an individual brain of where it fits within the culture in which it finds itself competing for goods and services by which to procreate itself. The brain is constantly analyzing its situation—who to trust, who to make alignments with, who not to trust, who can offer us an advantage, who makes us feel comfortable? All these evaluations take place within a mental picture in our brains of the social structure in which people are worse or better positioned to aid us or harm us. Our evaluations of those around us naturally fall into an hierarchical structure as we evaluate who we can help and who can help us—our allies and our enemies.
If someone is struggling against their place in a culture, they are, by default, acknowledging the pecking order. If there is not a perceived pecking order within our brains, against what are we struggling? What does it mean to be dissatisfied with our station in the pecking order? In short, to me the pecking order is indistinguishable from our sense of being in harmonious alignment with the culture we are born into. Or not. It's an intensely personal psychological phenomenon, rarely acknowledged for what it is, because we are so busy arguing about the politics of it. We have our heroes in the struggle (those we raise UP in our psychological fundament and our goats (those we put DOWN in our psychological hierarchy). We are always looking up and down the scale. Our friends are usually people who stand at a relatively equal place in the hierarchy.
Beth, no one has replied, I don't think, to my comments about sports. If there is a common phenomenon in worldwide culture, it's sports, specially football, soccer, rugby and all the permutations of that game called football. In that arena we find the pecking order being played out for us, a game to decide who is most fitted to rule the roost. Since most play is practice for living within a culture, football is childhood play raised into the adult sphere. Here is an arena where people vote with their dollars and their feet. There's no power structure holding them in place. In the last 60 years, we've gone to great lengths to raise the awareness of women as to their opportunities in sports. Women are playing many sports at the professional level now, yet women do not seem to want to flock to the WNBA, for example. Women seem less interested statistically in physically competitive sports. Not only do they not have a great interest in their sex playing sports, they usually don't much care about the opposite sex's participation in sports either. No one can keep a woman from watching a competitive sport if she so desires, thus, their failure to attend says something about how deeply they don't respond to hierarchical physical game play.
Most evolutionary psychological studies reveal that women do compete and do have a sense of where they stand among their contemporaries, but—IF THEY ARE WANTING TO HAVE CHILDREN—then they are constantly looking for ways to further that ambition, and, if they want their child-rearing efforts to be fruitful, they are constantly evaluating the male's fitness to nurture children either with time or with resources. Most all of this evaluating goes on under the conscious level. To be conscious of it would be too embarrassing. Women recognize a hierarchy of resources. I long ago painfully accepted that most outstandingly beautiful women would prefer a rich man to poor little old me. Nowadays, however, my psychology has begun to compensate by finding the Twiggys amongst us not to be physically beautiful. Too damn skinny. I now catch myself adjusting my psychological measuring stick to fit my circumstances. My wife is beautiful and sexy to me, and that's all I need to know, and since I'm 72 and my libido is not the same as it was when I was younger, my wife must be specially sexy and beautiful to me because our sex life is purring right along.
Evolutionary psychology is a much harder science than counseling and other fields of psychology. If you check into that field or into neuroscience, you'll discover tons of hard data about the human animal's brain. the inside of which is teeming with evaluations based on a pecking order, but the pecking order isn't a single chain of lower to higher. It's an accumulation of evaluations all based on various strategies for survival and procreation. It's this fundamental human drive that keeps us mentally shoving our fellow animals into hierarchies of various kinds.
My following comments also appear on the World Panthiesm Movement website:
Most of the statistics I go by are contained in the 1st and 2nd editions of The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology ed. Buss which is filled with overviews of the literature in that field.
From analyzing my own situation in and struggles against reality as it is conceived of in the brains of my fellow animals of the human species, I think there's a basic disagreement among us about what a pecking order is. It's not a political structure; it's a sense within an individual brain of where it fits within the culture in which it finds itself competing for goods and services by which to procreate itself. The brain is constantly analyzing its situation—who to trust, who to make alignments with, who not to trust, who can offer us an advantage, who makes us feel comfortable? All these evaluations take place within a mental picture in our brains of the social structure in which people are worse or better positioned to aid us or harm us. Our evaluations of those around us naturally fall into an hierarchical structure as we evaluate who we can help and who can help us—our allies and our enemies.
If someone is struggling against their place in a culture, they are, by default, acknowledging the pecking order. If there is not a perceived pecking order within our brains, against what are we struggling? What does it mean to be dissatisfied with our station in the pecking order? In short, to me the pecking order is indistinguishable from our sense of being in harmonious alignment with the culture we are born into. Or not. It's an intensely personal psychological phenomenon, rarely acknowledged for what it is, because we are so busy arguing about the politics of it. We have our heroes in the struggle (those we raise UP in our psychological fundament and our goats (those we put DOWN in our psychological hierarchy). We are always looking up and down the scale. Our friends are usually people who stand at a relatively equal place in the hierarchy.
Beth, no one has replied, I don't think, to my comments about sports. If there is a common phenomenon in worldwide culture, it's sports, specially football, soccer, rugby and all the permutations of that game called football. In that arena we find the pecking order being played out for us, a game to decide who is most fitted to rule the roost. Since most play is practice for living within a culture, football is childhood play raised into the adult sphere. Here is an arena where people vote with their dollars and their feet. There's no power structure holding them in place. In the last 60 years, we've gone to great lengths to raise the awareness of women as to their opportunities in sports. Women are playing many sports at the professional level now, yet women do not seem to want to flock to the WNBA, for example. Women seem less interested statistically in physically competitive sports. Not only do they not have a great interest in their sex playing sports, they usually don't much care about the opposite sex's participation in sports either. No one can keep a woman from watching a competitive sport if she so desires, thus, their failure to attend says something about how deeply they don't respond to hierarchical physical game play.
Most evolutionary psychological studies reveal that women do compete and do have a sense of where they stand among their contemporaries, but—IF THEY ARE WANTING TO HAVE CHILDREN—then they are constantly looking for ways to further that ambition, and, if they want their child-rearing efforts to be fruitful, they are constantly evaluating the male's fitness to nurture children either with time or with resources. Most all of this evaluating goes on under the conscious level. To be conscious of it would be too embarrassing. Women recognize a hierarchy of resources. I long ago painfully accepted that most outstandingly beautiful women would prefer a rich man to poor little old me. Nowadays, however, my psychology has begun to compensate by finding the Twiggys amongst us not to be physically beautiful. Too damn skinny. I now catch myself adjusting my psychological measuring stick to fit my circumstances. My wife is beautiful and sexy to me, and that's all I need to know, and since I'm 72 and my libido is not the same as it was when I was younger, my wife must be specially sexy and beautiful to me because our sex life is purring right along.
Evolutionary psychology is a much harder science than counseling and other fields of psychology. If you check into that field or into neuroscience, you'll discover tons of hard data about the human animal's brain. the inside of which is teeming with evaluations based on a pecking order, but the pecking order isn't a single chain of lower to higher. It's an accumulation of evaluations all based on various strategies for survival and procreation. It's this fundamental human drive that keeps us mentally shoving our fellow animals into hierarchies of various kinds.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
ANOTHER PANTHEISM DICUSSION
Beth Love said
I was attacked by a German Shepard, and i can tell you, I most certainly did not think everything through, I was lucky enough to have a fully functional instincual reactor...and instantly determined that there was nought to be done than kick some dog ass. I went for him, and he turned and ran, tail tucked. There's a place for intellect, an important place, but it isn't everything it thinks it is.
Reply by George Thomas
Beth Love said
I was attacked by a German Shepard, and i can tell you, I most certainly did not think everything through, I was lucky enough to have a fully functional instincual reactor...and instantly determined that there was nought to be done than kick some dog ass. I went for him, and he turned and ran, tail tucked. There's a place for intellect, an important place, but it isn't everything it thinks it is.
That is my point exactly. I'm a strictly materialistic, reductive determinist. WOW... lotta verbiage there, eh?
I go with the definition by evolutionary psychology that emotions evolved for the regulation of behavior or the mechanisms of behavior. My behaviors are strictly determined by the emotional signals (i.e. preference determiners) that control me. Emotions are physiological electro/chemical states in the body that range from intense to barely noticeable, but all action is preceded by a "preference" (i.e. an emotional setting in the synaptic landscape created by genetic and environmental conditions) that sets off a series of synaptic firings that reveal to the outside world what my behaviors actually look like. A spoken thought is also a behavior but my natural human duplicity makes my spoken thoughts untrustworthy or trustworthy, depending on the circumstances of the moment in which they come forth out of my mouth and body. The interesting thing is that language can be used to hide our true selves whereas our actions can't hide our "true self".
What is a true self? To my way of thinking, my true self is my biological self as expressed through its behaviors which are controlled through my electro/chemical makeup at the time of any action. Of course, experience is constantly readjusting (reevaluating) and altering that electro/chemical substrate. Also my tendency to think about or not think about my past behaviors also influence my current electro/chemical state. If I visualize a past experience and have feelings about it, that experience of having feelings about the past is readjusting my electro/chemical substrate. Thus our intellectual life reveals the process by which behavior is changed. Being reflective or un-reflective is a genetic condition, I believe, and also one of those conditions that separate the Hamlets (liberals) from the Genghis Khans (conservatives). PS: I'm revealing an emotional preference here, but I'm not feeling particularly fond of either one at the moment. I expect I respect the middle of the road average responder to the environment.
I go with the definition by evolutionary psychology that emotions evolved for the regulation of behavior or the mechanisms of behavior. My behaviors are strictly determined by the emotional signals (i.e. preference determiners) that control me. Emotions are physiological electro/chemical states in the body that range from intense to barely noticeable, but all action is preceded by a "preference" (i.e. an emotional setting in the synaptic landscape created by genetic and environmental conditions) that sets off a series of synaptic firings that reveal to the outside world what my behaviors actually look like. A spoken thought is also a behavior but my natural human duplicity makes my spoken thoughts untrustworthy or trustworthy, depending on the circumstances of the moment in which they come forth out of my mouth and body. The interesting thing is that language can be used to hide our true selves whereas our actions can't hide our "true self".
What is a true self? To my way of thinking, my true self is my biological self as expressed through its behaviors which are controlled through my electro/chemical makeup at the time of any action. Of course, experience is constantly readjusting (reevaluating) and altering that electro/chemical substrate. Also my tendency to think about or not think about my past behaviors also influence my current electro/chemical state. If I visualize a past experience and have feelings about it, that experience of having feelings about the past is readjusting my electro/chemical substrate. Thus our intellectual life reveals the process by which behavior is changed. Being reflective or un-reflective is a genetic condition, I believe, and also one of those conditions that separate the Hamlets (liberals) from the Genghis Khans (conservatives). PS: I'm revealing an emotional preference here, but I'm not feeling particularly fond of either one at the moment. I expect I respect the middle of the road average responder to the environment.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE HUMAN WHO SUSPENDS JUDGMENT?
Currently, slowly, working my way through a Darwin biography.... I couldn't help drawing a comparison between a repeated comment (by the biographers) about why an Owen or a Lyell hesitated to make the jump to "transmutation"... i.e. "evolution" while a handful of others, like Darwin, did, and similar comments by people discussing free will versus determinism. Always, those reluctant naturalists stated "fears" that it degraded mankind to put him in the biological line of monkeys.
In almost every situation when we're discussing free will, those opposed to determinism fear that we will lose "moral accountability" if we agree that human behavior is determined by electro/chemical factors beyond our control. Darwin's reply in his journals was that he opposed the arrogance of that idea which put humankind on a pedestal in the discussion of biology. He got this from his Fueguian [sp] experiences.
There is nothing scientific about a moral or fearful objection to the facts of natural selection or determinism. Of course, I know there's nothing scientific about my conclusion that we can measure the accuracy of the facts by the depth of the fear that they arouse in the human subconscious, but it's interesting to contemplate: the deeper the fear the nearer the truth. But who or what is fearing the concept of powerlessness? And why? Would accepting our powerlessness be harmful to our survival or would it create an entirely new world consciousness?
Imagine how fearful we would be if we had to suspend our judgment about all human behavior since those judgments are vital to our survival....... but........ only in a hunter/gatherer society?
Currently, slowly, working my way through a Darwin biography.... I couldn't help drawing a comparison between a repeated comment (by the biographers) about why an Owen or a Lyell hesitated to make the jump to "transmutation"... i.e. "evolution" while a handful of others, like Darwin, did, and similar comments by people discussing free will versus determinism. Always, those reluctant naturalists stated "fears" that it degraded mankind to put him in the biological line of monkeys.
In almost every situation when we're discussing free will, those opposed to determinism fear that we will lose "moral accountability" if we agree that human behavior is determined by electro/chemical factors beyond our control. Darwin's reply in his journals was that he opposed the arrogance of that idea which put humankind on a pedestal in the discussion of biology. He got this from his Fueguian [sp] experiences.
There is nothing scientific about a moral or fearful objection to the facts of natural selection or determinism. Of course, I know there's nothing scientific about my conclusion that we can measure the accuracy of the facts by the depth of the fear that they arouse in the human subconscious, but it's interesting to contemplate: the deeper the fear the nearer the truth. But who or what is fearing the concept of powerlessness? And why? Would accepting our powerlessness be harmful to our survival or would it create an entirely new world consciousness?
Imagine how fearful we would be if we had to suspend our judgment about all human behavior since those judgments are vital to our survival....... but........ only in a hunter/gatherer society?
YELLING AT THE PRESS
Lou,
I've hounded you in past about the paper becoming more relevant. This instance of the girl who has injured herself with acid is a case in point.
One of your commentators mentioned "Munchausen's syndrome". That syndrome, as well as many more, are being deeply explored in the fields of neuroscience and/or evolutionary psychology. Unlike psychology of the past, these new fields are hard science, based in new techniques for imaging and analyzing the brain and its functions.
Central to their findings is the idea that the brain is not and has never been a blank slate upon which any culture can write any lesson which they care to. The core finding of these new sciences is that the brain is an accumulation of hundreds and thousands of minute adaptations over time (minute computing devices with specific and limited duties) which have culminated (for the moment) in the modern brain which first appeared between 50 and 100 thousand years ago with all its strict limitations and its soaring strengths.
Reading in these fields will open any mind (and the minds of your readers) to what an amazing device the brain is. It contains all that is us, all the chemistry of our feelings and thoughts. The brainRus, so to speak, and its physical functioning produces every nuance of personality that others perceive in us. These states which we label "emotions" and talk about as if they were some sort of soul-state or airy-fairy presence within us are actually electro-chemical states of the body which evolved for the regulation of human decisions. Understanding these basic facts would go a long way toward humanity's beginning to get ahold of ourselves and our actions. Right now, we humans are pretty much by nature out of control of our actions.
These new findings are as important in the long run as Darwin's discover of the mechanisms of natural selection in the biological world. Is it not the duty of a newspaper to inform the public of new findings which may alter humanity's self-perceptions and our functioning in the Cosmos?
David Brooks, the once-upon-a-time conservative writer, brought up this new field of science in a recent conversation with Charlie Rose. He sees its importance as much as anyone in your line of work. That's why I mention him.
Good luck and good reading,
--
George Thomas
Lou,
I've hounded you in past about the paper becoming more relevant. This instance of the girl who has injured herself with acid is a case in point.
One of your commentators mentioned "Munchausen's syndrome". That syndrome, as well as many more, are being deeply explored in the fields of neuroscience and/or evolutionary psychology. Unlike psychology of the past, these new fields are hard science, based in new techniques for imaging and analyzing the brain and its functions.
Central to their findings is the idea that the brain is not and has never been a blank slate upon which any culture can write any lesson which they care to. The core finding of these new sciences is that the brain is an accumulation of hundreds and thousands of minute adaptations over time (minute computing devices with specific and limited duties) which have culminated (for the moment) in the modern brain which first appeared between 50 and 100 thousand years ago with all its strict limitations and its soaring strengths.
Reading in these fields will open any mind (and the minds of your readers) to what an amazing device the brain is. It contains all that is us, all the chemistry of our feelings and thoughts. The brainRus, so to speak, and its physical functioning produces every nuance of personality that others perceive in us. These states which we label "emotions" and talk about as if they were some sort of soul-state or airy-fairy presence within us are actually electro-chemical states of the body which evolved for the regulation of human decisions. Understanding these basic facts would go a long way toward humanity's beginning to get ahold of ourselves and our actions. Right now, we humans are pretty much by nature out of control of our actions.
These new findings are as important in the long run as Darwin's discover of the mechanisms of natural selection in the biological world. Is it not the duty of a newspaper to inform the public of new findings which may alter humanity's self-perceptions and our functioning in the Cosmos?
David Brooks, the once-upon-a-time conservative writer, brought up this new field of science in a recent conversation with Charlie Rose. He sees its importance as much as anyone in your line of work. That's why I mention him.
Good luck and good reading,
--
George Thomas
Saturday, September 18, 2010
YEP. NO! YEP... OKAY, WE'RE STILL DETERMINED
(The following is taken from another contribution of mine in a continuing discussion about free will on the World Pantheism Movement website I belong to.)
I sometimes think that a person needs to be involved in crisis situations before they can uncover the determinism that drives their own human behavior. Because we can reflect ahead (interesting turn of phrase, eh) in most cases, we seem able to ignore that the ultimate determinant in any decision is our emotional life (the mechanisms evolved for the regulation of our behaviors). We can tell other people, "I'm not going to the dance because Emily's going to be there." Or we can say we can't go because we "have homework to do". In discussing our decisions with others, language makes us supply calculations or reasons for our decisions, but quite often we don't relate the feelings that actually determined our decisions. Often we're not even aware of the emotional currents that underpin our decisions. If it was fear of the hurt of seeing ex-girlfriend Emily that kept us from going to the dance, we seldom say that we were afraid. We leave it up to our friends to understand what's going on. And people spend a good deal of their lives reflecting upon other people's behaviors, and they generally do so by trying to think about what others are/were feeling when they made a decision. Note the verb "to make" in the phrase? It reveals that we imagine decision making as an activity that can be formed or shaped. Language colors all our discussion about human behavior.
By the way, if you want to get deeply into the difference between a liberal and a conservative mentality, I believe it's in their capacity for self-knowledge, their capacity for getting in touch with the emotions that underlie their behaviors. The liberal tends to be a Hamlet and the conservative leans toward Genghis Khan. Action versus reflection. The reason we go at each other so mercilessly is that we don't accept that the others' underlying emotional life predetermines their thoughts and actions. So we blame them for their actions. We imagine them in out mental lives as responsible for their emotional reflexes.
Anyhow... to return to the theme of crisis in decisions. In a barroom brawl is one instance where our determinism becomes apparent. Think about all the immediate decisions that can flow from the conflict. Anywhere from running from the bar to participating joyously in the fray or, in the middle, seeking a balcony view where one can watch from safety. Among those who participate, are some who'll grab a beer bottle, break it and try to cause serious harm to an opponent. While another can only use his fists. Another might pick up a handy pool cue. Of course, depending upon which opponent faces you, you might graduate to a broken beer bottle if your opponent has one.
My point is that these decisions in crisis situations are flowing from every piece of experience that has formed our emotional cores up to the moment of decisions, the mechanisms which control your behavior. You may have rehearsed your behaviors all your life by imagining them through, but in crisis your decisions are based upon the exact alignment of all your experiences at the moment they trigger your action. And when I say alignment, I mean every synapse and chemical reaction that has been repeatedly rehearsed by every imagining of behavior and every feedback for every behavior that you've had in the past. You are so primed for action that you don't need to think about it. The switches activate and the behavior begins, but those behaviors are conditioned by so much individual experience as well as genetic inheritance that no person can take any credit for how he acts in a crisis.
Later, after the crisis passes, we often discuss our behavior with others, but by then, we're already shading our discussions, feelings and reactions to the crisis even from ourselves. How many people can tell a relative stranger, "Man, am I a coward! I ran from that bar like a chicken with its head cut off!" No we'll say, "Them damn fools was a trying to kill each other. I got the hell out of there!" Our fear is obvious to another person, but think about all the shades of meaning that can attach to an action that is motivated by fear? No wonder, the more civilized we get, the less we are in touch with crisis situational thinking. A hunter gatherer was always in crisis and those who hunted the mastodon effectively (fearlessly) stood out and became the leader and those of us more cautious became the shamans. Et cetera!
I still side with determinism even though our less dangerous existences nowadays allow us time to imagine (reflect) upon our behaviors and imagine that we control them when, deep down, it's a single uncontrollable synapse that tips the balance of behavior in each decision.
(The following is taken from another contribution of mine in a continuing discussion about free will on the World Pantheism Movement website I belong to.)
I sometimes think that a person needs to be involved in crisis situations before they can uncover the determinism that drives their own human behavior. Because we can reflect ahead (interesting turn of phrase, eh) in most cases, we seem able to ignore that the ultimate determinant in any decision is our emotional life (the mechanisms evolved for the regulation of our behaviors). We can tell other people, "I'm not going to the dance because Emily's going to be there." Or we can say we can't go because we "have homework to do". In discussing our decisions with others, language makes us supply calculations or reasons for our decisions, but quite often we don't relate the feelings that actually determined our decisions. Often we're not even aware of the emotional currents that underpin our decisions. If it was fear of the hurt of seeing ex-girlfriend Emily that kept us from going to the dance, we seldom say that we were afraid. We leave it up to our friends to understand what's going on. And people spend a good deal of their lives reflecting upon other people's behaviors, and they generally do so by trying to think about what others are/were feeling when they made a decision. Note the verb "to make" in the phrase? It reveals that we imagine decision making as an activity that can be formed or shaped. Language colors all our discussion about human behavior.
By the way, if you want to get deeply into the difference between a liberal and a conservative mentality, I believe it's in their capacity for self-knowledge, their capacity for getting in touch with the emotions that underlie their behaviors. The liberal tends to be a Hamlet and the conservative leans toward Genghis Khan. Action versus reflection. The reason we go at each other so mercilessly is that we don't accept that the others' underlying emotional life predetermines their thoughts and actions. So we blame them for their actions. We imagine them in out mental lives as responsible for their emotional reflexes.
Anyhow... to return to the theme of crisis in decisions. In a barroom brawl is one instance where our determinism becomes apparent. Think about all the immediate decisions that can flow from the conflict. Anywhere from running from the bar to participating joyously in the fray or, in the middle, seeking a balcony view where one can watch from safety. Among those who participate, are some who'll grab a beer bottle, break it and try to cause serious harm to an opponent. While another can only use his fists. Another might pick up a handy pool cue. Of course, depending upon which opponent faces you, you might graduate to a broken beer bottle if your opponent has one.
My point is that these decisions in crisis situations are flowing from every piece of experience that has formed our emotional cores up to the moment of decisions, the mechanisms which control your behavior. You may have rehearsed your behaviors all your life by imagining them through, but in crisis your decisions are based upon the exact alignment of all your experiences at the moment they trigger your action. And when I say alignment, I mean every synapse and chemical reaction that has been repeatedly rehearsed by every imagining of behavior and every feedback for every behavior that you've had in the past. You are so primed for action that you don't need to think about it. The switches activate and the behavior begins, but those behaviors are conditioned by so much individual experience as well as genetic inheritance that no person can take any credit for how he acts in a crisis.
Later, after the crisis passes, we often discuss our behavior with others, but by then, we're already shading our discussions, feelings and reactions to the crisis even from ourselves. How many people can tell a relative stranger, "Man, am I a coward! I ran from that bar like a chicken with its head cut off!" No we'll say, "Them damn fools was a trying to kill each other. I got the hell out of there!" Our fear is obvious to another person, but think about all the shades of meaning that can attach to an action that is motivated by fear? No wonder, the more civilized we get, the less we are in touch with crisis situational thinking. A hunter gatherer was always in crisis and those who hunted the mastodon effectively (fearlessly) stood out and became the leader and those of us more cautious became the shamans. Et cetera!
I still side with determinism even though our less dangerous existences nowadays allow us time to imagine (reflect) upon our behaviors and imagine that we control them when, deep down, it's a single uncontrollable synapse that tips the balance of behavior in each decision.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
THE PECKING ORDER LIFE REVEALED
In more detail, here's why films like "Avatar" are damaging to the human species. I think all of us must recognize that rooted in our evolutionary adaptions is a "pecking order". We can't help but navigate the world with an underlying judgment structure that places us in value-based human relationships within our cultures. Every time we make a judgment (based on feelings), we are asserting our place in the pecking order. It's a key survival tool. We rationalize our individual pecking orders when we make judgments about others that we put into words. Those we feel negatives about are below us and those we like are equal to or above us. At the level of far above us are our heroes. Of course, we also loathe those we fear and who are in a transcendent place in our value systems. You can see this at work when the mob enjoys the downfall of their "favorite" movie star or the disappointment we feel when one of our heroes in the culture wars falls from society's grace.
We can see our places in the pecking order by taking a careful look at those we place above us and those we place below us and those we judge as equals (i.e. those we are most ourselves with). Even though we may not be consciously arranging our relationships on these value levels, our brains automatically do it. That's the pecking order at work. It's the monkey in us.
My contention about almost all Hollywood films is that they automatically try to trigger our "pecking order" functions in order to trigger us to shell out good dollars. They trigger the "good guy, bad guy" structures in our brains. Every time we shell out dollars to these men who are plying our "pecking order brains" for our bucks, we are allowing our nervous systems to be exercised and our pecking order brain functions are strengthened and reinforced almost automatically. You can see this revealed in almost any conversation about films and/or drama. People automatically like or dislike characters and usually talk about films with this in mind. When you put evil versus good into these films, you begin to push pecking orders into religious realms. I think religious persons are really stuck in a royal pecking order—witness their heavenly and/or religious hierarchies—lords, kings and princes all!
The directors are directing not only the actors but our emotions to make us feel identity with characters in the films and to keep us coming back. This is why people don't like downer films which aren't fun to watch because they trigger emotions and consequent thoughts which are unpleasant. People don't like to watch their REAL SELVES up there on the big screen. They don't want to learn from film and drama. They don't want to think about unpleasant realities. Most people go to films to escape. Most people are always in an escape mode. Anytime I hear someone tell me that they go to movies to escape, I usually lose interest in them because they don't like dealing with reality at any other time in their lives. Okay, I have a pecking order too.
I still recall the first time I told myself that I ought to be rooting for the native Americans in John Wayne movies. I wasn't a kid by any means. It was a great leap forward in one way, but, as my identity with the downtrodden increased so also did my alcoholism, and soon my identifying with the underdog led me to also become an underdog and a loser. The more I hated those "above" me in the pecking order, the lower I fell in the ranks of the pecking order. The more I resolved not to compete with the bastards, the more I was unable to compete. I sank pretty low before the friends of Bill W. helped me stop using the depressant alcohol as a treatment for my depression. By age 31 or 32, I was so low that I spontaneously crashed my car one cold Winter's eve by speeding into a turn I knew I could not negotiate at speed. By the time I climbed out of the bottom of the pecking order, a good part of my earning life was over so my retirement is not in the greatest of financial straits, but I'm content because the "demons" are gone from my life. Like that "demon" metaphor? The religious among us also like to use that term.
Two recent films that demonstrate a way to make films that escape the "pecking order" are Rachel Getting Married and The Last Station. Films that worked against the pecking order in the past were Fellini's 8 1/2 or Juliet of the Spirits. In Fellini films, the characters are always at battle with the pecking orders in their heads, the distorted views of reality they carry around in their imaginations. It's wonderful and enlightening to come to in a Fellini film. Another great film which defies the pecking order is Sante Sangre. A serial killer is portrayed sympathetically, and I came across that film just when Silence of the Lambs was making a killing by portraying a serial killer in an almost evil light. Also, the last scene in The Truman Show was a vital metaphor. When Truman stepped through the containing wall into the real world, he was leaving the god-dominated, false world and entering the real world. That was my emotional response to that film. Scorsese's Taxi Driver approached the "pecking order" from another satirical angle. By making an insane and violent scene become the making of a hero, Scorcese revealed the whole fake pecking order nightmare we live in, surrounded by people whose "pecking order" responses are nearly automatic and not reflective.
In more detail, here's why films like "Avatar" are damaging to the human species. I think all of us must recognize that rooted in our evolutionary adaptions is a "pecking order". We can't help but navigate the world with an underlying judgment structure that places us in value-based human relationships within our cultures. Every time we make a judgment (based on feelings), we are asserting our place in the pecking order. It's a key survival tool. We rationalize our individual pecking orders when we make judgments about others that we put into words. Those we feel negatives about are below us and those we like are equal to or above us. At the level of far above us are our heroes. Of course, we also loathe those we fear and who are in a transcendent place in our value systems. You can see this at work when the mob enjoys the downfall of their "favorite" movie star or the disappointment we feel when one of our heroes in the culture wars falls from society's grace.
We can see our places in the pecking order by taking a careful look at those we place above us and those we place below us and those we judge as equals (i.e. those we are most ourselves with). Even though we may not be consciously arranging our relationships on these value levels, our brains automatically do it. That's the pecking order at work. It's the monkey in us.
My contention about almost all Hollywood films is that they automatically try to trigger our "pecking order" functions in order to trigger us to shell out good dollars. They trigger the "good guy, bad guy" structures in our brains. Every time we shell out dollars to these men who are plying our "pecking order brains" for our bucks, we are allowing our nervous systems to be exercised and our pecking order brain functions are strengthened and reinforced almost automatically. You can see this revealed in almost any conversation about films and/or drama. People automatically like or dislike characters and usually talk about films with this in mind. When you put evil versus good into these films, you begin to push pecking orders into religious realms. I think religious persons are really stuck in a royal pecking order—witness their heavenly and/or religious hierarchies—lords, kings and princes all!
The directors are directing not only the actors but our emotions to make us feel identity with characters in the films and to keep us coming back. This is why people don't like downer films which aren't fun to watch because they trigger emotions and consequent thoughts which are unpleasant. People don't like to watch their REAL SELVES up there on the big screen. They don't want to learn from film and drama. They don't want to think about unpleasant realities. Most people go to films to escape. Most people are always in an escape mode. Anytime I hear someone tell me that they go to movies to escape, I usually lose interest in them because they don't like dealing with reality at any other time in their lives. Okay, I have a pecking order too.
I still recall the first time I told myself that I ought to be rooting for the native Americans in John Wayne movies. I wasn't a kid by any means. It was a great leap forward in one way, but, as my identity with the downtrodden increased so also did my alcoholism, and soon my identifying with the underdog led me to also become an underdog and a loser. The more I hated those "above" me in the pecking order, the lower I fell in the ranks of the pecking order. The more I resolved not to compete with the bastards, the more I was unable to compete. I sank pretty low before the friends of Bill W. helped me stop using the depressant alcohol as a treatment for my depression. By age 31 or 32, I was so low that I spontaneously crashed my car one cold Winter's eve by speeding into a turn I knew I could not negotiate at speed. By the time I climbed out of the bottom of the pecking order, a good part of my earning life was over so my retirement is not in the greatest of financial straits, but I'm content because the "demons" are gone from my life. Like that "demon" metaphor? The religious among us also like to use that term.
Two recent films that demonstrate a way to make films that escape the "pecking order" are Rachel Getting Married and The Last Station. Films that worked against the pecking order in the past were Fellini's 8 1/2 or Juliet of the Spirits. In Fellini films, the characters are always at battle with the pecking orders in their heads, the distorted views of reality they carry around in their imaginations. It's wonderful and enlightening to come to in a Fellini film. Another great film which defies the pecking order is Sante Sangre. A serial killer is portrayed sympathetically, and I came across that film just when Silence of the Lambs was making a killing by portraying a serial killer in an almost evil light. Also, the last scene in The Truman Show was a vital metaphor. When Truman stepped through the containing wall into the real world, he was leaving the god-dominated, false world and entering the real world. That was my emotional response to that film. Scorsese's Taxi Driver approached the "pecking order" from another satirical angle. By making an insane and violent scene become the making of a hero, Scorcese revealed the whole fake pecking order nightmare we live in, surrounded by people whose "pecking order" responses are nearly automatic and not reflective.
Friday, August 20, 2010
MORE DEBATE ABOUT FREE WILL
Ronhorgan wrote: Thus my problem with the determinist position is that it may be demotivating.
Ronhorgan,
My distant computer friend is only one of many reasons that I believe my behavior is determined by factors beyond my control.
The argument that determinism is "demotivating" cannot be a legitimate reason to disregard the evidence for our determinant situation. I note a tendency to bring morality into this particular discussion quite a lot. People cite the lack of moral accountability that seems to accompany a materialistic view of human behavior. People note that we won't be able to hold people accountable for their behavior if we come to the conclusion that human decisions are determined by factors not in their control. But the fear of a particular scientific conclusion is not itself a scientific fact that ought to keep us from arriving at the truth. We would all be Bible literalists if we failed to accept the truth because of irrational fears.
I have to note that we long ago decided that some people are not in control of their behavior when we allow insanity as a plea in trial cases, but insanity, itself, is a label that we put on behavior that does not fit into the normal range of human behavior. In short, it's asocial behavior that our fear of death causes us to angrily respond to. For a time, I believe, in some countries, the rage of a jealous husband was an allowable defense for murder of a rival. If we now realize that such a view of jealousy is unacceptable, it is because slowly a new social norm has arisen into human consciousness, but that new norm is a group phenomena that is evolving as we speak, one brain at a time. We also do not, in America, allow a Muslim father to kill his daughter for asserting her right to fit into American culture. We also are beginning to reign in a parent's religious right to kill his children through neglect of their health needs. As to our overall debate about the death penalty, we seem, because we can debate the issue, to believe that we have free will, but if each of us were honest about our own individual decisions about the death penalty, we would see that individually, our decision were emotional decisions over which we had no control. For myself, my brain is able to consider that—maybe—we ought not to allow the death penalty, but my emotions have not come to that conclusion at all. All arguments against the death penalty fall on my deaf emotional ears so I have made no decision about that particular reality external to my own. Just don't ask me to be the executioner, then, I fear, I would be immobilized by emotional considerations. Future human cultural decisions, if they are basically self-regarding, will naturally lead the human species to the best survival strategies though it will be one individual at a time.
Let me return to another fact that causes me to believe that we are not in control of our own behavior—the moment to moment functioning of the human brain. At any one moment the brain is being bombarded by information arriving from its sensory apparatuses. All of this information is aiming to arrive into our consciousness, all at the same time. Through chemical reactions beyond our control, chains of synapses are firing or being shut down by processes beyond my control. Which impulse from which sensory apparatus that arrives into our consciousnesses is completely out of our control. We hear a sound (a loud crack or a bee buzz) and we instinctively duck and cover. All evidence shows that we commence to duck before we are conscious that we will duck. In short, action precedes awareness.
As to bees, why do we so instinctively duck? It's because those that didn't duck in the evolutionary past and for whom a bee sting was toxic are no longer among us. We now have bee sting kits, et cetera for those who are allergic to bee stings. Same with peanut butter. We have new cultural phenomena arising based on past experience which we are now conscious of, but these are group phenomena. In the individual brain, the duck or don't duck remains an instinct.
My conclusion is that if I cannot control any of the synapses which are firing in my brain and, thus, cannot control which sensory data reaches my consciousness, I cannot be said to be in control of my behavior. Behavior is going on under the radar of my consciousness constantly which, when I become aware of it, I am proud or ashamed of (to name but two possible emotional reactions). Since emotions are the adaptations that regulate human behavior (according to evolutionary psychologists) and emotional reactions are also beyond my control, I conclude here, too, that I am not a free agent. I cannot even choose which thoughts I will think. I conclude we are all day dreamers every moment of our lives while our biological frameworks go about functioning of their own volitions.
PS: I must add here that some of us are able to refrain from hitting the human who is irritating us while others among us can't control that hit reaction. And don't we pride ourselves on our restraint in our afterthoughts? Yet, if most of us were honest with ourselves, we'd see that we were afraid to strike out at our antagonist because we feared the result of that action more than the emotional resolution that hitting our antagonist would bring to our limbic systems. It's fear that keeps us in check, and if we're honest, we wouldn't be so proud of what we can't control.
By the way, an additional consideration here, is that some discussions of my fear-based view of human behavior might label me as conservative rather than liberal. Steven Pinker concludes in his book, The Blank Slate, that the conservative view of human behavior is probably more attuned with evolutionary psychology's findings than the liberal view is. Liberals are hopefully naive while conservatives are pessimistically inhibited. Wouldn't that knowledge of his alignment to evolutionary psychology drive a religious conservative nuts?
Ronhorgan wrote: Thus my problem with the determinist position is that it may be demotivating.
Ronhorgan,
My distant computer friend is only one of many reasons that I believe my behavior is determined by factors beyond my control.
The argument that determinism is "demotivating" cannot be a legitimate reason to disregard the evidence for our determinant situation. I note a tendency to bring morality into this particular discussion quite a lot. People cite the lack of moral accountability that seems to accompany a materialistic view of human behavior. People note that we won't be able to hold people accountable for their behavior if we come to the conclusion that human decisions are determined by factors not in their control. But the fear of a particular scientific conclusion is not itself a scientific fact that ought to keep us from arriving at the truth. We would all be Bible literalists if we failed to accept the truth because of irrational fears.
I have to note that we long ago decided that some people are not in control of their behavior when we allow insanity as a plea in trial cases, but insanity, itself, is a label that we put on behavior that does not fit into the normal range of human behavior. In short, it's asocial behavior that our fear of death causes us to angrily respond to. For a time, I believe, in some countries, the rage of a jealous husband was an allowable defense for murder of a rival. If we now realize that such a view of jealousy is unacceptable, it is because slowly a new social norm has arisen into human consciousness, but that new norm is a group phenomena that is evolving as we speak, one brain at a time. We also do not, in America, allow a Muslim father to kill his daughter for asserting her right to fit into American culture. We also are beginning to reign in a parent's religious right to kill his children through neglect of their health needs. As to our overall debate about the death penalty, we seem, because we can debate the issue, to believe that we have free will, but if each of us were honest about our own individual decisions about the death penalty, we would see that individually, our decision were emotional decisions over which we had no control. For myself, my brain is able to consider that—maybe—we ought not to allow the death penalty, but my emotions have not come to that conclusion at all. All arguments against the death penalty fall on my deaf emotional ears so I have made no decision about that particular reality external to my own. Just don't ask me to be the executioner, then, I fear, I would be immobilized by emotional considerations. Future human cultural decisions, if they are basically self-regarding, will naturally lead the human species to the best survival strategies though it will be one individual at a time.
Let me return to another fact that causes me to believe that we are not in control of our own behavior—the moment to moment functioning of the human brain. At any one moment the brain is being bombarded by information arriving from its sensory apparatuses. All of this information is aiming to arrive into our consciousness, all at the same time. Through chemical reactions beyond our control, chains of synapses are firing or being shut down by processes beyond my control. Which impulse from which sensory apparatus that arrives into our consciousnesses is completely out of our control. We hear a sound (a loud crack or a bee buzz) and we instinctively duck and cover. All evidence shows that we commence to duck before we are conscious that we will duck. In short, action precedes awareness.
As to bees, why do we so instinctively duck? It's because those that didn't duck in the evolutionary past and for whom a bee sting was toxic are no longer among us. We now have bee sting kits, et cetera for those who are allergic to bee stings. Same with peanut butter. We have new cultural phenomena arising based on past experience which we are now conscious of, but these are group phenomena. In the individual brain, the duck or don't duck remains an instinct.
My conclusion is that if I cannot control any of the synapses which are firing in my brain and, thus, cannot control which sensory data reaches my consciousness, I cannot be said to be in control of my behavior. Behavior is going on under the radar of my consciousness constantly which, when I become aware of it, I am proud or ashamed of (to name but two possible emotional reactions). Since emotions are the adaptations that regulate human behavior (according to evolutionary psychologists) and emotional reactions are also beyond my control, I conclude here, too, that I am not a free agent. I cannot even choose which thoughts I will think. I conclude we are all day dreamers every moment of our lives while our biological frameworks go about functioning of their own volitions.
PS: I must add here that some of us are able to refrain from hitting the human who is irritating us while others among us can't control that hit reaction. And don't we pride ourselves on our restraint in our afterthoughts? Yet, if most of us were honest with ourselves, we'd see that we were afraid to strike out at our antagonist because we feared the result of that action more than the emotional resolution that hitting our antagonist would bring to our limbic systems. It's fear that keeps us in check, and if we're honest, we wouldn't be so proud of what we can't control.
By the way, an additional consideration here, is that some discussions of my fear-based view of human behavior might label me as conservative rather than liberal. Steven Pinker concludes in his book, The Blank Slate, that the conservative view of human behavior is probably more attuned with evolutionary psychology's findings than the liberal view is. Liberals are hopefully naive while conservatives are pessimistically inhibited. Wouldn't that knowledge of his alignment to evolutionary psychology drive a religious conservative nuts?
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