More guts than brains

A while back I read that the physiological reactions of engrossed spectators at the sports stadium are the same as those of gorillas or chimps warding off threats from another tribe. People are very loyal to their favourite teams. There a very deep instinctive tribal response. Anything that can be given an identifying marker - team, nation, religion, political party, lifestyle brand, etc., can elicit the kind of loyalty that suppresses individual reasoning in the service of clan loyalty and group homogenization.

Advertising can work on those strong basic instincts to present "identities" that link people to consumer tribes of the marketers' making. They don't just stop at brand but can get into politics to support the kind of reactions and herd mind that ensure that people will elect governments more likely to have economic and tax policies that support corporations. For example, ads that stress freedom and independence through purchasing for "manly" men and promote a sort of non-intellectual or brute machismo are more likely to sway people rightward than leftward given that social support systems are not on the radar of lone cowboy individualists. Ironically, these memes have the effect of homogenizing and infantilizing perspectives, not of encouraging adult individual thought.

Bear this in mind when you see commercials. I've noted an alarming change in tone, especially in terms of the depiction of gender. We seem to be following a backward trend. Devolution.

Rousing nationalist passion or reviving historical gender stereotypes is inconsistent with looking forward to a future with a modern, sustainable functioning economy in a global marketplace. We need more tolerance, open-ended thinking, more comfort with ambiguity, more agility and more responsiveness. We need a more pluralistic and inclusive sense of humanity and respect for nature, more brains than guts or glory.

The Yin and Yang of Politics

Have you noticed that almost every pundit and politician on the rise today is channelling machismo as some sort of answer to a huge problem, namely  _________________ ?

The interconnected Memes of this Machismo (Yang) Politics are

1. Lone Cowboy Individualism 
2. Military style Tribalism and Nationalism (zero sum competition)
3. Domination of Nature
4. A rugged outdoorsy manhood (rather than a cultured intellectualism)
5. The sense of being entitled not to have to edit one's own pronouncements or check one's own behaviours, or to receive more than to give care, regardless of effects on the wellbeing of others.

If you're Jordan Peterson or a supporter of his, the huge problem is Political Correctness and its extreme danger to freedom of speech. Any emphasis on equity evokes his fear that we are in a slide toward post-modern Marxist Maoist Totalitarianism. And he will threaten to sue you for using your freedom of speech to criticize him.

If you're a person who's lost his or her job, you might think that the huge problem is immigration and globalism. Or maybe you think government regulations that are meant to protect the environment and citizens are limiting local investments in new industry and reducing job growth. But did you consider that we are in an era of great technological change and that the mandate of corporations is to increase production efficiencies (where labour is considered another expense cutting into profits)?   In fact, more production is going on in the US now than in the past - but much of it is automated. The technology has changed so the economic system must adapt or leave people behind.

Meanwhile, economists believe that Free Trade improves the economy. It has also been shown that diversity improves outcomes for innovation. And without immigration, the average age of the citizenry will increase to the point that there are nearly as many retirees as working people (paying the taxes that pay for the old age benefits).  

The huge problem is that the technology has changed but the economic system has not changed. We produce more than we need, much of it disposable or wasted. We pollute the environment with producing it. Those that have jobs, many are what we know to be "bullsh*t" jobs that would not be necessary if large companies and governments were not piled high in unnecessary bureaucratic processes. All but a few jobs can be automated and will be in the future. What happens to wage labour and the relevance of "work ethic" then? 

And what of Yin politics?

The Memes of Feminine (Yin) Politics

1. Interconnectedness (individual human potential cannot be realized apart from society, culture, economics and technology)
2. Pluralism and Diversity (not a zero sum but a win-win)
3. Environmentalism, Sustainable Development
4. Resilience and the importance of ongoing learning

To be honest, I don't know if I'd really call the above Yin or feminine or feminist. The reason I did so is because they seem to be the memes disparaged or neglected by the resurgent patriarchy. 

I take it to be pretty self-evident that no one's potential can be realized apart from society, culture, economics and technology. Even so, neuro-palaeontology confirms it. We are immersed, regardless of whatever political system we live in.

Given the fact that we live in an ineluctably global economic system, we need to be more tolerant of diversity. Not so tolerant that we tolerate a lack of tolerance or abuse, though. 

We cannot continue to carry on producing in excess of what we need or that nature can give or absorb.

Exploratory curiosity and learning is what makes us human, gives us meaning and helps us to adapt. We are not adapting by insisting on a set idea of "human nature". Our flourishing and resilience, our strengths, lie in our creative responsiveness and adaptability. We change. Culture changes. Narrative that doesn't change becomes decrepit and toxic.

Ideological Lag

The economy sets the rules of how we cooperate (and has throughout history), because how we cooperate is how we work together to make and do stuff - any stuff - all stuff - ever. Those arrangements (personal or institutional) are eventually established in terms of our evolving levels of productive technology and patterns of trade.These things are thoroughly interconnected.

But there's usually a very uncomfortable lag between the implementation of an economically significant technology, our new working relationships that emerge out of the change, and the collective story that makes sense of it, a story that generally reflects evolving notions of "justice".

Being forward looking is very important. It's time to resist nostalgia for an imaginary "homeland" as we cannot afford to be tribal in a transnational economy. The last century in Europe should have taught us that. This is what we should remember today.

We need to allow ourselves to risk thinking informed by wisdom and good purpose. 

Mental Models: Five of Many Basic Assumptions Currently in Need of Revision

1. The Universe is Composed of Fundamental Building Blocks

This view has proven fruitful in certain types of research, but I wonder why people think that what exists in the universe can be exhaustively explained by reference to fundamental components and their interactions? Effects and causes occur at many scales of granularity.

I also wonder what makes people lean toward the idea that there is a certain "fundamental" aspect of reality? Is the notion of a foundational layer of reality a product of experience or a conceptual hangup?

 

2. Individual Interests Drive Collective Behaviours

Individuals are born into an existing social milieu and learn the language, norms and aspirations of their group. Though I'm not one to say that we are all simply products of our socialization - people have unique sets of abilities and unique ways to express them - in this chicken/egg scenario, the collective comes first. Therefore the collective will is not an aggregation of individual interests and the notion of an "original position" where individuals came together to forge a society is a mythical fancy with no explanatory value.

Another mistake fed by this assumption: Researchers assume that it's altruism or community feeling that needs to be explained rather than individualism because, ironically, individualism is the current ideological norm and raw self interest is seen as the more fundamental fact. This assumption is not objectively justified. It's an idea that supports the economic system and preserves the social order by allowing individuals to be seen as wholly responsible for their own lack of success, regardless of social realities.

3.  All Biological Traits are Products of Adaptation by Natural Selection (Fitness)

Evolution occurs but that doesn't mean that every trait of every species can be explained as a positive contribution to survival. Species not only pass along traits that positively enhance the possibilities of survival, but traits that are not maladaptive - traits that are just there - or even weaknesses that are compensated for by a cluster of other traits.

The attempt to explain every trait in terms of adaptation begs a lot of questions.  Nearly every species eventually becomes extinct or evolves into a different species. Evolution cannot directly explain the biological mechanisms that give rise to the emergence of a new trait, but only indirectly - only insofar as random mutations occur that  aren't survival liabilities or that are likely to enhance survival opportunities.

4. There Are No Natural Final Causes (No Whys, only Hows)

If you're wondering why I've included this, it's because it's generally assumed that any final cause or purpose (sometimes called "teleology") of existence would imply a non-natural (metaphysical) factor. People who believe themselves to be scientifically minded try to distance themselves from the idea that there are purposes in nature because they assume it necessarily aligns them with proponents of reviled "intelligent design" (ID) theories.  ID theories suppose that matter is a passive receptacle for the purposes implanted in it by a divine architect of the whole universe - an architect who cares about us and who especially cares that we are purified of contaminants from our participation in the natural material world in particular - so one can hardly blame them.

In a sense though, the struggle for existence would be a natural final cause, wouldn't it? The drive to survive is a natural purpose, though not necessarily one that is embodied only in individuals.  Scientifically minded folks need to question whether the idea of natural final causes really is an oxymoron and get over feeling guilty-by-association. (This is just one instance of reactive distancing that shuts doors on avenues of meaningful inquiry.)

5. The Ability to Scientifically Predict and Control Phenomena Proves Determinism

To predict and control what happens, a scientist needs to be able to spell out what influences events in the most generic and universal way possible. This is done by eliminating variable, unpredictable influences by trial and error (or prior knowledge) and then by refining the definition of the predictable influences and their objects so that they can be stated in the form of an equation or "law of nature" that plays out within a generic frame of reference.  For example, Newton's laws of motion refer to "bodies" without any reference to their shape or density, and to "motion", without any reference to the wind's influence, etc. To control something, knowing a number of such general laws, technologists can exactly arrange certain chains of events so that they unfold in predictable, mechanical ways. For instance, we have technologically advanced machines. Parts are arranged, the right amount of power is supplied, and presto...


Only some kinds of investigation allow for this kind of simple analysis and arrangement. For most events, it is not possible to eliminate unpredictable influences and isolate the predictable ones because there is no way to predefine a generic frame of reference within which potential influences are in play.  There is therefore no law in relation to which the influences of an event are "exactly arranged" so that the event rolls out in a pre-determined, mechanical way. Most events are  neither physically nor metaphysically predetermined.

...To be continued...

On Elitism

Ironically, populist movements in the US support the elite (creditor class, plutocrats, monopoly capitalists) and laws that increase their wealth and power, which are sold as contributing to greater individual freedom while increasing the class divide. Meanwhile the American Dream of individual freedom that began with the Age of Enlightenment has become a ridiculous caricature, as it is considered "elitist" to trust scientists and intellectuals, who are generally motivated by curiosity and concern for the public good more than self-interest.

It doesn't make sense to think of society or social institutions in terms of the original "social contract" among rational consenting individuals because, clearly, individuals maintain their identities in terms of their relationship to a real or idealized group, not by means of some inborn identity and a capacity for individual reasoning.  People are born into and conditioned into an existing culture, with its history, its images, and its language . Speech is always historically and culturally conditioned and most people welcome that conditioning, although they may tell you otherwise by way of some fantasy "lone cowboy" image of individualism or something along those lines, equally culturally conditioned.We are members of real or idealized tribes and in times of rapid change in technology, the precursor to a change in ideology, there is a culture lag. Today we see culture regression. In some years, this will pass, hopefully with less pain than in times past.

Politics is not about rational choices. It's about tribal allegiances and, in uncertain times, it's the ancient archetype of the alpha male tribal leader, perhaps updated to the archetype of a valiant king, that keeps the lines of power organized and most people aligned to the interests of the oligarchy that directs our economy, regardless of what government regulators may want to do about it. Although our contemporary stories still indicate some deformed attempts to escape some vestigial projection of feudalism, the instinct to submit to the "divine right of kings" across many domains of human endeavour doesn't seem to have abated much.

What is an economy? It is a combination of our technologies, how we are socially organized to make the best use of them (or not) to produce what we need (and much, much more) from nature, and the institutions and stories that sustain that arrangement, and the powers of those who dominate the economy, in whom our powers are vested. We, more often than not, work against our personal advantage (usually unwittingly) and instead maintain the structures that in turn maintain our investment in the powers that sanction the rules and rituals that organize our lives and public relationships. For example, mothers in certain countries make sure that their daughters are "circumcised" in order to ensure their marriageability.

Today though if you dare to dream that reason, morality, art and respect for evidence (science) will help see us through to a more just arrangement, you may be called "elitist". This label is vestige of the hatred of the privileges of the feudal lords. It has nothing to do with today's world. Populism is the vehicle that most acutely and continually sustains the elite today. The next question is, what does that mean for democracy, if the dream of the enlightenment has become something "elitist"?

Of course, it's much more complicated than dreamers of the enlightenment may care to think. There is a deep seated sense that enlightenment dreams represent a kind of hubris on the part of human beings, as if we could rationally organize ourselves or submit our wills to a rational economy (invisible hand, "free"enterprise) to best achieve our increasingly empty ends.  Of course we can't. The the complexity of the world would prevent our being able to do it - although frighteningly, the recent rediscovery of the complexity of nature doesn't prevent our ability to think it. 

What is the alternative? As many are voicing today, the solution is in being adaptive, in our responsiveness and resilience. Rather than fixed universal truths of "human nature" or visions of true science, the just beneficence of some "invisible hand" economics, or various ideological diseases that afflict us today, I think we should rediscover what it means to understand, in all its dimensions, with the proviso that human understanding is ever-provisional.

Today more than ever we need to understand our relationship to the world we burden with the polluting byproducts of our Promethean dreams and our unrelenting, culturally conditioned searches for a better life. We will never arrive at a perfect solution but we can find our way to a more harmonious one, I hope.