Follow up

Friday January 19, 2007 - 10:10PM EDT

In follow up to my last post I start thinking about the 2008 elections, or the JD 2454484 elections for you Julian Day Count fans.  I think about the various epochs in American history of social change. Generally you could say that things swing back and forth between ideals as we progress forward. The 2008 election could be the beginning of a swing in an opposite direction. Though I loathe to say it. The democrats could be back in strong position. That is not the swing I want. I still can't fathom these so called election laws about fundraising and equal time that have loopholes the size of the Chunnel in them. Not to mention this sinister yet accepted practice called lobbying. Well I guess we will see what happens.

Speaking of politics and government. I was watching a documentary on western philosophy the other day and they were talking about how early greek philosophers debated the merits of various forms of government. While today we assume (making and ass out of me and you) that democracy is the best way to conduct things and how every single nation should be run it was still up for debate in early western philosophy. I just wonder if those who debated forms of government had the history of the world up till now to add to their debate what would they say. I don't think it would be the single minded academic stances we have today about some forms of government.

Along those lines of emergence of ideas one of the most loathsome things I find about human society today is the lack of objective historical hindsight. Wait that is not what I want to say. I mean the blatant ignorance of the development of human society. The vast majority of people view humans as a static group that spontaneously attained its various characteristics at various  epochs in history. Many times  at epochs they make up. I cannot with any sound mind view humans in that way. We look at the great apes the roam the earth today and I can't help but think that in our beginnings that we were much like they are now. Our development into what we are today was exactly that, a development that takes into account tons of variables. Even simple concepts that we take as something being intrinsically human, something that were always a part of us, can't in honesty be taken that way. I think I talked about it in another post but the concept of reality is something that was introduced in western philosophy. We don't come out the womb knowing what the hell reality is. Now there is a concept, I don't know who introduced it, but the concept is that humans posses these things but it needs to be drawn out. That is a horrible way of going about things. Going on the assumption that people posses high concepts already and they need to be simply drawn out is some kind of logical fallacy and leads to all kinds of problems. I think of the various reports of wild kids living with animals during their developmental years and being discovered by society. These people who are not kids anymore have no high concepts they are like animals. That is what they learned to be.

Which brings me to another point. The whole instinct vs. learning debate issue. What is intrinsic to humans and what is learned. I think people put far to much weight on instinct. Mainly because what they interpret as instinct is learning. I don't think the general public has a good grasp on what exactly learning is in its most basic forms. I hear this a lot in sports. That certain great players have good instincts. While their intention is not to mislead about human behavior I think the kind of dialogue about instinct we hear in sports leads to that.  Maybe because it is boring to say that someone is good as catching a ball because their brain has slightly higher than average amount of neurons dedicated to depth perception and that because of it they skewed development towards using those neurons by playing with balls a lot as a kid. I just think there is an incomplete picture of human behavior and brain function yet we operate as if we understand it completely or that we know the basis of human behavioral tendencies. I guess people don't like uncertainty. That what it comes down to for me. I''ve come to a point where life is best taken as sliding levels of uncertainty. But I don't feel that as being how most people see it and I think it is doing more harm than good. But then again what is good anyway?