Human survival depends upon recognizing inefficiencies as the root cause of Climate Destabilization and taking control of human evolution to avoid them.
Two genders evolved because it was more efficient than hermaphrodite competition, such as sea slug penis fencing. As soon as one gender had genetic programming to bear the heaviest investment in the next generation, the free-rider gender was freed to compete amongst themselves with their "extra" energy. Physical competition does weed out deficient males with genetic predispositions for weakness or disease, but it's a crude decision tool. It introduces overwhelming inefficiencies - males which are extra big, extra strong, extra risky, and extra aggressive also have the advantage. So males evolve into bullies, designed above all for fighting and taking.
This inefficiency includes males killing babies, and not just camels, cats, and bull elephants. It's inefficient for human females to be reduced to baby machines, so half the brains and talent of the population is squandered. It's inefficient for men to loose the ability to recognize sadness in female faces, and similar traits of the psychopathy spectrum, because rapists have more babies.
Taking control of our own evolution will mean deciding what traits humans need for us to prosper together while controlling a planet, and selecting for those traits, as well as keeping our population level sustainable. Humanity 1.0, which evolved for a seemingly unlimited environment, is obsolete. For men, the most frightening part of that obsolescence is not just that Dominator Culture drives our race to self-destruction, but the instincts which underlie it. Men will no longer collectively and individually decide who gets to make babies and how often. "You want to cut off my balls?!" No. We need to separate sexual bliss (good) from domination/control (not good on a planetary scale).
Imagine engaging every adult in these choices globally (perhaps with well-designed computer gaming techniques), rather than having a Global Authority force it on you. Limits there will have to be. Which would you prefer?
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
The dimension Alvin Toffler fails to see
Alvin Toffler's capacity to understand how culture was changing was impressive, till now. In this video, he speaks broadly of advanced cyber infrastructure and conflicts over a biological revolution and genetic engineering.
When Toffler mentions that "Any theory of social change that doesn't have a theory of conflict attached to it isn't worth the space on a computer that it may occupy", he pays attention only to economic and social upheaval, including changes in social roles.
Toffler's still entranced by the conquest of space as the blossom of human promise. "The fourth wave will be when we, having grappled with our own genetics and understood ourselves biologically far better than we do now, when we finally do go significantly and seriously into space." Toffler shows no awareness that primitive brain function, exploited by memeplexes, is the black hood blinding us to the prison of DNA programming.
Orson Scott Card's science fiction trilogy Homecoming:Harmony (1992-1994) evinces more insight than Toffler into the way human genetic programming holds us back and leads us to destroy our planet.
Janet L Factor describes our dilemma best in Of Two Minds, Part 2, The Secular Humanist Bulletin, Vol 26, No. 1, Spring 2010, p 12-13.
"... the faith meme could be summed up as the rule 'Steer only by your emotions.' ... In the end 'Trust your heart, ignore your head' reduces to 'Listen to your DNA'!
"This neatly explains why as religions become more extreme, more rejecting of the world and its knowledge, they all seem to follow the same downward path: women are subjugated, sexually exploited, denied birth control, then married at younger and younger ages; a single male rises to absolute power; he surrounds himself with a cadre of male allies whom he rewards with sexual access to women; ultimately their children are brainwashed and brutalized. It is the primate troop re-created! All in the guise of spirituality.
"... To hand oneself over entirely to feeling, intoxicating though it may be, is not to transcend but to devolve." [bold mine]
Alvin Toffler's failure of imagination is not simply an ignorance of memetics, but failure to look inward critically. His critical eye dissects economics, culture, and war from an emotionally safe distance. He fails to dissect himself the way talented authors of fiction and feminist skeptics routinely do.
When Toffler mentions that "Any theory of social change that doesn't have a theory of conflict attached to it isn't worth the space on a computer that it may occupy", he pays attention only to economic and social upheaval, including changes in social roles.
Toffler's still entranced by the conquest of space as the blossom of human promise. "The fourth wave will be when we, having grappled with our own genetics and understood ourselves biologically far better than we do now, when we finally do go significantly and seriously into space." Toffler shows no awareness that primitive brain function, exploited by memeplexes, is the black hood blinding us to the prison of DNA programming.
Orson Scott Card's science fiction trilogy Homecoming:Harmony (1992-1994) evinces more insight than Toffler into the way human genetic programming holds us back and leads us to destroy our planet.
Janet L Factor describes our dilemma best in Of Two Minds, Part 2, The Secular Humanist Bulletin, Vol 26, No. 1, Spring 2010, p 12-13.
"... the faith meme could be summed up as the rule 'Steer only by your emotions.' ... In the end 'Trust your heart, ignore your head' reduces to 'Listen to your DNA'!
"This neatly explains why as religions become more extreme, more rejecting of the world and its knowledge, they all seem to follow the same downward path: women are subjugated, sexually exploited, denied birth control, then married at younger and younger ages; a single male rises to absolute power; he surrounds himself with a cadre of male allies whom he rewards with sexual access to women; ultimately their children are brainwashed and brutalized. It is the primate troop re-created! All in the guise of spirituality.
"... To hand oneself over entirely to feeling, intoxicating though it may be, is not to transcend but to devolve." [bold mine]
Alvin Toffler's failure of imagination is not simply an ignorance of memetics, but failure to look inward critically. His critical eye dissects economics, culture, and war from an emotionally safe distance. He fails to dissect himself the way talented authors of fiction and feminist skeptics routinely do.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Those mysterious forces beyond our control
How complicated problems and helplessness can lead to distorted reality
In How the Mountain of Climate Change Evidence Is Being Used to Undermine the Cause, Bill McKibben says the successful techniques of climate deniers resemble those of OJ Simpson's Dream Team of lawyers. When a mountain of evidence gets big enough, there will be a few cracks. Just "spend week after week dwelling on the cracks in a case, no matter how small they may be." But, he says, the main reason for climate deniers success is, "They’ve grasped the widespread feelings of powerlessness in the U.S., and the widespread suspicion that we’re being ripped off by mysterious forces beyond our control." [emphasis mine]
From Extreme fear: could you handle it? "The more control a person has over a threatening situation, the less anxiety it provokes. Numerous experiments have shown that being out of control of a negative situation leads to the release of the stress hormone cortisol."
Michael Bader says that paranoia arises as people try" to make sense of and mitigate feelings of helplessness and worthlessness." "People can't tolerate feeling helpless and self-hating for very long. It's too painful, too demoralizing and too frightening. They have to find an antidote. They have to make sense of it all in a way that restores their sense of meaning, their feeling of agency, their self-esteem, and their belief in the possibility of redemption. They have to. They have no choice. That's just the way the mind works."
"The paranoid strategy is to generate a narrative that finally "explains it all." A narrative -- a set of beliefs about the way the world is and is supposed to be -- helps make sense of chaos. It reduces guilt and self-blame by projecting it onto someone else. And it restores a sense of agency by offering up an enemy to fight. Finally, it offers hope that if "they" -- the enemy, the conspirators -- can be avoided or destroyed, the paranoid person's core feelings of helplessness and devaluation will go away."
Climate Destabilization and Corporate Control of Civilization generate this situation
Blaming the patronising liberal elite and intellectual snobs misses the point, and embeds a self-defeating hierarchy (they understand stuff that I don't, so I must be dumb). All of us humans, including the highly educated and those who claim various expertise, are out of our depth. The world has become far too complicated for our evolved perceptions and our innate responses to grasp and respond adequately. Even coroporate institutions with their vaster resources, designed to maximize short-term profit, fail to forsee economic and ecological catastrophies of their own making.
We need new institutional structures designed to cope with civilization-on-the-edge-of-self-destruction. We need new human identities, that do not demand the impossible in order to avoid intolerable cortisol levels.
In How the Mountain of Climate Change Evidence Is Being Used to Undermine the Cause, Bill McKibben says the successful techniques of climate deniers resemble those of OJ Simpson's Dream Team of lawyers. When a mountain of evidence gets big enough, there will be a few cracks. Just "spend week after week dwelling on the cracks in a case, no matter how small they may be." But, he says, the main reason for climate deniers success is, "They’ve grasped the widespread feelings of powerlessness in the U.S., and the widespread suspicion that we’re being ripped off by mysterious forces beyond our control." [emphasis mine]
From Extreme fear: could you handle it? "The more control a person has over a threatening situation, the less anxiety it provokes. Numerous experiments have shown that being out of control of a negative situation leads to the release of the stress hormone cortisol."
Michael Bader says that paranoia arises as people try" to make sense of and mitigate feelings of helplessness and worthlessness." "People can't tolerate feeling helpless and self-hating for very long. It's too painful, too demoralizing and too frightening. They have to find an antidote. They have to make sense of it all in a way that restores their sense of meaning, their feeling of agency, their self-esteem, and their belief in the possibility of redemption. They have to. They have no choice. That's just the way the mind works."
"The paranoid strategy is to generate a narrative that finally "explains it all." A narrative -- a set of beliefs about the way the world is and is supposed to be -- helps make sense of chaos. It reduces guilt and self-blame by projecting it onto someone else. And it restores a sense of agency by offering up an enemy to fight. Finally, it offers hope that if "they" -- the enemy, the conspirators -- can be avoided or destroyed, the paranoid person's core feelings of helplessness and devaluation will go away."
Climate Destabilization and Corporate Control of Civilization generate this situation
Blaming the patronising liberal elite and intellectual snobs misses the point, and embeds a self-defeating hierarchy (they understand stuff that I don't, so I must be dumb). All of us humans, including the highly educated and those who claim various expertise, are out of our depth. The world has become far too complicated for our evolved perceptions and our innate responses to grasp and respond adequately. Even coroporate institutions with their vaster resources, designed to maximize short-term profit, fail to forsee economic and ecological catastrophies of their own making.
We need new institutional structures designed to cope with civilization-on-the-edge-of-self-destruction. We need new human identities, that do not demand the impossible in order to avoid intolerable cortisol levels.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
In Why do People Vote against Their Own Interests? Political scientist Dr David Runciman says,
"If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them.
They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best.
There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots.
As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing."
Basically, voters crave emotional stories, not explanations.
The thing is, we all crave emotional stories over explanations. Because fictional dramas mainly address the primitive brains they're easy and relaxing. Learning, especially complicated things with long names, taxes the higher brain. It's work, we get fatigued. This human design limitation will have to be addressed if humanity is to comprehend global climate destabilization.
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