This relates to other threads, but I wanted it on its own. The first answer says, when dealing with human behaviors, check all the disciplines. He’s good at saying what the limits of his knowledge are while doing that. One of my favorite spots is at 23 minutes where he talks about how emotions driving decisions used to be something that only artists said. He reference Jonathan Haidt’s work on where the science is now.
(413) #384 Robert Sapolsky: Behavior, Self-control, Morality, Primates, Humans, and Religion - YouTube
Nice interview.
Thing is, this is where we are at in today’s world
There’s more to this than how to tell a story to others,
how about having a story to tell?
What does the leftie, or science crowd have?
Something that resonates from a street level human perspective, as opposed to the hallowed halls of comfortable intelligencia.
How will we deal with the unthinkable?
This is the communication problem. What happens if “dooms” day isn’t like anyone imagined,
no rush to meet Hollywood guidelines, just an endless series of increasing catastrophes.
Where will humanity reach for some sort of “bearing” to help get through the changes when the unthinkable becomes part of our lives, and todays concerns will be sweet nostalgia?
How will frivolous people deal, when it gets “real” and real tough?
And I want to drill down a little, because I think we forgive too much bad intellectual behavior, just because it’s human nature so have at.
Yet, we keep referring to ourselves as such superior Beings to the rest of the semi-irrelevant life & stuff that surrounds us - ( unless we can find some personal utility in it).
A study say back stabbing in politics is the norm, so have at it.
A study says people are prone to biases thinking, so have at it.
A study says people have always lied, so have at it
A study says people get pissed off when they are corrected with solid facts, so have at it.
And so so many are in this intellectual blissful high, it seems to me so many are totally oblivious to the real world - l mean we are blast off rockets to outer space fast as we can, while we notice on page 11 that a huge swath of this country is about to run out of drinking and power water, and it’s treated like some distant fanciful conjecture by some tree hugger. It’s that disconnect that needs to be crashed by fellow humans, rather than wait for nature to teach us the lesson.
Back in the real world this sort of renewed political societal dysfunction, which has been supercharged since 9-11 has real world results. Case in point.
So how do we deal with human behavior?
Today’s intellectual & religious approach has little to offer for when the free-fall we are driving ourselves towards kicks in for real earnest. Here’s a mind experiment think of a top, spinning and moving along the table top, as the momentum wears off watch those first few tiny wobbles, that’s were we are at. Keep watching, the analogy is worth recognizing. We have a huge system with huge momentum, and it’s being forced into a new much more energetic state, we are in the early stages of a profound regime change, we all know it, but very very few are to be “present” to it, so we know, but keep it at the surface and parked off in some backlot of our respective mindscapes. Totally human and natural, from an evolutionary animal perspective.
But I keep remembering how humans always pride themselves on how much more we are. Superior to animals, that some will argue, don’t even possess consciousness. Now, the time has arrived to start proving it. Not through imaging another dimension, but through getting real about this dirty slimly bloody biological realm we live in and what we are doing to ourselves. Of course such thoughts can only be handled by a very few, but those will be the survivors and it’s those who I’m thinking about when I struggle and write.
The days of changing the future on our terms has been passed, we’ve been handed over to the court of nature. As for me, the days when I thought I could do something positive with my writing and energetic enthusiasm are gone. Now it’s simply down to being a witness, continuing my life long process of trying to make sense of the disconnected thinking and decision making I’ve been embedded within. The communal mentality that’s has inexorably drawn us to this point. The disconnected thinking that has so permeates the media, the public, and even within my various families. (sure one can point to exceptions, but they are footnotes.) Well that and perhaps continue to search for someone that gets it, a little community is always nice.
Your generalizations can be hard to follow. I don’t know who you are including in who gets to “have at it.” This is the reasoning of segregationists, that we can’t live together, so we shouldn’t. It’s obviously flawed.
The point of studying human nature is not to allow it to freely run It’s course in any and all directions. It’s also not to control whatever some group of scientists decides is bad behavior. That’s the world of Farenheit 451.
The grounding for the conversation is that we live in a free and open society. Without that, women, LGBTQ, POC, none of them would have the rights they have today. A forum like this wouldn’t exist. In that society, intolerance can’t be tolerated, which means we have to constantly be gauging what is intolerable vs what is personally preferable.
Come on, that up there was a rhetorical partly tongue in cheek summary,
I’m talking about a general underlying attitude, that dreaded “normalization” of stuff that shouldn’t have been allowed to get normalized, if our children’s (and this Earth’s) future mattered.
The collective we, both sending and receiving, some more than others, and with lots of reinforcing feedback loops, and let’s not forget the passage of time.
The general milieu and priorities of society. The way they vote.
I have no idea what you are on about there.
“The grounding for the conversation is that we live in a free and open society.”
Right, and you think I’m advocating mind control and censorship? wtf?
Seems to me, I try to keep it simple: advocating for the importance of a more sober evaluation of, well, of the reality of what we are, who we are, and what we are doing to this Earth.
That’s it.
It seems like you’re busy trying to tell me there’s no “there” there.
I’m not screaming REVOLUTION!
I’m just pointing out the collective masses out there, on both sides of the political spectrum, are being self-absorbed it’s been our upbringing personally and our society historically, it is what it is.
Problem is that self-absorption makes us blind to nature’s most basic lessons and needs which incidentally our future really and truly depends on, no joke, dfs. Over the course of our lifetime we have been witness to Humanity finally overpowering Earth’s once endless frontiers and it’s cornucopia biosphere, that made us who we are. Yet who wants to talk about it, let alone think about what it’s implications.
So self-absorbed greedy jealous humans keep blindly racing forward towards self induced oblivion. At least for our society, if not for humanity itself, depending on how badly we continue behaving.
You offer some great reading at times and at some point I’ll probably force myself to listen to that Popper and Paradox, but I spent years and years reading & thinking about Popper’s words thanks to climate science contrarians. He’s misrepresented more often than not once ya dig down a little, but I respect your judgement, it probably okay - still it’s a sideshow to my consistent theme:
The importance of a genuine deep down fundament understanding, fed by appreciating our Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide" - with its appreciation of Earth, natural laws and biosphere are our number one touchstone with physical reality.
At this point the profundity of Being an evolved biological sensing creature takes on a deeply personal and ‘at home’ quality, as it helps one make sense of one’s place in this crazy insane world and the rush of time that will end in one’s death. STOP.
A little deeper clarity, nothing more, nothing less. Well okay, somewhere in the equation there’s the deal breaker, “talking responsibility” - …
For a long time I’ve worked on being very thoughtful and specific about the words I use.
I wish I could be challenged based on those words - rather than the conclusions of others. Besides, it’s not so much an argument I’m making, it’s a situation I’m pointing out. I think it will resonate with some, if I can find 'em.
That doesn’t mean I think I’m the only person who’s ever thought about it, or that any of it is really unique, I’d be shocked if it were, but it seems they are somewhat rare, that much more reason to keep at it.
I think I’ve been saying the same thing. Don’t know how that happened.
There’s a there, but when we think we’re getting close, it’s somewhere else.
Thank you. That means a lot, coming from you.
I linked it for anyone who wasn’t familar with it. I figured you knew what I was referring to.
But, but 
I always thought: no matter where you go, There you are. 
Thanks. Still you took the time to post it so I ought to look at it, but I got chores today, and should stop letting myself slip sliding away into these dialogues.
See ya.