Did you catch the woman at 40 minutes, who says there is nothing she can say or do to change what someone else believes or does, if she could, “she would have said that already and there would be world peace”. There’s more to it, our words and actions do create change, but I think she’s saying that there are no magic words, there isn’t a formula. We can plant seeds, we can inspire, we can recognize the human being behind the face that might be angry in the moment. There is something we can do, but I’m thinking lately, that it has more to do with listening than it does with the words that come out of me.
The Popular Mechanics link is members only.
Did not know I was a member
I get that now too. I must have had one free view. Not critical really. There are many responses to the paradox.
The “first in, last out” theory is that once one planet discovers interplanetary travel they do something to destroy it for everyone else, like mining all the dilithium crystals or something. Like the way we are using up all the fossil fuel.
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Don’t know what you are trying to say there. Is it just to point out it’s normal and nothing to worry about?
Yeah interpreting the words can be challenging, although just like with consciousness it’s an interaction - don’t you think? The writer interprets his reality, and the reader deciphers the words through his particular lens of priorities.
You know what I’m talking about. My irritation with how we are destroying this planet right out from under ourselves, with wanton disregard.
That’s were curiousity, passion for experiencing and learning come into the equation.
We are running out of time, and where’s the impetus for that sort of awakening?
Heck malicious, blatant lying has become an accepted part of public, political, and business discourse. I love reason and ration discussions, sharing information, the back and forth of honest debate using your facts in a good faith manner. Listening to what the other(s) has to offer, because it might be that piece we’re missing, that stuff includes some hard knuckle dialogue, sort term hurt feelings. Who likes to be shown to be wrong, but all that is part of the dance, the passion, and getting the final best answer (for now) and achieving a good (or at least better) understanding of the situation or dynamic we were studying, that’s wonderful. Respecting each other and all that.
But we don’t find it out there these days, (Sure a few refreshing exception, demonstrations of what’s possible) but without a massive shift in our collective priorities, the collective Will isn’t there.
I wish it were as rosy as you make it sound, but it isn’t.
Listen to storm victims and reporting, people remain if not clueless the in a state of willful rejection, willful ignorance, about what’s coming there way.
We had a clear choice when Carter v Reagan forced the question of priorities: healthy future for kids and grand kids, or a party like no society has ever seen it before, while it lasts. We collectively chose the FLASH.
Every party has it’s morning after, when bills and damages come due. This is something you choose to ignore in most of your threads.
You know I actually am concerned about the future …
I think it’s of value getting down and dirty and specific about where we collectively and individually screwed this pooch, that is the 21th century and our children’s future.
I also believe it’s important to think about what it would take to turn this around. Or how all of this could have been avoided.
Since with a focused concerted effort and the kind of money we spend on playing in space and such, a lot of could have been done her on Earth where we need it.
Taking Earth, her story and biosphere, into our heart. Is a Step One requirement.
That’s one reason appreciating that you are an evolved creature, a product of half a billion years worth of successful generations built your body, is to my mind critically important. Only chance we have. If people don’t take Earth into their hearts, the way you do with you’re own family, we are doomed. At least now there’s still a window of hope for a post global society. It’s a fluid situation.
Why not care about Earth like we would for our own mother? I’m not being flippant, nothing is going to change (except increasing weather damage) if football games, fast cars, fashion and continuing wars like the good old days, are so important.
How can I say that? For starters, I haven’t heard of any one willing to face the reality that future human survival will require doing with less. That’s big.
It’s a flat out Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape thing, and right now collectively we are way too lost within our own mindscapes and too oblivious of Earth and the shape we have put her in.
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How many times have I said that I am not implying there is nothing to worry about? This and the other comment I made in the other thread, about our different views of history, are telling me that we can’t get any closer to understanding each other. I don’t make things sound “rosy”, where did you get that?
I “worry” about the future of conscious life on this planet. But worrying to the point of anxiety doesn’t move me toward solutions. So I put my “worry” energy toward listening to the music of the ages, the winds that have blown us to this precipice. I try to hear what others have going on inside their heads that keeps them from seeing things the way I see them. And, this is the important part, when I reflect my perspective back out into all of that, I keep all of that in mind and shape my story in a way that I think will make a difference for them.
It doesn’t always work. Like with you. I say something about history, something confirmable, based on evidence and data, using logic, and you interpret me as saying that it means I’m saying we just shouldn’t worry. Instead of shaping your message to the world that is, you comment on what’s wrong with people and seem to believe that will change them. It doesn’t.
You and I have very different definitions of “reason and ration discussions”, and “listening”. You shrug off “short term hurt feelings”, while directing much of your writing and commenting and blogging at generalizations of “what’s wrong with people today”. It’s not an occasional quip with you, it’s become your entire theme.
First, well yeah, that was a personal impression from being born in 1955, with a mother who retained vivid memories of being a constant refugee during WW2 then immigrating to America in '56 and growing up in Chicago, on a patriotic street. My parents weren’t religious, my grandma was very religious, but didn’t harangue us over it. My parents felt it was important for us to be exposed to religion, but to make up our own mind. Imagine that.
So we wound up attending a small bible study storefront church, it was fun and we went for a while. At school we watched wonderful little civics movies back in those days, which I would watch attentively, never understanding why most the class hated those educational & civics videos.
Even wound up attending Tabor Lutheran Church school in 6th and 7th, then we moved to the SF Peninsula. When the busing situation and races riots kicked in, we’d get to listen to my mom pointing out that in her Europe every nationality hated everyone else and they were all white, and that we Americans should be appreciative of all we have achieved in this country.
So I was shielded, and have a certain unrealistic bechmark. Okay there was a lot roiling under the surface waiting to bust onto the scene, and take back what progress was made.
Are you insisting that’s an irrelevant questions?
Or insisting nothing is wrong with our self-absorbed priorities and thinking?
Or are you denying that we human are by nature self-absorbed and self-serving, and that our philosophy reinforces those biological tendencies?
Why do you think the notion of taking Earth and our biosphere into our hearts the way we do our family members, is so insane, or irrelevant? I ask because I notice you never touch on that part of what I’m writing. Instead it’s about hurt feeling and tangents.
Do you not care that, looked at from a global perspective, we humans are engaged in nothing less than self-cannibalism, with plenty of sober scientifically established trajectories to underscope the physical reality of our self destruction nature?
Most of my blogging isn’t about “what’s wrong with people today” - it’s actually about some very fundamental notions that deserve more attention. Such as becoming deeply aware of the Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide with its many implications.
Your comment begs a question, if it’s all the same as it ever was, what are you getting out of your constant philosphy/religious studies? Have you gleaned any answers to life’s eternal questions?
Why do we humans by and large insist on digging our hole ever deeper - if I’m to understand you correctly; it’s nothing to get upset about, we may not be doing just fine, but this is the best we can hope for.
Thanks for admitting that. I wish you would think through things like that before posting.
I believe everyone holds some belief that is wrong and that it is difficult for us to see those blindspots, even when we know we have them. I believe people are basically good but capable of evil, and not just a small chance of doing something terrible, more like small transgressions regularly, all of us. Selfishness is a little more complicated, I like to use the phrase “enlightened self-interest”. If you aren’t concerned with your own survival, why would yo care about others, is a place to start the conversation.
I don’t think that. I’m done responding to your leading questions. When did you stop beating your grandchildren?
If you were someone who had just started posting here, I’d say you should check my other posts. Again, not going to keep answering the same accusatory tone questions you ask when the answer is everywhere in everything I do, and you know it, because we’ve known each other for years.
I know. This has slowly become pervasive over the last year or so. Starting with your first “Human Centrist” post and then your reactions to my critiques. Critiques that were about the messaging, not the fundamental underlying problem of our relationship to nature.
It’s not. But if you believe in evolution, don’t you? I don’t know, you never mention it. But if you do, then you know we have lizard brain stems, and we only perceive a fraction of reality, and we have insatiable appetites, and that power structures have kept people ignorant. Things change, but they also stay the same.
Yes. People are studying how social media affects the brain, they are studying the increase in political polarization, they are comparing the Roman Coliseums to our football stadiums, they have metrics for children at risk of joining gangs. Also, the Vervaeke series has on average 3 book recommendations per episode, by people you have never mentioned, people who are crossing over from AI to human psychology and from neuroscience to those eternal questions. You seem to have no awareness of these. You complain a lot about Descartes though.
And there’s this
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sense-and-goodness-without-god-richard-carrier/1100369743
just taking a second to point out that I’m not going to address BS comments like this one anymore.
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Hmmm, but I remember a number of specifically ‘what me worry’ thread starters.
Oh, it’s just a casual worry. More than that is off limits?
Well we are the problem! The world we’ve created is peddle to the metal with destructive attitudes and behaviors and are going to destroy the biosphere that nurtures us. That is a problem no matter how NOT PC it is.
It is our fundamental blithe disregard for everything beyond our own concerns - as witnessed by the past century (and beyond) of grotesques choices and priorities that are damaging our planet’s current Life Support Systems beyond repair and is driving our planetary condition back millions of years.
It is our collective human inability to look at ourselves in the mirror and recognize the difference between our imaginations and desires, and Earth’s physical processes, let alone her different creature communities. That is the problem, no matter how offense that sounds to people.
So far as my writing, if the human ego can’t handle it, isn’t my concern. Trying to write clearer, nicer, and stroke people ego’s while applying the simple acid test, that’s a challenge, I’m working on it, but the acid test remains and matters.
I would disagree, it is all about What’s wrong with our thinking !
and the failure of religion>philosophy (and the rest of society) to recognize the most fundamental elements of human existence on this planet and the importance of other creatures and our planet’s life support system in general.
Dang straight.
I’ve spent the past couple weeks wrestling with Rousseau and how to describe what I see, with as little offense as possible, because he certainly doesn’t not nail human “nature” - it is human “behavior” that Rousseau is the superstar on - and I’m not sure many have thought about that distinction much.
Instead it’s all muddled up with human exceptionalism as if Earth were gifted to us for our own devouring, which many wholeheartedly believe and the rest of us go along with the flow.
How my writing ages as what we’ve done to Earth and our future really starts striking home, is what matters to me. We’re still at the appetizer stage of the coming horror shows, and people quite probably do have a few more generations of dealing with it, that is before the ugly depleted ocean biology and cryosphere disappearance (with all their knock on impacts) creates a totally new and hostile to complex creature planet Earth.
I should tell you thank you, because you holding my feet to the fire has made me dig deeper, which has helped further clarified the issue and my failings on the one hand, on the other, the digging deeper has reinforce my basic thesis.
Then don’t trivialize it.
One reason for that is our human collective and individual worldviews comes from a decidedly self-serving action plan. It’s only natural! It’s biological.
We have human complex creative forward dreaming coupled with biological/evolutionary imperative, that is what “human nature” is all about.
Thing is were created by, and we are sustained by Earth’s systems.
But we human have spend a few hundred million years of treating it as stage, to consume its resources at will.
What you defend and what I so grievously seem to insult, the need to see through that, beyond to the underlying physical reality in all it’s glorious wonder.
Get what I’m saying here?
Science has provided a compelling backstory to WHO AM I?, etc. which needs to be incorporated into our everyday self-evident perspective upon the world.
What the hell am I talking about?
How many no-pet people remember the first time they connected with a dog, or cat, or talking bird, etc. How that Creature worked its way into your mind and heart and picket and time prioritization, when that creature became a member of the family in your heart.
What happened there?
I got along with others’ pets just fine for most of my life, point being I knew all about animals, done.
And now some eight years after a Maddy dog decide that I, not my wife, was her master, and by & by we became genuine companions and I myself saw through and past my early postcard understanding of pets, to something so much deeper, there’s no describing it, beyond other’s having gone through the experience and tipping their hats, as they think back on that time.
That’s what I’m say with the appreciating the:
Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide
With its cascading clarifying understand regarding our relationship with Earth.
I may offend humans, our society and priorities and condition of the world speaks for itself. I don’t like insulting, but if touching this topic does that, mis culpa and time will be the judge.
Have a good day, I need to get back to wood gathering, now that my three morning walks with Maddy are done and she’s ready to hang at home. 
(to be continued)
Your interpretation. I’ve attempted to address your concerns. Out of respect i will continue to do so, but i have to set limits.
That contradicts your focus on our evolution. Our ego evolved. Facebook and Elon Musk and Trump’s team know this and they manipulate it. The harder road is to speak about it in a way that increases awareness.
Example: I like sugar. I understand millions of years of evolution led to that. So, I look at a box of Oreos and see the colors and smell the smells and I know someone wants my money. I can give in to the body, or use my mind, but only because I have the knowledge.
Who says I believe I can change anyone?
I’ve given up on that quite a while back.
All I can do is define the problem as clearly and honestly as I can.
Sure. But the problem is the problem.
I’m working on it. But I’m also certainly under no illusion I’ll go viral (unless some knucklehead blows me away), though I do believe the ideas I’m clarifying will help a few, here and there, to help them better clarify their own notions, in all its down to Earth beauty. Even if it pisses off everyone still in love with classical and popular philosophy with its religious/metaphysical undercurrents, and resistance to fully confronting & embracing the facts of Earth and biological and evolutionary understanding, with their cascading implications.
Nothing Earth shattering, though it is soul rattling and priorities rearranging for those who take the journey.
Enjoy the Oreos.
That is really confusing.
I remember you saying, recently, something like “if we’re not changing minds we’re losing” and that we should try to change minds by presenting facts.
Those are two different words. This has always been a problem with definitions that makes it difficult to move on with this conversation.
That is more like a basic truth - that’s not a statement of faith that all people will change.
Oh and there are an awful lot of us, some are ripe for change, some aren’t. Some are waiting for someone to say something they can relate to, some don’t hear a dang thing that others say. Splitting hairs isn’t going to get us any where.
Meta Physical is beyond our physical world.
Religion unfolds within our mind - which is something beyond the physical.
Or do you have a different understanding of religion?
Read it, do any of those answers satisfy you?
Because they seemed very confused and served as another example about that misunderstanding caused by not clearly recognizing the Physical Reality ~ Mindscape divide.
Those entries also included a few example of how philosophy is still trapped within the shadow of religious convictions.
Both spirituality and metaphysics share a focus on transcendental (Kantian a priori) objects or concepts. The primary difference between the two is that:
- Metaphysics deals with one naturalistic transcendental being — the human subject — and its relationship to objects, other human subjects, and abstract concepts.
- Spirituality presumes one, or several, or a multitude, of other transcendental beings — spirits, which might be gods, or demons, or ghosts, or some essence that is embodied in objects — with which the ‘human’ being might interact.
The evolution of the modern (Western) concept of metaphysics is complex, but we can think of it loosely as an effort to pick up some difficult philosophical problems that were left unanswered as the modern intellectual world broke away from traditional Christian metaphysics. Spirituality has historical primacy in the sense that stretches back into prehistory, in animistic and pantheistic thought, but metaphysics properly put has received far more analytic attention, and predominates in modern philosophical discussions.
But the human subject is a physical biological creature!
Explicitly recognizing and appreciating the Human Mindscape ~ Physical divide, is profoundly important, if making sense of our human drama matters.
This seems evasive. You make strong statements about people and have defended your blogs, letters, and discussion fervently. Not to mention arguing against my approach, despite my scientific backing for it. You even agree on sources but take different things from them, as in Sapolsky.
If you aren’t doing metaphysics, then you aren’t doing science. Unless you are doing a sixth grade experiment where the outcome is known. Metaphysics is looking at what might be, given all that we know about the world. Religion is making something up that our knowledge of physics disproves, or at least puts at an extremely low probability. I think you get bothered by psuedo-science and outdated philosophy based on outdated physics, and then just blanket apply that to anything that isn’t well-established science.
In a nutshell, religion has gods, metaphysics discusses if god exist.
You state that divide as if it’s something being taught in high school. You use it to say a lot of other people are wrong, but spend very little time describing what it is. If you’d like, I’ll go find the link you always use and put it here, save you the time.
That’s almost exactly what your quote says about metaphysics. This is very frustrating, when you read something, and say “but” when it says what you say it doesn’t say.
Right and I’ve gone to lengths to explain what my point of view is.
Why not try reading this, then think about what I’m trying to explain through this analogy.
And please stop making it about you, I’m going after the entire classical state of mind.
Real Science doesn’t do metaphysics, it’s about studying material matter, Earth, biology, geology and the laws nature seems to follow.
Religion, meta-physics, philosophy, etc., ALL of that, belongs to the realm of our human minds, none of it exists anywhere else. Yes, those non-material thoughts can, in turn kick our brains, hands, bodies into phenomenal actions and deeds that are very materially and impactful. Thus the need to really understand and appreciate the divide between that mind and the reality our individual spirts/souls are embedded within.
What are you talking about?
Gotta run, later
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Here’s heck of book it does a good (if apparently not perfect) job of rendering the scope and pageant of the evolution of, shall I say the first worlds, the empire builders and such.
if you ever read it let me know if you come up with a two word description, that’s better than “self-absorbed” and “self-serving”?
It’s made us great, but that was then, now it’s guaranteeing our self-destruction.
It’s a few of simple lessons I’m trying to make as clearly as my pitiful mind can manage.
He wants to bring metaphysics into the laboratory and demands respect in doing so.
The way you phrased that is a little confusing.
So, is religion doing metaphysics and would that be doing science?
religion is not metaphysics. where do you guys get this?
You can literally google this
Metaphysics in Science | The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science | Oxford Academic
Physics can only get back to a few milliseconds after the universe began. It’s metaphysics after that. Metaphysics is the study of the ultimate cause of the universe, so CERN is metaphysics. There are non-physical aspects of reality.
You can’t have those without physics, physics is built on math, those need an epistemology which is a philosophy. We don’t know everything, so you can’t get started without metaphysics. Again, you’re taking some woo-woo version of metaphysics and “rounding up”, saying that is the only thing that metaphysics is.
This might be the problem. You have somehow drawn a line on “mind”. Like I said to Write, you guys need to use google. “Mind” refers to consciousness and thinking, we don’t know how those work. We know its in the brain, which is chemistry and biology, and physics and math help us understand it, but there is a lot we don’t know, so we theorize. That is, we take everything we know about the physics and think beyond it, think about what could be, how thoughts might work. None of that is unreal, it’s not a “realm” that isn’t physical. You lost me with “the reality our individual spirits/soul are embedded within”. You’re giving me a hard time about metaphysics and you say “souls”?
What are you talking about?