Bigthink - Idea Comments Feed

Comment on: Re: Where are we?

Bigthink — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:28:53 +0100

How do you share your extraordinary wisdom with the neighbors on your street? If you do, maybe those same techniques will work across the world. If you don't ... why not? Maybe the same reason holds in the long distance application of your superiority to other people's lives. You think maybe? I believe it starts with relationships...and respect...not superiority. Didn't we learn anything from the religious zealots that traveled the world imposing their idealogy on inferior people? And now, with global climate change resulting from our intelligent greed and science and industry...maybe we recognize that less is better in many cases. Maybe THEY are more sustainable than WE.

Comment on: Re: Where are we?

Bigthink — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:29:21 +0100

We the enlightened ones are predictably uneasy about those who are comfortable with ignorance. This is of course a "tongue in cheek comment" but there remains an element of sincerity.

A live and let live attitude is much easier if the other person is not armed or allowed to vote. There is an element of self defense to our encouragement of society to look toward knowledge and not wishful thinking.

The problem is not a simple matter of education. Science(knowledge)will never replace the comfort and social interaction of a widespread faith system yet that is what is being offered. Many people are not willing to sacrifice personal comfort for knowledge.

A live and let live attitude certainly has it's place but not when the results are so clearly damaging for us all. I hope that the more common acceptance of knowledge in place of faith will create a tipping point. Religion, like candy, is an easy sell - it offers much, is widely supported but is best consumed in very small quantities. Science is a little like eating broccoli - an acquired taste for some but ultimately good for us all.

Comment on: Re: Where are we?

Bigthink — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:09:48 +0100

Nobody asked anybody to export enlightment, democracy, justice, happiness, by killing hundreds thousands men, women, children ...
So, please, stay home.
Nobody wants you around.
Stay home and enjoy the enlighment you have and the wondeful people you yourselves are.
The very best of mankind.
Glorious heroes.
Leave the barbarian alone.
Stay home.
Thanks.

Comment on: Re: Where are we?

Bigthink — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 18:44:58 +0100

secu8lar enlightenment is nothing more than the recognition of how the Nash Equilibrium defines the relationship between the one and the many.It is a tension that exists at every level of life from bacteria to people. Ultimately all life is economic and the best model is both competitive and cooperative.

Comment on: Re: Where are we?

Bigthink — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 06:45:58 +0100

After four hundred years of science--bastion of reason and rationality--there is no coherent theory of human nature. As Professor Pinker admitted in his video on language, there is no money to be made by the general study of that subject (a revealing insight into the modern spirit of scientific inquiry). Consequently, though incremental advancements have been made in every discipline (thanks to the professor, we know a bit more about verbs), there is no grand synthesis. The scientific picture of the human being is no more comprehensible than an unsolved jigsaw puzzle. From unsolved scientific puzzles the ideological foundations of secular humanism have been constructed. I make no defense of religious fundamentalism, but secularists have the final word on nothing about the human condition. Better they self-reflect, and leave the rest of us to our own spirits of inquiry.

PS: Unlike solving a jigsaw, where the memory of the original image is there to guide your placement of the pieces, no memories are permitted by the scientific method. The memory of wholeness preserved by sacred traditions is summarily dismissed. That is unfortunate, because memory is the only faculty capable of summoning forth unity; the discriminative faculty requires at least duality. Only a method of gaining knowledge which can integrate both intellect and intuition, the left and right brain, can deliver the final strokes of knowledge. Without it, scientists will continue to venture forth one-hemisphered, fumbling with their fragments of the Big Picture.

Comment on: Re: Where are we?

Bigthink — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:08:36 +0100

How Do we get 'there?'

I think that the old expression, "can bring the horse to water, but can't make him drink" is overtly appropriate.

The people within any society have to want to be enlightened first. This is obvious.

Western intervention into non-democratic societies for the purpose of spreading enlightment and the fruits of democracy is a blatent farse and always will be. Western motivation is stimulated by the pursuit of wealth, first and foremost.

American foreign policy is the exact opposite (if opposites were to have a true correlate in reality) of the only conclusion of enlightenment thinking; the inversed golden rule: DO NOT DO ONTO OTHERS AS ONE WOULDN'T WAN'T DONE TO THEMSELF!!

The only way to get 'there,' as an united human civilization on the island of earth, is for the people who are already 'there' to act like it and set an example.

As a society, Americans do not act like we are 'there.' Hence, we must not really be 'there,' or anywhere.

We are just wealthy with overly pampered brains and overly fed bodies, so we have the 'freedom' to even consider that there is a somhwere to be other than just worrying about whether we will be alive tomorrow.

Comment on: Re: Where are we?

Bigthink — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:55:52 +0100

In response to John and Mr. NoBrainer,

To the contrary, it seems to me that Dr. Pinker's words are more honest and logically consistent than your own positions. Steve (NoBrianer), your statement about "genuine advancements in culture" simply takes for granted the Western model of Enlightenment, Progress, and linear history. The crux of the issue is escaping you (or you are attempting to do the converse): different cultures may have drastically disparate barometers for "advancement" and "progress" that may never be resolved. Most westerners would agree, for instance, that polygamy, childhood marriage, 'female circumcision', and punishment in the form of mutilation (amputation for stealing, etc., as still occurs in Saudi Arabia) should be discouraged. This is a cultural judgment that goes to the heart of our beliefs about gender, women's rights, and social justice. Your ideological judgments remain, whether you seek to rectify these injustices with force or finesse. They cannot simply be whitewashed by a "live and let live" attitude, and they do not address the dividing-line between humanitarianism and cultural imperialism; i.e., when are we justified in interfering in the internal affairs of another country or culture? When does ethnic discord become ethnic cleansing? When does a famine become a 'humanitarian crisis'? When do we become responsible for containing disorder or imposing our own order in another country? To use an easy example from British history: Was the Raj justified in eliminating sati (immolation of widows) during its tenure in the subcontinent? Many Hindus claimed that the practice was deeply enshrined in their culture, and that the British should not interfere; yet today we would all agree that such an atrocity is morally unacceptable.

These are difficult questions that I cannot answer. At least Pinker is acknowledging that they exist.

Comment on: Re: Where are we?

Bigthink — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 04:10:21 +0100

Steven Pinker keeps amazing me! I have to agree with nearly everything that he says, in principle........"How" he says it is the delight!

Comment on: Re: Where are we?

Bigthink — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:26:21 +0100

As a European liberal democrat, I see one of the inspiring features of American culture is its inherent optimism. Prof. Pinker%u2019s comments on the enlightenment are certainly in that tradition. What amazes me about the sentiments of that part of the video is that he, like so many prominent US thinkers, are so blinkered by the prevailing cultural belief set of popular political culture, in which the current intellectuals provide the justification for empire. In the 20th century we Europeans have had to listen to left and right wing ideologues tell us of the greatness of their brand of ideas, although they were not quite working yet. He says %u201CI think we have hit on a way of living that is better to the alternatives %u2026. (the) chunks of the world that have not got there yet could do a lot of damage%u201D Clearly ideas do spread between cultures. We are, for example, benefiting from mathematical ideas that originated in India. Middle eastern and then European culture willingly adopted these ideas because of their empirical value. It is bizarre to divorce militarism from the rest of liberal democratic thinking. Liberal democracy of the US and UK variety has presently embraced the territorial aggression of Genghis Khan. It is one of the intrinsic weaknesses of liberal democracy that we have done so. The UK parliament for example voted in favour of the Iraqi invasion through a chain of democratic processes. We should be asking how can we reform liberal democarcy from within rather than how we can export it. If we, like the Indians, make genuine advances in culture they will in due course be adopted by other cultures. The fact that intellecutals like Mr Pinker feel that we are logically superior and thus entilted to export our values is deeply worrying. The fact that it is %u2018the others%u2019 who are capapble of %u201Cdoing a lot of damage%u201D shows a deeply frighetning lack of cultural introspection.

Comment on: Re: Where are we?

Bigthink — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 04:59:43 +0100

I think that we cant just live and let live. 9/11 happened and although Iraq was no sense, with Afganistan/Al Qaeda we should deal in one way or another.

Comment on: Re: Where are we?

Bigthink — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:36:04 +0100

I agree with Mr. Pinker that the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution that came with it have brought us a new way of seeing the world and freeing ourselves from earlier tribal beliefs and mores that trapped us, but the idea of imposing our notions of liberal democratic society on the rest of the world leaves me cold, considering how badly we�ve managed this up until now. Even in the age of globalization, Stephen, can�t we just �live and let live?�