You’re welcome Paul. Thanks for dropping by.

Deborah

Thanks for the article, very thought provoking…
Paul

With every good wish, I am

Sincerely yours,

Steve

Deborah

Thanks for all you are doing to protect the environs from wanton, irreversible degradation and global biodiversity from massive extirpation; to preserve Earth’s resources from relentless dissipation and the future of our children from reckless endangerment; to save “the pale blue dot” from the ravages of unbridled global overproduction, overconsumption and overpopulation activities of the human species in these early years of Century XXI.

It’s very interesting. When you talk to individual humans, not a single one (well I’m exaggerating) would ever tell you that they would ever kill another human being. And when forced (okay mostly males) they’ll say the governemnt made me do it, or the emperor or king or whatever. So as individuals no one ever takes responsibility. My initial training was as a psychoanalyst, and if I described to you the supposed process of a person discovering their self-destructiveness you would get a migraine to listen to the lengths our brains go to in disgusing, repressing and tricking us into believing self-made fictions about why we do things!! So self-awareness is a much more slippery slope than you might think.

Well, pessimism and cynicism aside. And granted they are typcially non-productive attitudes, I do think situations can change, sometimes very fast and sometimes very dramatically. To have lived through the cold war and especially the Cuban Missile crisis, there was not a single person on the globe who ever dreamt the Soviet Union would implode. Now the more basic question of how to change human behavior spanning diverse culture and social/governemnetal systems, that’s another question.

On GlobalMind-Shift.org, Brain Swimme, a mathematical cosmologist, has produced some quite moving vidos about how profound our attacment is, not only to earth, but to the universe. The question always is, “Can you get a critical mass of people to pay attention and to feel the meaning of that attachment. Pangeaday.org is another powerful attempt to try to get human beings around the world to notice the overwhelming sameness of our speoies. There is no shortage of organizations around the globe on the internet struggling with all the same questions— but I know you already knew that!!

-Doug

In response to two posts above – your ‘raging rivers of blood’ post – yes. It’s true. My dog is geared to hunting, and nothing seems to curb that urge in him. Likewise, humans have the brain functions you describe and much more. Yet we also have self-awareness. And isn’t it our task in life to recognize our own self-destructiveness, and try to correct it? On the small scale of a single human being, or on the large scale of an entire planet of human beings, I believe this is so.

So if we knew, really knew, we were coupled to Earth and that harming Earth was harming ourselves … wouldn’t it be our task to correct that behavior?

Nothing is perfect, but we could try.

Is there a way to correct typos ‘after’ I actually post a response?

Oh, I have to remember where I’m posting!! I guess part of the problem for me in considering the contribution of science to these issues is that, to use my lingo, the ‘affect’ is usually missing. Everything we do, everything we learn, everything we feel motivated about or interested in or passionate about floats upon the feeling tone or affects which support it. To one extent the scientist really can put this ‘affective’ part to the side (although I think the whole intuitive process is tied into our affective brain systems), but then when you try to communcate science to the public you’re left with this void. There isn’t any question that the whole cognitive side to this, the knowledge, the scientific method, the attitudes about truth and proveability are all the very foundation of scientific progress– but the communication aspects to the greater public requires this other kind of dual attention.

-Doug

I probably shouldn’t bring this up here, because it’s a bit off the topic, but… other problem apart from the ones you and I spoke about, is that our species often seems desperate to separate itself from all the ‘other’ animals on the planet. It was an odd design flaw to add a neocortex, but change so little about the underlying stuctures. In many respects it looks like our frontal lobes were ‘hell bent’ to be ‘in the service of’ our most aggressive, sexual, predatory and power based (territorality, dominance and all that)’inner’ brain structures. There are few other ways to interpret the raging rivers of blood that have marked our human history. We became such great hunters, that killing other human beings became an equal proficiency. I wish people could look at this with a more clear headed neutrality– but we just run, run run from it.

If only human beings could acknowledge these predispositions, we might be more along the way of controlling ourselves.

I fear that all of our ‘positive’ intellectualities and supposed new awarenesses leave us fiddling while the earth continues to burn (metaphorically, of course). It is the nature of human communication, what we communicate about, that needs more attention.

-Doug