“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” EO Wilson
Just what I needed, something to get me out of the nitty gritty. With all the talk of language and icons and symbols and history I was surprised there was no mention of Plato’s Forms or of Kant’s conceptual scheme of space and time…Deacon did mention that Chomsky was wrong (“we now know…”) in ascribing language, or “symbolic capacity” to a hard-wired feature of our brains, although I am curious how we are supposed to have discovered this so-called error of his. I don’t know what Chomsky did say specifically about this despite having read him once in a philosophy of language seminar, but the idea that there is something about our minds that orders the world for us and is part of our language capacity is certainly not a new idea.
The part of this discussion that got me the most was on the subject of being addicted to our shortcuts to thinking, through ideology and other category-making that we often engage in, and how challenging these leaves us struggling. You took my drug away! Now I can’t function! To the extent that this happens regularly in an interesting and maybe even intense conversation, and requires that we have the ability to reconsider our habits, and maybe defend them, or explain them, without resorting to violence or getting upset made me think of how, in the cases that Rachel and Deacon were considering here, when people are for some reason unable to re-think, or calmly discuss, or learn…? Are we just talking about those who never learned to read, write, and think well? Are we mainly talking about people who have a poor ability to analyze arguments impassively (or at all) and so cling to ideology, thoughtlessly, and become upset when their MAGA or whatever it is, is challenged? People for whom a complex discussion is so taxing, more due to a lack of practice than ability, that they get confused and just stick to their guns, so to speak? So that this boils down to a problem (that we all should know by now that we have) with our so-called educational systems?
I have the feeling this wasn’t what was meant here. The idea seemed to be that “this is the way we humans are” but when we talk of “defending to the death” our drug/ideology of choice (which is never really a choice but just happens to us) I think we are talking about something else altogether. To the extent that such strong reactions, or such stubbornness, occurs, I would think it is more because when the situations occur, for example on a college campus where pro Palestinians are attacked by pro Israelis, that the problem is in the setting: there was no real opportunity for discussion. There was simply a confrontation and a need to shout back to those shouting at us or trying to hit us with a stick. Even in the context of a “debate” on wokeism, for example, where people enter the room in a somewhat charged state already, and recent sad events on YouTube and The Nightly News are fresh on people's minds such that both the speakers and the audience can do no more than throw verbal rocks at each other, the opportunity to have a genuine discussion wasn’t there, and people were instead simply on self defense- or attack-mode. I think the lack of a proper platform leads to the real trouble, rather than any inability of ours to consider other ideas.
We're concentrating and simplifying our symbols because we're leisure time poor, having miniscule windows of opportunity to lasso information from the ether and synthesis the tribal zeitgeist.
Interesting, as usual. Time is always limited, but I would have liked to hear the speakers' thoughts on two other perspectives on our use of symbols.
First, some implications of Jacques Lacan's conception of the Imaginary and Symbolic functions in the human psyche in relation to the purportedly real world of technology and it's physical, biological and mental effects.
But second, maybe more in keeping with the focus of this discussion, the relation of climate catastrophe to what Kenneth Burke called "the genius of language," whereby our language of itself creates linguistic imaginaries, ideas in a more or less Platonic sense, which we see as possibilities we then try to realize, to actualize, in the (purportedly) extra-linguistic world.
Burke's go-to example in the Cold War era was the idea of nuclear fission, which once thought of impelled us toward creation of the Bomb, and more than that, into actual production and deployment.
That narrative, perhaps more fundamentally than any ideological narrative, is implicit in any number of ideas (eternal life and forever growth come easily to mind) that are intrinsic to the ecological mess we find ourselves in today.
Burke suggests that rather than focus on after-the-fact correction of liguistically-conceived problems (such as Dr. Deacon alludes to), we need to learn how to instill into the linguistic commons specific counter-measures to over-complicate (complexify?) and thus neutralize development of potential frankensteins.
In less technical terms, to touch on both Lacanian and Burkeian notions, we need to insert a very strong moral imperative of restraint into the discussion -- self-restraint on the personal level, linguistic and technological restraint on the level of political economy.
We very much need a global linguistic imaginary that severely restricts (maybe even precludes) our doing something just because we can, and that subverts the dominant paradigm by infecting it with a moral imperative that asks, How much is enough?
Alfred North Whitehead and Richard Dawkins have both written books on this subject, including "The Selfish Gene", in which Dawkins first coined the term "meme" for the surrounding culture/symbols that control the activity of our genes. A recent book, "Meme Wars", addresses our divisive politics. This presentation knocked the ball outta da park! However, isn't the central "existential" issue that we humans are now 3,000 times more numerous than were our migratory Hunter-Gatherer clan/band living (<150, the Dunbar number) ancestors, who were the last of our species to live in an ecologically balanced relationship with Mother Earth? We became a symbolic species, and "addicted" to our symbolic surrounds, when we jumped to sedentary agriculture from the H-G lifeway. Maybe it was the thousands of years we spent huddled in the "painted caves" of southern Europe that fueled that jump as the last ice-age came to a close, although the advances in hunting/gathering tools may have contributed as well (thrusting spear-->atlatl, etc.). In any case, we have become the captives of our own designs, just as the potential endlessly expanding AI is threatening, and climate collapse is finally starting to awaken us to just how far beyond our limits we have stumbled.
Thank you both/all for this invigorating and symbol filled video! I wrote a free e-book PDF in 2018 covering much of this and more. God help us (and that's the God of Nature sitting right in front of us!)!
Agghhh! My brain hurts! This episode was a window onto the vastness of human existence and development, a dive into deep space with bright stars and galaxies constantly vying for attention. There was the question of meaning - a galaxy in itself - which depends so much on a common understanding. Religions, cults and more ancient belief systems have all tried to codify a basis for interpreting what we experience and even in our more atheistic world we look for a value base to work from. How do we make sense otherwise?
Then you mentioned attachment. Such a powerful, visceral need that drives us to find a source of belonging and one that can transcend the values we have taken as gospel or can swallow the twisted interpretation of what we experience to allow us to feel part of a 'family' - however you interpret that!
Then there is the scale and speed of change which prevents us from stopping to catch our breath and take stock of what we have. It's almost as if the technological advance is designed to keep us in awe to preserve it's god-like aura - an aura it might lose if we had time to really think about its implications and the motives of its progenitors.
And not least is the fear that is generated by this increasingly out-of-control race to technological mastery that has turned our lives into a series of hamster wheels as Brett Scott lays out so eloquently; that has created such an imbalance of wealth and conditions of living; that raises our cortisol levels on a permanent basis as we anxiously look for the next meteorite to impact our narrowing world. In this state our ability to consider and reflect is subordinated to the need for safety. Safety in this context is certainty. No room for complexity or grey areas. Abigail Thorn on Philosophy Tube explains in very simple terms how conspiracy theory evolves from fear - an example of phantasm.
There is so much more which I'm still processing but I can't say this has been a thought-provoking one!
“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” EO Wilson
Just what I needed, something to get me out of the nitty gritty. With all the talk of language and icons and symbols and history I was surprised there was no mention of Plato’s Forms or of Kant’s conceptual scheme of space and time…Deacon did mention that Chomsky was wrong (“we now know…”) in ascribing language, or “symbolic capacity” to a hard-wired feature of our brains, although I am curious how we are supposed to have discovered this so-called error of his. I don’t know what Chomsky did say specifically about this despite having read him once in a philosophy of language seminar, but the idea that there is something about our minds that orders the world for us and is part of our language capacity is certainly not a new idea.
The part of this discussion that got me the most was on the subject of being addicted to our shortcuts to thinking, through ideology and other category-making that we often engage in, and how challenging these leaves us struggling. You took my drug away! Now I can’t function! To the extent that this happens regularly in an interesting and maybe even intense conversation, and requires that we have the ability to reconsider our habits, and maybe defend them, or explain them, without resorting to violence or getting upset made me think of how, in the cases that Rachel and Deacon were considering here, when people are for some reason unable to re-think, or calmly discuss, or learn…? Are we just talking about those who never learned to read, write, and think well? Are we mainly talking about people who have a poor ability to analyze arguments impassively (or at all) and so cling to ideology, thoughtlessly, and become upset when their MAGA or whatever it is, is challenged? People for whom a complex discussion is so taxing, more due to a lack of practice than ability, that they get confused and just stick to their guns, so to speak? So that this boils down to a problem (that we all should know by now that we have) with our so-called educational systems?
I have the feeling this wasn’t what was meant here. The idea seemed to be that “this is the way we humans are” but when we talk of “defending to the death” our drug/ideology of choice (which is never really a choice but just happens to us) I think we are talking about something else altogether. To the extent that such strong reactions, or such stubbornness, occurs, I would think it is more because when the situations occur, for example on a college campus where pro Palestinians are attacked by pro Israelis, that the problem is in the setting: there was no real opportunity for discussion. There was simply a confrontation and a need to shout back to those shouting at us or trying to hit us with a stick. Even in the context of a “debate” on wokeism, for example, where people enter the room in a somewhat charged state already, and recent sad events on YouTube and The Nightly News are fresh on people's minds such that both the speakers and the audience can do no more than throw verbal rocks at each other, the opportunity to have a genuine discussion wasn’t there, and people were instead simply on self defense- or attack-mode. I think the lack of a proper platform leads to the real trouble, rather than any inability of ours to consider other ideas.
Loved the bit about the in-breeding of AI!!
We're concentrating and simplifying our symbols because we're leisure time poor, having miniscule windows of opportunity to lasso information from the ether and synthesis the tribal zeitgeist.
Interesting, as usual. Time is always limited, but I would have liked to hear the speakers' thoughts on two other perspectives on our use of symbols.
First, some implications of Jacques Lacan's conception of the Imaginary and Symbolic functions in the human psyche in relation to the purportedly real world of technology and it's physical, biological and mental effects.
But second, maybe more in keeping with the focus of this discussion, the relation of climate catastrophe to what Kenneth Burke called "the genius of language," whereby our language of itself creates linguistic imaginaries, ideas in a more or less Platonic sense, which we see as possibilities we then try to realize, to actualize, in the (purportedly) extra-linguistic world.
Burke's go-to example in the Cold War era was the idea of nuclear fission, which once thought of impelled us toward creation of the Bomb, and more than that, into actual production and deployment.
That narrative, perhaps more fundamentally than any ideological narrative, is implicit in any number of ideas (eternal life and forever growth come easily to mind) that are intrinsic to the ecological mess we find ourselves in today.
Burke suggests that rather than focus on after-the-fact correction of liguistically-conceived problems (such as Dr. Deacon alludes to), we need to learn how to instill into the linguistic commons specific counter-measures to over-complicate (complexify?) and thus neutralize development of potential frankensteins.
In less technical terms, to touch on both Lacanian and Burkeian notions, we need to insert a very strong moral imperative of restraint into the discussion -- self-restraint on the personal level, linguistic and technological restraint on the level of political economy.
We very much need a global linguistic imaginary that severely restricts (maybe even precludes) our doing something just because we can, and that subverts the dominant paradigm by infecting it with a moral imperative that asks, How much is enough?
If I get you, I think this is what I mean simply by better (real) education.
Alfred North Whitehead and Richard Dawkins have both written books on this subject, including "The Selfish Gene", in which Dawkins first coined the term "meme" for the surrounding culture/symbols that control the activity of our genes. A recent book, "Meme Wars", addresses our divisive politics. This presentation knocked the ball outta da park! However, isn't the central "existential" issue that we humans are now 3,000 times more numerous than were our migratory Hunter-Gatherer clan/band living (<150, the Dunbar number) ancestors, who were the last of our species to live in an ecologically balanced relationship with Mother Earth? We became a symbolic species, and "addicted" to our symbolic surrounds, when we jumped to sedentary agriculture from the H-G lifeway. Maybe it was the thousands of years we spent huddled in the "painted caves" of southern Europe that fueled that jump as the last ice-age came to a close, although the advances in hunting/gathering tools may have contributed as well (thrusting spear-->atlatl, etc.). In any case, we have become the captives of our own designs, just as the potential endlessly expanding AI is threatening, and climate collapse is finally starting to awaken us to just how far beyond our limits we have stumbled.
Thank you both/all for this invigorating and symbol filled video! I wrote a free e-book PDF in 2018 covering much of this and more. God help us (and that's the God of Nature sitting right in front of us!)!
Agghhh! My brain hurts! This episode was a window onto the vastness of human existence and development, a dive into deep space with bright stars and galaxies constantly vying for attention. There was the question of meaning - a galaxy in itself - which depends so much on a common understanding. Religions, cults and more ancient belief systems have all tried to codify a basis for interpreting what we experience and even in our more atheistic world we look for a value base to work from. How do we make sense otherwise?
Then you mentioned attachment. Such a powerful, visceral need that drives us to find a source of belonging and one that can transcend the values we have taken as gospel or can swallow the twisted interpretation of what we experience to allow us to feel part of a 'family' - however you interpret that!
Then there is the scale and speed of change which prevents us from stopping to catch our breath and take stock of what we have. It's almost as if the technological advance is designed to keep us in awe to preserve it's god-like aura - an aura it might lose if we had time to really think about its implications and the motives of its progenitors.
And not least is the fear that is generated by this increasingly out-of-control race to technological mastery that has turned our lives into a series of hamster wheels as Brett Scott lays out so eloquently; that has created such an imbalance of wealth and conditions of living; that raises our cortisol levels on a permanent basis as we anxiously look for the next meteorite to impact our narrowing world. In this state our ability to consider and reflect is subordinated to the need for safety. Safety in this context is certainty. No room for complexity or grey areas. Abigail Thorn on Philosophy Tube explains in very simple terms how conspiracy theory evolves from fear - an example of phantasm.
There is so much more which I'm still processing but I can't say this has been a thought-provoking one!