There's an adamant refusal, built into human nature, to look to our own faults. The typical human's attention is turned outward, and that's where we perceive wrongful things - out there: in the words and deeds of the others.
The republicans blame the democrats, and vice-versa. The atheists blame the religious, and vice-versa. Men blame women and women blame men. It's been my observation that, when looking to assign blame, we tend to look outward.
When do we look to ourselves? When do you look to yourself for errors in your own way of thinking and doing and being? Ask yourself: How often does that really happen? Then, answer truthfully. If you can make a habit of asking this question and answering truthfully, you'll see amazing changes in your attitude over time.
Again, it's human nature. A big part of it is wrapped up in what the Buddhists call ego, and it's not terribly different from Freud's version of ego[1]. This natural tendency, to look outward for the causes of our problems, has been turned against us by people who crave power for themselves. It can only be overcome with conscious effort.
Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, was among the first to harness the power of ego to capitalist purposes, starting around the period of World War I. Since then the techniques have been expanded upon and, in modern times, have reached a disturbing level of effectiveness[2].
It's important to note that information flows not only through words, but through actions and tones of voice and dozens of other subtleties we humans are not naturally geared to notice. Observe closely the next time a news pundit rails on the party opposite his own. Observe his choice of words; listen to his voice, inflection; read his non-verbal cues. He's not only communicating with language! His very attitude is a subtle manipulator that guides your way of thinking about what he's saying.
Of course he's right and they are wrong! His passion makes that clear - but notice that he, too, refuses to express self-reflection in any way. His job is to keep your attention on the enemy! Therein lies the problem! That's who you must blame!
And yet, might your "enemy" be simply another scared, pressured individual human who has been deceived by his own set of pundits? Is he not suffering just as you are? Look to your pundits with a critical mind. The definition of pundit is as follows: "A source of opinion; a critic."
How can you accept the assessments of a pundit you have not assessed carefully yourself?
What I'm speaking of here is not about who's right and who is wrong. That question can not be well-answered because it's a trick question. The trick is to keep you arguing - distracted - while the proverbial hand relieves you of your wallet.
Power, in today's terms, is represented by money. The real enemy consists of those who actively work to gain and hoard it. If we don't begin to see this soon, there's little hope for our way of life. All capitalist ventures value profit over human needs; short-term gains over long-term stability.
The tendency is toward deterioration of infrastructure and a serious lack of social and economic workability. Yet, those in power are those with the money to finance political campaigns and control media. To wit: those who control law, policy, and national dialogues. They're certainly not going to use their power against themselves!
How, then, do we proceed?
No progress can be made while lies are accepted as truth. We must become discerning. We must look beyond the reasoning provided by the system - the very system that is crushing us! - and see power for what it truly is. Power requires public support. Is it possible that you are unknowingly supporting oppressive power centers? Might blaming those who aren't directly at fault be hurting, rather than helping, you?
Are you able even to ask such a question of yourself? Is it already "obvious" that you're right and they are wrong? That your side is good while theirs is bad? Is it absolutely impossible that you're being deceived in any way? Is the matter is settled? If so, I suggest you read up on self-serving bias. I'm certain the propagandists of the day know it well, and know well how to use it against you.
I submit that there are many such tricks available in the public relations repertoire. If you think they won't use such tricks to deceive you, it's partly because you refuse to look to your own part in part problems.
Only by understanding and addressing our own problems - whether in a family, a community, a nation, or a political party - can we find ways to make better systems, societies, and nations.
My theory is that Trump's interest is in regaining his billionaire status. I'd be very interested in your thoughts on how his actions might be more altruistic.
Grazhdanochka:
He could well indeed be out to achieve that and I see no reason to think not..... It does not however mean he could not be Rational about some Politics and happy to work for that....... What I was getting at earlier is Trump since Day 1 of Electoral Race talked about China - USA Trade and how they were cheating the USA, the USA was losing for lack of Competitiveness...... He also ALWAYS spoke respectfully of Russia (yet he never really commented of Russian Trade).
My Thought is that Trump identified China from early on as the Economic Challenge that has to be beaten, Economics is of course part of Geopolitics and that comes with full Political Spectrum..... He potentially if he was indeed advised by Experts (I bet he was at least advised by some People considered 'Experts' to various degrees, that if one looks at Cold War History Nixon and Kissinger made a very historic and Important Effort to divide China and USSR.
Indeed if one does some research they see that most actually realistic Figures in US Strategic Thinking understand that China + Russia back to Back means a Eurasia continent that is well - very very challenging to deal with...... Trump possibly, very likely considered the Idea that while one needs to confront China - Russia could be brought to the Side of the USA or at least separated from China.
Strategically speaking the US is facing a Disaster, a huge Economic Power (China) with a very solid and large Energy Source (Russia), with Russia's Military Technology/Capability, and an Iran looking for backing...... Russia since at least 1999 has been warning the Western World and the Western World has ignored us.
Dividing the two was elementary Tactics, (Forcing for example China/Russia to secure their mutual Borders from each other and making Energy/Trade more a Question) but indeed since Bush and ESPECIALLY Obama this has gone the Opposite Path.
I think if Trump is to be given any Credit for Brain thinking (He should be given he trashed Clinton), this should be considered as ONE possible approach he had.
I think there i many more - Just I think US Politics is too polarized for well much Logical Debate to get a Chance... It seriously saddens me.
The following is a collection of comments from an online conversation I read this morning. There are some minor edits and organizational changes. Regarding the colorful description of the current administration (ending the first paragraph) I must point out that the previous administrations have been little, if any, better.
The first step Hitler took was deportation of Jews. And now we are arresting Mexicans, Haitians, and Salvadorans and holding them in "temporary" deportation centers where there is no official check on arrivals and departures. Do some go in and never come out? Where are deportees taken? What oversight monitors the process? How can we, the citizens who are ultimately responsible for our government, as the German people were for the actions of the Nazis, confirm that it is genuinely an honest and aboveboard deportation process and not becoming the cheaper and more expedient process of mere elimination? And can we seriously expect a misogynistic, racist, bigoted administration to undertake such an essentially inhumane project with due respect for human rights? Seriously?
There is a place for democratic "consensus." For that citizens require time, commitment to citizenship (a belief in its value), appreciation for discussion and debate and knowledge. In the absence of something that resembles "consensus" (which might only be the fullest possible public disclosure of disagreement), decisions are made that seem mysterious, that one can't account for. Immigration policy, and every nation must have one, whether permissive or the opposite, seems to have fallen from the skies rather than rendered more transparent via public input or, better, construction. Witnessing, at the very least, would be nice. The immigration policy decisions were made outside of any possible public legitimating process. I am speaking now of that last 50 years. One feels differently about a policy that in some regard is "my own," even if that means not fashioned without my conscious dissent, as against one that seems to "come from elsewhere." In fact, it is so "elsewhere" that I doubt there are many Americans who could say what immigration policy includes, say something of its existence in law.
There is an instinctive response to human excrement, defecation and putrefaction. We turn away. We hide it. We cover it. Our daily discourse avoids mention of it. In situations like this, something that people instinctively know is kaka, is the foul odor of pure moral wrong, to treat in the same way. It involves exactly the same mental faculties, I think. And so on every hand, in every context, this foul smelling underbelly of the process remains unobserved.
A public sphere of democratic discourse must demand that grotesque sausage-making be more public. The adult changes the child's diapers despite the crap. That is, if the adult has any love for the child.
Let's imagine. If you glimpsed the future and you were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information? You'd go to, who? Politicians? Captains of industry? And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck. The only facts they won't challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in. But what if... what if there was a way of skipping the middle man and putting the critical news directly into everyone's head? The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it was to show it... to scare people straight. What reasonable human being wouldn't be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they have ever known and loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse. And how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom? They gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair. They didn't fear their demise, they repackaged it! It can be enjoyed as video games... as TV shows... as books, movies, the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted toward it with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile, your earth was crumbling all around you. You've got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation - explain that one! Bees and butterflies start to disappear.. the glaciers melt... algae blooms... all around you the coal mine canaries are dropping dead and you WON'T TAKE THE HINT! In every moment there is the possibility of a better future, but you people won't believe it - and because you won't believe it, you won't do what is necessary to make it a reality. So you dwell on this so terrible future. You resign yourselves to it for one reason: because that future doesn't ask anything of you today.
Jordan Peterson
People like
Sam Harris
and
Richard Dawkins
they assume that the natural
person is the civilized creature that
you see before you in a discussion like
this, but I don't believe that. I think
that people are far crazier and far more
destructive and - and far greater as well,
than the typical
rationalist approach.
00:25
Rationality is a surface facade - that's
all - and the idea that people will
eventually be rational? It's much more
likely that they will be irrational than
rational. You could say for example
that Catholicism, let's say, for all its
irrationality, was as rational as people
can get. If you remove that level of
irrationality, that structure, say, then
everything falls apart and people get so
irrational you can't believe it - not more
rational.
00:57
Harris and his crowd think that we
were superstitious for thousands of
years kind of savage and and and
superstitious and then all of a sudden
the Enlightenment came along - the
scientific revolution - and "poof" we got
rational, and since then things have been
good. That's not how it looks to me
at all. I don't buy that. I think
that our rationality, as I said already,
our rationality, even our science, is
nested inside this larger metaphysical
structure. This is also something that
Carl Jung
would be an advocate of - that
there's an irrational, pragmatic, I would
say evolutionarily-determined ethic
underneath this rationality, and when it
goes then all that rationality goes to.
01:47
So yes, you can be a non-believer but the
funny thing about that is, too, you can't
be a non-believer in your action, you see,
because Harris's metaphysics is
fundamentally Christian. He acts out a
Christian metaphysics but he says "well I
don't believe it". It's like "Well, yeah you
do because you're acting it out. You just
say you don't believe it".
2:09 Host
What do you mean? What do you mean he's
acting? Acting it out like what for example?
02:13 Jordan
Well he doesn't rob banks, doesn't kill people,
doesn't rape, doesn't murder; you know I mean
look in crime and punishment for example...
Host
So you think, I mean, when you
don't do those things, basically the
underpinning of it - even though I think,
I certainly I can't speak for Sam, and you
guys have had, by the way, regardless of
where we get with this, you guys have had,
I think, two great conversations; one
where you didn't quite get there, but one
where you've come together, and I
suspect you both really relish in that,
right? I mean at the end of the day this
is someone that you respect whether you...
Jordan
Oh, yeah. Oh, no no no, look, I mean, yeah.
Host
I just think I need to preface, because you guys
are so "at each other's throats" all the
time, that when I saw two people that I
respect just disagreeing on things but
really trying to get there, I thought
"this is good". And there's a certain
amount of people that, you know, that
want you guys do tear each other apart...
Jordan
Well there's a good case to be made for
atheism. I mean, let's make no bones about it.
I actually think it's an easier case to
make than the alternative because you
could say in some sense there's been 300,
400 years of brilliant scientists who've
been doing nothing but laying the
foundation for an objective, empirical
atheism. So it's an unbelievably powerful
argument, but it's not going to lead to
the to the rule of rationality. I
don't believe that because...
03:34Host
Do you think anything could get you there?
Do you think somebody could lay out a case
that could eventually turn you on this the
same way you would want someone like Sam
to come around to what you're saying? Do
you think that that's even in the realm of
possibility?
Jordan
I don't. I can't see
how because it's it's not like I haven't
thought these things through. I mean, I am
a scientist, you know? I understand the
scientific worldview. In fact everything
that I am saying and thinking about
religion is nested inside an
evolutionary viewpoint; an evolutionarily
biology viewpoint and an evolutionary
psychology viewpoint. I do believe
there's a fundamentalcontrast between a
Darwinian worldview and a Newtonian worldview,
which is the worldview that i think sam harris and
his crowd basically have. he didn't agree
with that but... and it's complicated
but... see I guess in some sense
I'm more romantic in temperament than
Sam, and I think then his followers too -
and because of that I can see the
irrational and malevolent side of human
beings - I believe much more clearly than
they can, and I also think I have far
more experience with that sort of thing.
04:43Host
So let's say Earth is crumbling. We
have two ships we're gonna send the
people that believe what you are saying
here - basically that we need this sort of
religious underpinning - and then the the
Dawkins/Sam people, they're going to take
their hundred people, you're going to
take your hundred people, were going to go
to two different planets and set things
up "the way they should be", you know,
blank slate for each. I
guess the part that I would struggle
with here is to understand how that...
how their ship lands, they're rooted in
science and in in basic liberalism and
and acceptance of others and all that...
how that society would not flourish from
them from the base level if we could
just reset. Now I think you could make a
great argument that we can't do it here
because there's just so much history
here and all that stuff; but if we were
just resetting on another place why
could we not do it that way and have it
work?
Jordan
First of all, you know, there's
an assumption that science and the
scientific worldview in some sense has
won - and because it's so
self-evident, let's say, because of what
it can produce, that people just will
accept it and move forward with it.
I'm not sure about that either. I mean,
I think there's a strong anti-science
movement afloat now. I don't think
there's any reason to assume that a
scientific attitude of that sort would
be stable.
I mean, it it's only 300 years
old... 400... People don't like it when I
say that because - okay, fine you can chase
it back to some degree to the ancient
Greeks, you know, barely - but really it
was Newton and bacon and and Descartes, and
and that's not very long ago. We take
it for granted, but there's anti-science
movements popping up... well look the whole
debate over biology, to some degree
is profoundly an anti-science movement,
and not unconsciously so, consciously so!
06:41 Host
Yeah.
Jordan
I don't think that there's any reason to
assume something like that would be
stable; there's no evidence that it's
stable, let's say; whereas there is
evidence for the stability of cultures
that were non-scientific for thousands
of years - millions of years, for that
matter - at least hundreds of thousands of
years.
Host
There was a lot of war and death
involved in those cultures, too, but
I guess that would be
your argument: That this is just the
nature of this battle between these
two worlds that we live in.
07:10 Jordan
Yeah, well you know, the other thing that often
happens with with with Dawkins and
Harrison and and their crew is that they
attribute war and conflict to religious
motivations. You know, I find that quite
interesting because, first of all,
chimpanzees go to war. So, you know, we
could just lay that right on the table
and say "well, so much for the religious
theory; they're territorial, we're
territorial."
You could consider religious
sentiment as an aspect of territoriality,
but the fundamental motivation for the
battle is territorial - and that's
grounded; like you can see that in
animals always. That was only discovered,
you know, the chimps went to war and in
about mid-70s.
Goodall
suppressed it for quite a while because
she thought maybe she had warped the
chimpanzees by provisioning them - and
so that they were manifesting abnormal
behavior - but they were studied for quite
a while and they do do raiding.
They'll wipe out another colony, no
problem, and brutally. They seem to have
absolutely no inhibitions on their
aggression whatsoever; they'll tear them
into pieces. Chimpanzees are about
six times as strong as an adult male.
They're super strong, and so when they
let loose they're vicious with no
control.
8:23
And so, unless you're willing to
attribute religious sentiment to the
chimpanzees (which I think you could to
some degree, by the way).
Host
How do we make that jump for a chimpanzee?
Jordan
Well, because the precursors to religious
belief are in place so for example animals
organize themselves into a hierarchy you could
call it a
dominance hierarchy,
but it's not exactly the right way to
conceptualize it because dominant sounds
like power, right?
That's sort of
the social justice warrior postmodernist
claim - that all hierarchies are based on
power.
08:55 Frans de Waal,
a dutch anthropologist who studied chimps for a
long time, has noted that the brutal
chimp dictatorship tends to be unstable
and end in a very violent manner.
If you're a brutal chimp leader
and you're always tormenting everyone
and you don't do any reciprocal grooming
and you don't have any friends, and
then one day two chimps who are nicely
bonded together, three-quarters your size,
wait and ambush you and tear you into
pieces... and so one of the things do all
has noted is that the stable chimpanzee
troops tend to have a leader
that's quite pro-social, lot of friends a
lot of social bonds, a lot of mutual
grooming; and so you could see even there...
Imagine that there are sets
of hierarchies among chimpanzees and
there is different principles of
leadership at the top; then you could
imagine a competition across time; which
principle of leadership is going to
produce the most stable and functional
chimpanzee hierarchy?
Well, that is
exactly what does happen and so
there's some shape that the
top of the hierarchy starts to
take, and you could think about that as
the beginnings of an ideal. It's even
more complicated than that because... let's
say you get a stable hierarchy set up
and then - this is what happens in human
beings it doesn't happen in chimps, or it
does but only to a limited degree - you
get a stable hierarchy set up and then
there's some pattern of behavior that
emerges that reliably moves men to
the top of that. They leave more
offspring, so what happens is that the
male dominance arc, the male hierarchy,
forget about dominance... the male
hierarchy becomes a selection mechanism.
It promotes men to the upper ranks and
Then the women peel off the top because -
we know that human females do that;
chimpanzee females don't - they're
promiscuous mater's; the dominant males
are more likely to mate with the
females, but that's because they chase the
subordinates away - it's not because the
females are choosy.
10:54 Jordan
So the reason I'm telling you this:
It's really important because imagine
that there's a reliable pattern of
behavior that will move you up a male
hierarchy across time. What that
means is that men over time have become
biologically
adapted to that pattern. The hierarchy
is there; it's stable; it exists across
millions of years, and so it acts as a
selection mechanism by promoting men.
And so, the men who have the genes that
are most likely to get them promoted put
those genes forward, and so we get more
like the group ideal as we progress
through time, both biologically and
culturally; and we then also start to
articulate that group ideal, and that's
partly what a religion does when it when
it's coming up with the idea of an ideal.
There's a distinction made
between [countries that rule by the ruler,
who's God] and [countries that are ruled
by God, who's not the ruler]. Okay, so,
strip it for a minute of its religious
language and imagine this instead:
Imagine that what we consider God is the
abstraction of the ideal by which people
have to orient themselves to produce a
functional society. It's an abstraction
right?
Host
So it's just sort of the the basic
underlying truth of how we are able to
function as a group of people.
12:10 Jordan
Yes, properly; and you can't identify it with
any one person because when you identify
it with the person then the system gets
corrupted because the person gets
inflated, let's say.
Host
This would be like the Pharaoh.
Jordan
Yes, exactly like, precisely like that;
that's the canonical story
in the Old Testament. The Pharaoh is
the earthly ruler who demands everything
that you should provide to God. What's
God? Well, we can speak about it
from an evolutionary psychology
perspective: God is the idea of the
abstract ideal, and you separate it out
from the actual ruler just like in
in in in our society. The idea of
sovereignty is abstracted from the
president, right? The president comes and
goes; the sovereignty of the president
remains. The sovereignty of the president
is a very abstract idea because it's
disembodied, right? Its disembodied.
Jordan
13:10
We were chimps, for God's sake! How
long do you think it took us to figure
out how to disembody the idea of
sovereignty from the individual? Man!
it was like, well, maybe it took us
until 150,000 years ago to
start formulating that - you know, in
some articulated way, in some abstract
way.
I think we could recognize it before
then, and the way you recognize it is
through admiration. Alright if you meet
someone that you admire, there's someone
you want to imitate.
Imagine this pattern that will move you
up the hierarchy; and then you see people
who manifest different elements of it;
and you see someone who manifests an
element that you don't have and
something in your response to that with
admiration. It's unconscious, right?
because it pulls you towards them. It's
not voluntary. You see [that] really
with kids a lot when they hero
worship someone and start to imitate
them. The same thing happens throughout
culture.
