Sunday, March 16, 2014
Abstract
Homo Sapiens evolved to survive in an evolutionary niche that looked very little like what we now surround ourselves with. Several of our physical, psychological and behavioral adaptations, which drove our success, are now deeply out of synch with contemporary life. And in the last 2 - 3 hundred years technological and cultural change have sped up to the point that traditional values have become less and less adaptive. The values that got people through the middle ages are not the same that got them through the renaissance which are not those that will help someone through the challenges of today's global economy. What I am proposing is a new set of crutches to help people with the cultural environment that we currently face.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
The Four F's
Feeding
Fighting
Fleeing
Fucking
These are the four basic drives for all animals. I bring this point up to say that fear, hunger, lust and anger are not just inborn, not just unavoidable, but necessary for the survival of any animal. These four feelings are the basic virtues of animal life. If you aren't willing to fight, flee, eat and reproduce then you are an evolutionary zero, no one will even find your bones.
The problem with these drives in us is that we have changed our environment such that our drives our out of synch with our surroundings. Our needs are so easily met, and the risk to our lives are so vanishingly small (for those of us lucky enough to avoid the underbelly of our great country) that fear and hunger are powerful all out of proportion to what it takes to keep safe and fed. And so we end up anxious and overweight, not because we are bad, but because we are, in some sense, animals in captivity.
Animals taken outside of their natural habitat need special treatment in order to stay healthy. You cant just put a tiger in a cage and expect it to be OK. (Well you can and we have but its obviously a bad plan at this point). I think that this basic idea of tigers and cages applies to homo sapiens and office buildings. We have taken ourselves out of our native environment and allowed ourselves to build up a new environment without taking a long distance view of what we have done.
We have built our own zoo, which sadly is too much like the inmates building their own asylum.
Fighting
Fleeing
Fucking
These are the four basic drives for all animals. I bring this point up to say that fear, hunger, lust and anger are not just inborn, not just unavoidable, but necessary for the survival of any animal. These four feelings are the basic virtues of animal life. If you aren't willing to fight, flee, eat and reproduce then you are an evolutionary zero, no one will even find your bones.
The problem with these drives in us is that we have changed our environment such that our drives our out of synch with our surroundings. Our needs are so easily met, and the risk to our lives are so vanishingly small (for those of us lucky enough to avoid the underbelly of our great country) that fear and hunger are powerful all out of proportion to what it takes to keep safe and fed. And so we end up anxious and overweight, not because we are bad, but because we are, in some sense, animals in captivity.
Animals taken outside of their natural habitat need special treatment in order to stay healthy. You cant just put a tiger in a cage and expect it to be OK. (Well you can and we have but its obviously a bad plan at this point). I think that this basic idea of tigers and cages applies to homo sapiens and office buildings. We have taken ourselves out of our native environment and allowed ourselves to build up a new environment without taking a long distance view of what we have done.
We have built our own zoo, which sadly is too much like the inmates building their own asylum.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Bibliography (on going)
Compass of Pleasure
Regina Rini
Joshua green
Supernormal Stimuli
There is no God and he is Always with You
pg 79: The brain is an organ whose job it is to make sense of the world we encounter so that we can operate efficiently. It does this by ignoring most of the input it receives and then slicing the rest into usable chunks.
Sex at Dawn
Principia Discordia
The Power of Myth
Why We Get Fat
The Design of Everyday Things
Thinking Fast and Slow
Kinds of Minds
thinking fast and slow
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weakness-will/
Regina Rini
Joshua green
Supernormal Stimuli
There is no God and he is Always with You
pg 79: The brain is an organ whose job it is to make sense of the world we encounter so that we can operate efficiently. It does this by ignoring most of the input it receives and then slicing the rest into usable chunks.
Sex at Dawn
Principia Discordia
The Power of Myth
Why We Get Fat
The Design of Everyday Things
Thinking Fast and Slow
Kinds of Minds
thinking fast and slow
Stumbling on Happiness
Stanford Philosophy encyclopediahttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weakness-will/
Monday, March 10, 2014
A defensive preface note
If at first you don't understand, go look up the fucking words. I hate the idea that every sentence should be accessible to every reader. This book is build for the person who has read all the primary sources and just hasn't noticed the patterns that I have. The only time I'm going to reiterate the primary source is when that source sucks. If I'm making a reference to a good read then you're going to have to go to either wikipedia or amazon before you find out what I'm talking about. And if you don't like it then you should have read the preface before you bought the book.
the organizing idea
What can we learn about how to treat ourselves from existent wisdom and science once we admit that we are animal that don't have souls.
Why are you unhappy?
1) Because you've been told that you are better than animals, and not just the smartest one
2) That your feelings are flaws in your cognition, not the foundation of it.
3) That pleasure is sinful and dangerous, as opposed to just an unreliable compass
4) That the key to understanding human nature is found in the bible, not in the scientific study of the human animal.
With these 4 ideas (to be reviewed and amended as we go forward) I will reexamine established wisdom and show which are helpful for a secular person in the present day and age.
Why are you unhappy?
1) Because you've been told that you are better than animals, and not just the smartest one
2) That your feelings are flaws in your cognition, not the foundation of it.
3) That pleasure is sinful and dangerous, as opposed to just an unreliable compass
4) That the key to understanding human nature is found in the bible, not in the scientific study of the human animal.
With these 4 ideas (to be reviewed and amended as we go forward) I will reexamine established wisdom and show which are helpful for a secular person in the present day and age.
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