Henry writes:
It is a groping in the dark to seek a solution to a problem without understanding what that problem really is to begin with. This goes for problems among humans, societal problems, as well as for other kinds of problems, those addressed by physicists, chemists, and biologists; from the Big Bang up. As for the many seemingly intractable problems among humans, Pascal Boyer wrote that there is no good reason human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success of a thoroughly probed piece of research as applied to the rest of nature. Here are just some questions begging for answers:
• Why do people believe many things that are not true?
• What explains morality?
• What makes people cooperate or not?
• Why do people want other people to be more like themselves?
My Reply:
Henry,
This is eloquent as are all your missives.
Perhaps because of the nature of my Sense of Self (Personality), Sense of Place & Space (Geography), and Sense of Self-Worth (Demography), or the typology of The Fisher Paradigm, I am not looking for answers but for understanding.
Understanding exists beyond answers, as answers suggest solutions, and as we know, solutions only postpone understanding.
I am simply interested in the ever shifting nature of the stimuli that bombards our consciousness, and the consequences of that activity.
In my case, religion, Irish Roman Catholicism, gave me A Sense of Self; where and when I was born gave me A Sense of Place & Space; and my essence and its employment gave me A Sense of Self-Worth.
Equally so, science provided me with tools for a reasonably interesting life, but I have never been awed by science, or with those who would treat it as a new religion.
Where religion and science commingle for me, it is in culture.
All my works can be wrapped around that one word, “culture.”
Religion and science (for me) are blended into a harmonious whole as necessary aspects of my spiritual and rational needs as a conscious being. Incidentally, Einstein came to the same conclusion but in more poetic terms:
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
I am currently reading Harvard University trained etymologist and anthropologist Mark W. Moffett's "The Human Swarm: How our Societies Arise, Thrive and Fall" (2018), which, incidentally, is not unlike our own inevitable personal experience, as we (each) are essentially "a society of one."
Moffett studied under E. O. Wilson, the ant man, and like his mentor, has much to say about ants. Having read Wilson before, there are no surprises here.
What is, however, new for me is his comprehensive and elaborate presentation on cultural markers, such as how we differentiate each other from the way we talk, dress, eat, value and behave.
Markers are also our national flag, monuments, statues, patriotic songs, pledges (e.g., to the flag), and so on. Markers hold a society together, not science, not religion, but cultural markers.
Currently, I am working on a little book about Eric Hoffer and The Fisher Paradigm©™ which is surprising me on how identical our corporate society has become to a “mass movement” in the lexicon of Hoffer; how juvenile our society has become since WWII; and how that mindset has been allowed to decimate and deprecate traditional cultural markers without consequence by “rebels without a cause” but with the angst of spoiled brats, not realizing (apparently) that they are cutting off their hands that feed their faces.
Stay tuned,
And always be well,
Jim
This is eloquent as are all your missives.
Perhaps because of the nature of my Sense of Self (Personality), Sense of Place & Space (Geography), and Sense of Self-Worth (Demography), or the typology of The Fisher Paradigm, I am not looking for answers but for understanding.
Understanding exists beyond answers, as answers suggest solutions, and as we know, solutions only postpone understanding.
I am simply interested in the ever shifting nature of the stimuli that bombards our consciousness, and the consequences of that activity.
In my case, religion, Irish Roman Catholicism, gave me A Sense of Self; where and when I was born gave me A Sense of Place & Space; and my essence and its employment gave me A Sense of Self-Worth.
Equally so, science provided me with tools for a reasonably interesting life, but I have never been awed by science, or with those who would treat it as a new religion.
Where religion and science commingle for me, it is in culture.
All my works can be wrapped around that one word, “culture.”
Religion and science (for me) are blended into a harmonious whole as necessary aspects of my spiritual and rational needs as a conscious being. Incidentally, Einstein came to the same conclusion but in more poetic terms:
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
I am currently reading Harvard University trained etymologist and anthropologist Mark W. Moffett's "The Human Swarm: How our Societies Arise, Thrive and Fall" (2018), which, incidentally, is not unlike our own inevitable personal experience, as we (each) are essentially "a society of one."
Moffett studied under E. O. Wilson, the ant man, and like his mentor, has much to say about ants. Having read Wilson before, there are no surprises here.
What is, however, new for me is his comprehensive and elaborate presentation on cultural markers, such as how we differentiate each other from the way we talk, dress, eat, value and behave.
Markers are also our national flag, monuments, statues, patriotic songs, pledges (e.g., to the flag), and so on. Markers hold a society together, not science, not religion, but cultural markers.
Currently, I am working on a little book about Eric Hoffer and The Fisher Paradigm©™ which is surprising me on how identical our corporate society has become to a “mass movement” in the lexicon of Hoffer; how juvenile our society has become since WWII; and how that mindset has been allowed to decimate and deprecate traditional cultural markers without consequence by “rebels without a cause” but with the angst of spoiled brats, not realizing (apparently) that they are cutting off their hands that feed their faces.
Stay tuned,
And always be well,
Jim
