Pull! said Providence

Originally Posted by BBC

Startling evidence has been found which shows mammoth and other great beasts from the last ice age were blasted with material that came from space.

Seven tusks dating to some 35,000 years ago all show signs of having being peppered with meteorite fragments.

The ancient remains come from Alaska, but researchers also have a Siberian bison skull with the same pockmarks.

The scientists released details of the discovery at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, US.

They painted a picture of a calamitous event over North America that may have severely knocked back the populations of some species.

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

Pull! said Providence

But humanity "done 'em in". The population crash around 35,000 years ago should have given the American megafauna ample time to recover before large human populations had a chance to finish them off.

China: Ancient Values and New Generation Rich

From a Washington Post article. For discussion purposes...

Their children are better educated but unaccustomed to hardship. They spend money freely and return home from studying abroad with strange ideas such as networking with outsiders. Half the students in the course have studied abroad, including one woman who has jetted back and forth to China since age 7 and understood only part of Zhang's lecture.

"Entrepreneurs are leading where society is going, and if this group doesn't understand Chinese culture, it will be very bad for society," Zhang said. "People will be less and less happy, even though they have more and more money."

In the west, government checks and balances traditionally play a role in checking the excesses of the wealthy. China's government is still autocratic. All power has been with the Communist Party, but is now being moved into the private sector with a generation of entrepreneurs. There remains a large tension between the new capitalist class, land seizures and pollution that enables growth but impacts the working classes, and the recently taught Communist values suggesting capitalist motivation is evil and oppressive.

This article speaks of reviving Agricultural Age values. In the long term, it is not wise for elites to be too greedy and arrogant, and certainly not wise to flaunt greed and arrogance. If one looks into the traditions of most autocratic cultures, one will find religious and philosophical values suggesting that moderation, charity, humility and similar traits are expected of the children of elites.

I get the feeling that it has never worked very well. Perhaps it was once fast horses rather than fast cars that attracted the young idle children of hard working generations. The problem seems perpetual, though. It is not a question of culture or religion. It is human nature.

Anyway, yes, it is prudent for the wealthy to show moderation and give the appearance of caring for those less well off. Different cultures attempt to enforce this in different ways. The problem may take different forms in the US and China, but will have to be dealt with.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

China: Ancient Values and New Generation Rich

From a Washington Post article. For discussion purposes...



In the west, government checks and balances traditionally play a role in checking the excesses of the wealthy. China's government is still autocratic. All power has been with the Communist Party, but is now being moved into the private sector with a generation of entrepreneurs. There remains a large tension between the new capitalist class, land seizures and pollution that enables growth but impacts the working classes, and the recently taught Communist values suggesting capitalist motivation is evil and oppressive.

This article speaks of reviving Agricultural Age values. In the long term, it is not wise for elites to be too greedy and arrogant, and certainly not wise to flaunt greed and arrogance. If one looks into the traditions of most autocratic cultures, one will find religious and philosophical values suggesting that moderation, charity, humility and similar traits are expected of the children of elites.

I get the feeling that it has never worked very well. Perhaps it was once fast horses rather than fast cars that attracted the young idle children of hard working generations. The problem seems perpetual, though. It is not a question of culture or religion. It is human nature.

Anyway, yes, it is prudent for the wealthy to show moderation and give the appearance of caring for those less well off. Different cultures attempt to enforce this in different ways. The problem may take different forms in the US and China, but will have to be dealt with.

I see much the same problem in the United States with its rising New Class. It's hard to see any virtue in bureaucratic elites or in the political organizations that pander to them, whether the Communist Party of the PRC or the Republican Party of the United States. After all, under the leadership of Karl Rogue, the GOP was developing the structure of a Communist Party; in China, the Communist Party might as well call itself a Conservative Party. Besides, Chinese and American economic elites are becoming closer to each other as they distance themselves from the masses in their respective countries.

(It's your guess as well as mine whether Karl Rove still calls the shots for the Republican Party, and behavior suggests that his presence has yet to vanish).

During this Unraveling we have had "Creative Class" entrepreneurs-associated with the Information Revolution-and "New Class" kleptocrats. Using Arnold Toynbee's terminology, the "New Class" kleptocrats are an old Creative Minority that has become an authoritarian Dominant Minority-a morphing across family generations.

Generations and the High Arts

Renaissance Watch

Here is a good blog post that is relevant to the tiimes.

Optimism as a Political Act

Michel Bauwens
4th January 2009

The two blockquoted citations are followed by a important and inspiring reflection on the role of optimism by Alex Steffen. Really worth reading.

“Pessimism is a luxury we can only afford in good times, in difficult times it easily represents a self-inflicted, self-fulfilling death sentence. This insight, to me, is real Realism or real Realpolitik, far from blue-eyed Idealism. We have to courageously resist the current tendency to suspect those who work for a better world to be hopeless idealists. This would mean Realpolitik letting disaster happen (by deepening fault lines instead of transcending them), and us not at least attempting to prevent this. Strange real Realpolitik!” (Evelin Lindner, 2004.)

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” (Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A personal history of our times, 2004, p. 208)

Really worth reading in full here and meditating upon.
Excerpts from a text by Alex Steffen:

1.

“Optimism is a political act.

Entrenched interests use despair, confusion and apathy to prevent change. They encourage modes of thinking which lead us to believe that problems are insolvable, that nothing we do can matter, that the issue is too complex to present even the opportunity for change. It is a long-standing political art to sow the seeds of mistrust between those you would rule over: as Machiavelli said, tyrants do not care if they are hated, so long as those under them do not love one another. Cynicism is often seen as a rebellious attitude in Western popular culture, but, in reality, cynicism in average people is the attitude exactly most likely to conform to the desires of the powerful – cynicism is obedience.

Optimism, by contrast, especially optimism which is neither foolish nor silent, can be revolutionary. Where no one believes in a better future, despair is a logical choice, and people in despair almost never change anything. Where no one believes a better solution is possible, those benefiting from the continuation of a problem are safe. Where no one believes in the possibility of action, apathy becomes an insurmountable obstacle to reform. But introduce intelligent reasons for believing that action is possible, that better solutions are available, and that a better future can be built, and you unleash the power of people to act out of their highest principles. Shared belief in a better future is the strongest glue there is: it creates the opportunity for us to love one another, and love is an explosive force in politics.

Great movements for social change always begin with statements of great optimism.”

2.

“Consider, instead, the politics of optimism:
1) That realism ought best to be defined as “within our capacity” and “necessary.”

2) That we have the capacity to create and deploy solutions to the world’s biggest problems, and the magnitude of the consequences of failure (both for ourselves and generations to come) demands that we act immediately.

3) That it is possible to act in such a way that the prospects of most people on the planet are improved. While certain costs will be incurred, the returns on those investments will be quite attractive, not only in ecological stability, international security and human well-being, but in terms of plain old economic prosperity. These solutions will make the future better than the present for the almost everyone, and greatly improve the lots of our children and grandchildren.

4) Therefore, defining our win scenarios, imagining the kind of future we want to create, describing the solutions that will make building that future possible, and publicly committing ourselves to success are the appropriate course of action.

Nothing about the politics of optimism needs to be naive. We can understand that people are fallible, mostly self-motivated and sometimes even mistaken about what’s in their own best interests. We can stress the importance of informed decision-making, demand rigor and note uncertainty. We can recognize the massive differentials in power and wealth in our society and be clear-headed about the difficulty of opposing those whose power and wealth is tied to planetary destruction. We can anticipate setbacks and failures, disappointments and betrayals. We can expect corruption and demand transparency. We can freely admit the profound difficulty of the work yet to be done, even the possibility of total failure.

We can freely acknowledge the tremendous struggle ahead of us, and yet choose to remain decidedly optimistic, and to work from a fundamental belief in the possibilities of the future. When we do that, we liberate ourselves from some of the burden of despair and powerlessness we’ve all been saddled with at the dawn of the 21st Century.

But when we do it in public — when we stand up and refuse to accept the idea that failure is preordained and action is unrealistic — we strike right down to the heart of the political conflict we really face: the conflict between our party of the future and their party of the past.
I’m more and more convinced that incrementalism in the absence of committed vision almost always serves the politics of impossibility. Paradoxically, a lot of old school activism does as well. The impossibility lobby is entirely okay with Greenpeace or whoever doing direct action to highlight the latest dire predictions about the ruin of the Earth, because they’ve mostly moved on from debating reality to defining response. They’re okay with people thinking the crisis is downright apocalyptic, so long as those same people don’t think there’s really anything we can do differently.

That’s why our best hope lies in a fighting optimism, an optimism that’s willing to confront the impossibility lobby and its messengers and make very clear that a feeble, halting response is not the rational or responsible response, but a corrupt and morally bankrupt response.

Every time we explain how a better future might be built, we redraw the boundaries of the possible. We show that the realm of choice available to us is actually quite large, and even includes paths that might, for instance, harm the interests of rich old guys who own big chunks of coal companies or the petrochemical industry but improve the prospects of pretty much everyone else.

We need to accelerate innovation and magnify vision. We need to school ourselves in the possible, share ideas, imagine outcomes, weigh options. We need to figure out how best to transform the systems we’ve built. I definitely don’t have the answers personally, but Worldchanging aims to be a useful tool for people undertaking that exploration.

Ultimately, though, we need something more than better answers. We need millions of people who are willing to teach the teachable, comfort the disheartened and confront the scoundrels. We need to take our politics public and take on the whole culture of cynical defeatism. On some days, I think we need an optimism uprising.”

Originally Posted by Mr. Rod Dreher

(on) "The Age of the Unthinkable," by Joshua Cooper Ramo


Ramo spends a fair amount of time talking about the differences between the way Easterners (Chinese, mostly) and Westerners perceive the world. He discusses a series of experiments in which Chinese students (not Chinese-Americans) were shown the same images as American students, then questioned about their recall. What the experiment found was that the Chinese typically paid more attention to the background than to the main object in the foreground, while the Americans focused on the object in the foreground. The discussion of these experiments is fascinating; Robert Nisbett, the psychologist who conducted them, said that until he'd carried out this research, he had been a "universalist" about the nature of human thought, thinking that all people pretty much saw the world the same way. The results of his experiment helped explain certain strengths and weaknesses in the Eastern and Western ways of seeing the world.


For example (says Ramo), the social and cultural worlds East Asians inhabit are relatively more complex and constraining than in the West, meaning that if you are to succeed in those societies, you need to pay a lot more attention to context than you do in the West. In this way, culture trains the eye, and our way of thinking about what's really significant about our world. Ramo says that Eastern philosophical thought is generally preoccupied with mystery and with wholeness -- how the parts work together in a whole -- rather than Western thought, which tends to be more analytical. To boil it down, the Eastern mind is more focused on relationships as opposed to things, at least in this accounting.

Here's a Wall Street Journal science column about Nisbett's research.

Originally Posted by WSJ

Westerners typically see categories (animals) where Asians typically see relationships (monkeys eat bananas). Such differences in thinking can trip up business and political relationships.

The cognitive differences start with basic sensory perception. In one study, Michigan's Taka Masuda showed Japanese and American students pictures of aquariums containing one big fast-moving fish, several other finned swimmers, plants, rock and bubbles. What did the students recall? The Japanese spontaneously remembered 60% more background elements than did the Americans. They also referred twice as often to relationships involving background objects ("the little frog was above the pink rock").

The difference was even more striking when the participants were asked which, of 96 objects, had been in the scene. When the test object was shown in the context of its original surroundings, the Japanese did much better at remembering correctly whether they had seen it before. For the Americans, including the background was no help; they had never even seen it.

"Westerners and Asians literally see different worlds," says Prof. Nisbett. "Westerners pay attention to the focal object, while Asians attend more broadly -- to the overall surroundings and to the relations between the object and the field." These generalizations seem to hold even though Eastern and Western countries each represent many different cultures and traditions.

Because of their heightened perception of surroundings, East Asians attribute causality less to actors than to context. Little wonder, then, that West and East see North Korea's nuclear threats very differently. "Understanding how other people think and see the world is crucial in international disputes," says psychologist Robert Sternberg of Yale University in New Haven, Conn.

...

Westerners prefer abstract universal principles; East Asians seek rules appropriate to a situation. For example, when researchers in the Netherlands asked people what to do about an employee whose work has been subpar for a year after 15 years of exemplary service, more than 75% of Americans and Canadians said to let her go; only 20% of Singaporeans and Koreans agreed.

Cognitive differences likely originate in child rearing and social practices, but are far from hard-wired: Asians living in the West and Westerners in Asia often find that their cognitive style goes native. Similarly, bicultural people, like those in Hong Kong with its British and Chinese history, show thinking patterns intermediate between East and West. That's a model that workplaces might do well to emulate, says Prof. Nisbett: The more cultural diversity and, hence, thinking styles in a workforce, the likelier it is to see problems clearly and solve them.

Ramo doesn't argue, nor does he intend to argue, that one way of seeing is superior to the other, but he does say that we in the West should train ourselves to see things more in an Eastern way, for our own good. He concludes from this research that we in the West are more interested in seeing the world so we can determine how to act on it to make it conform to our will, instead of seeing the world with an eye toward learning the deeper natural laws governing the the conduct of nations, through an understanding of which we could bring about a more harmonious, and stable, world (or at least a world in which the US didn't bumble into bad situations it ought to have seen coming had it paid more attention to context).

The Hemispheres of Perception

Yo. Ob. Sv. is somewhere between these two world viewings (and much more Sinical than the average Commercial Republican) which may lead to the difficulties in my description (and my affections in Robt. Filmer vs. John Locke) of the world given by Providence whenst posting here at T4T.

We all know what we know. Some of us know why we know. This is a discussion about knowing if we know.

Originally Posted by Garry Gutting in the NY Times, June 29, 2011

Argument, Truth and the Social Side of Reasoning
... Sperber and Mercier begin from well-established facts about our deep-rooted tendencies to make mistakes in our reasoning. We have a very hard time sticking to rules of deductive logic, and we constantly make basic errors in statistical reasoning. Most importantly, we are strongly inclined to “confirmation-bias”: we systematically focus on data that support a view we hold and ignore data that count against it.
These facts suggest that our evolutionary development has not done an especially good job of making us competent reasoners. Sperber and Mercier, however, point out that this is true only if the point of reasoning is to draw true conclusions. Fallacious reasoning, especially reasoning that focuses on what supports our views and ignores what counts against them, is very effective for the purpose of winning arguments with other people. So, they suggest, it makes sense to think that the evolutionary point of human reasoning is to win arguments, not to reach the truth.

Much more a the link.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

We all know what we know. Some of us know why we know. This is a discussion about knowing if we know.

Much more a the link.

And it's funny how today, you can pretty much find support for any argument you are trying to make. Add that with how convicted both sides feel they are...and we soon have a situation where it feels like there are no right or wrong answers. Just people babbling.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

We all know what we know. Some of us know why we know. This is a discussion about knowing if we know.

Much more a the link.

M&L, Thank you. I enjoyed the article, particularly this paragraph (emphasis mine).

This pragmatic view understands seeking the truth as a special case of trying to win an argument: not winning by coercing or tricking people into agreement, but by achieving agreement through honest arguments. The important practical conclusion is that finding the truth does require winning arguments, but not in the sense that my argument defeats yours. Rather, we find an argument that defeats all contrary arguments. Sperber and Mercier in fact approach this philosophical view when they argue that, on their account, reasoning is most problematic when carried out by isolated individuals and is most effective when carried out in social groups.

Here is one point of view:
http://youtu.be/35RyhBpdkg8
Can we "marry" science and spirituality?

Argument, Truth and the Social Side of Reasoning
... Sperber and Mercier begin from well-established facts about our deep-rooted tendencies to make mistakes in our reasoning. We have a very hard time sticking to rules of deductive logic, and we constantly make basic errors in statistical reasoning. Most importantly, we are strongly inclined to “confirmation-bias”: we systematically focus on data that support a view we hold and ignore data that count against it.
These facts suggest that our evolutionary development has not done an especially good job of making us competent reasoners. Sperber and Mercier, however, point out that this is true only if the point of reasoning is to draw true conclusions. Fallacious reasoning, especially reasoning that focuses on what supports our views and ignores what counts against them, is very effective for the purpose of winning arguments with other people. So, they suggest, it makes sense to think that the evolutionary point of human reasoning is to win arguments, not to reach the truth.

This seems correct but, can we accept the assumption that reason can lead us to the truth in the first place? To what extent? That needs to be examined philosophically, and related questions, before we can assume what reason should do.

Just from talking to family members, I've noticed the vast differences. My silent/GI cusp grandmother is very traditional, going to church every sunday and doing typical religious traditions like giving up meat on Fridays and on lent. For her, it's just a duty, something she needs to do. For my Joneser mother, it's idealistic and symbolic. She'll look at a cloud and say, "oh look it's shaped like a feather, do you think that's a sign? For me, I'm actually an atheist. My brother is pretty much a deist, but is very interested in spirituality like true Kabbalah. My cousin is interested in Eastern religions and gets a lot of his spirituality there, but as for god..I don't think it's important. We've had philosophical discussions on the ideas of God existing or not existing, and an existence of a god was never very important to all three of us. We were all born in the 80s and so there is definitely a growing secularism in younger generations.

By the way, I took a class with a late Xer, early Yer and he basically taught us that philosophy was based on rational thought. He taught us how to literally debate, taught us terms to use as tools to debate with. (ad hominem, etc..) He taught us the logic, ethnic, and morals of debating, rather than just being convincing...something I've noticed Boomers don't even consider. For Boomers, debating is convincing people to agree with your opinion. A lot of later 90s baby millies don't exactly see it that way. For them, simply disagreeing with them=negativity, and negativity is a reason to be turned off by your argument. Whether it's realistic/rational or not. So they're the complete opposite of Boomers in that respect, they despise the negative rhetoric, where Boomers thrive on it. The Xers and early Yers are stuck in the middle, the Silents just want to agree with and please everyone.

I should point out that this was a philosophy class, but the teacher made it so objective to the point where I was suddenly struck with the realization that philosophy was not idealistic in the slightest. Yet I had always believed it to be as it was portrayed in such a light in the 90s by Boomers and early Xers to an extent (or possibly the Boomers perverted version of young Xer adults in the 90s)

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Here is one point of view:
http://youtu.be/35RyhBpdkg8
Can we "marry" science and spirituality?

This seems correct but, can we accept the assumption that reason can lead us to the truth in the first place? To what extent? That needs to be examined philosophically, and related questions, before we can assume what reason should do.

I have no problem with the man's description of science as a language, nor with his statement of what science is for. I also agree, and have said before, that scientific method has inherent limits, that there are questions that it is not a good tool to answer. The most obvious such questions involve values, which are not questions of fact, and for which as a result scientific method is almost useless. (Not quite, because the answers to factual questions can inform the moral sense, but certainly science is inadequate by itself.) Also, the idea of science as a language is not new with him; this is a feature of quite a bit of fairly modern philosophy, in which the idea of a "language game" is current. As far as it goes, I believe this to be sound.

Here is where I run into problems.

1) He makes some false statements. The claim that ours is the only species that pursues conflict as the best approach to life is untrue. Actually, there are quite a few species that do this to a greater extent than we do; we are a social species, and there are some species that are not, e.g. solitary hunters. Tigers don't cooperate at all, except when mating and then only briefly. Humans do.

2) He makes some dubious statements, which are not so obviously false, but by no means as clearly true as he suggests, such as the claims he makes for the indigenous wisdom of non-Western cultures.

3) He speaks of blending science with other languages or language-games, but he seems to want to do this for purposes that are clearly scientific. That isn't appropriate in my opinion.

4) Alongside this, he seems to also make the opposite error. He referred at one point to science providing ways of understanding "our relationship to ourselves, each other and the world around us." I feel very strongly that this is not a scientific question, and that science is not appropriate for pursuing it, except tangentially insofar as it depends on questions of objective fact and about the workings of nature. This is a part of the core of spirituality, along with the even more basic question of who we are.

I think one needs to draw a distinction between a scientific question, statement, or claim, and a non-scientific (which should not be confused with "unscientific") question, statement, or claim. Spirituality, properly so called, does not deal with scientific questions or statements, and it just as inappropriate to try to deal with spiritual questions scientifically. The gentleman in the film seemed instead to be thinking of science as one of multiple appropriate ways to answer the SAME questions. I don't think that's appropriate at all.

I would say that science and religion conflict only insofar as one of two things happens. Either religion attempts to answer what is properly a scientific question -- which is to say, a question of fact about the objective world -- or science attempts to answer what is properly a spiritual question, although science properly so called hardly ever does this. It does happen, though, that philosophers will assert an ability to answer these questions using scientific methods.

Historically, we have seen conflicts arise when religious organizations and spokespeople have attempted to provide dogmatic, doctrinaire answers to such questions as whether the heliocentric model of near space is accurate, or whether the human species evolved from other species of animal. On a smaller scale, philosophers have sometimes attempted to define God scientifically and disprove His existence. Either of these actually might amount to a "blending" of science with other approaches to life, and both amount to misapplying a way of knowing to questions for which it isn't appropriate. The origin of the human species is a question of fact about the objective world and it should be approached scientifically. It is not appropriate to approach it using any other method. The nature of God is a metaphorical question, not one of fact, and not about the objective world; it amounts to a question about the meaning of certain spiritual experiences. As it is not a question of objective fact, to approach it scientifically is completely wrong; one can only begin to do so by operationally defining God, which means one has left the subject matter altogether and is talking about something else while using the same word.

I think it's more appropriate to recognize a parallel validity of science and spirituality, not a blending of them. A person should ideally be acquainted with both, and also with values/feeling function and also with art. None of these can take the place of any of the others. Science is the best tool for answering scientific questions, but not all questions are scientific.

As for reason leading us to "the truth," I believe the problem lies with the words in quotes. That's a vague expression, poorly defined, and not at all clear as to what it means. Reason allows us to draw conclusions from evidence. It allows the answering of questions for which sufficient data exist to answer them. It is a crucial part of scientific method, and a less central but still somewhat useful adjunct to all others. That's really all we can say about it, but since I don't believe there is such a thing as "the truth," absent a context, what does that matter?

Originally Posted by Felix5

By the way, I took a class with a late Xer, early Yer and he basically taught us that philosophy was based on rational thought. He taught us how to literally debate, taught us terms to use as tools to debate with. (ad hominem, etc..) He taught us the logic, ethnic, and morals of debating, rather than just being convincing...something I've noticed Boomers don't even consider. For Boomers, debating is convincing people to agree with your opinion. A lot of later 90s baby millies don't exactly see it that way. For them, simply disagreeing with them=negativity, and negativity is a reason to be turned off by your argument. Whether it's realistic/rational or not. So they're the complete opposite of Boomers in that respect, they despise the negative rhetoric, where Boomers thrive on it. The Xers and early Yers are stuck in the middle, the Silents just want to agree with and please everyone.

You've noticed the shortcomings in the reasoning of other generations, especially Boomers; what about your own?

You've noticed the shortcomings in the reasoning of other generations, especially Boomers; what about your own?


I'm obligated to name them? Why? Also, my generation hasn't even fully come of age, we have no faults as a mass yet because we are not a mass yet. Naming potential faults seems quite absurd, considering that every generational archetype has the potential for faults....we could be so conformist and narrow in ideology and philosophy that we vote for a dictator. We could be so traumatized by the crisis period that we turn into the artist archetype. We could be anything. What faults do we have no? Impossible to tell. The only thing I've noticed from 80s born cohorts is that we share some nomad tendencies, but I especially can't speak for the more civic younger waves. If we're talking about the first wavers, the nomad tendencies might be good or bad. Having a bit of nihilism and realism, mixed with idealism may be great or may hold us back and alienate us from both Xers and civics, making us our own lost cohort similar to the interbellum GIs and other groups like Jonesers. We may also be less secular, considering that the two relatives I named had a connection to spirituality in some sense. Anyway, I was actually in a class with a lot of second wavers, so I couldn't even tell you what first wavers think of philosophy. Second wavers seemed more interested in the moral points their Boomer mentors/parents talk about. Of course, these are main topics in politics anyway....

The reason I brought up the faults of the previous generations, is that they have existed for at least more than 30 years have a strong effect on the world and have made their voices heard to an extent. Yers and Millennials? Not so much yet, we have to wait, I'm telling you what we were taught by our teachers. And this was a late Xer, early Yer and in community college of all places. I don't know how they teach philosophy in high school or university. I thought the experience was relevant though, since someone brought up the topic.

Originally Posted by Felix5

He taught us how to literally debate, taught us terms to use as tools to debate with. (ad hominem, etc..) He taught us the logic, ethnic, and morals of debating, rather than just being convincing...

IMO this is something everyone should learn starting in elementary school and through high school. We would be a much better society if we did so, more immune to propaganda, advertisements, and spin.

I was on the debate team in high school and I was shocked by the poor reasoning and illogic used by my peers. Circular reasoning, appeal to tradition, appeal to popularity, denying the antecedent, affirming the consequent, post hoc ergo propter hoc, appeal to consequences, etc.

I think Braden refers in the video to spirituality as old stuff, but not just to non-Western indigenous. I would broaden his description of "spirituality" to include more recent movements as well, including but not limited to romanticism, the modern "new age," depth psychology, philosophical trends, etc.

What appeals to me about his "holistic" approach, is that it squares with the nature of reality as I experience it. It is also a principle of Eastern philosophy and Western hermeticism, as well as the spirituality Braden refers to, that we as humans are not "separate" from the world we perceive, but are part of it. Related to this is the paradoxical truth, as described in Zen, and in hermeticism, that polar opposites are different (indeed opposite, poles apart), and yet also one. The upshot is that we can't fully separate the subjective experience of who we are, what we value, etc, from the objective study of facts about the world. And so a marriage of science and spirituality is at least plausible and interesting, and I am interested in it, as are many authors today such as Braden, and earlier scientist/mystics like Teilhard de Chardin.

The circle or sphere seems to be a useful model of reality, though it is only a map. Within this circle are the cross or the 6-pointed star. All around the circle are opposite points, each poles apart, and yet all related to each other on one circle. The zodiac, mandalas, medicine wheels and magic circles are examples of these circular maps. This useful symbol makes the point that opposites remain different, and indeed poles apart, but still related and interdependent or mutually-arising as part of one whole. As Blake said, the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. The scientists travelled this road, going to the excess of objective materialist methods and outlooks, yet some of them by that very means found themselves in a place of rediscovering the subjective and the spiritual within the objective data itself. Braden refers to this happening in quantum physics. Whether this example is true or not is a matter of some debate, but many people continue to hold it as an example of science and spirituality merging.

I think it is useful, as Brian suggests, to define the difference between approaches such as science and spirituality. The examples of religion dogmatically asserting the falsehood of data about evolution and the Earth's movement around the Sun, are good ones. I would like to draw a sharp line and say these two approaches should be put in separate compartments. But that would go against the philosophical principle that seems to be a bedrock truth, that I am not separate from the world and vice versa (the non-duality of subjective and objective). The world does not consist of separate compartments, but is one whole with different aspects. So in fact science and spirituality are approaches to the same question, because it is the same world or reality that is asked about.

I would say that these two approaches take us in different directions, and in fact these two directions are opposites. The methods are different, each appropriate to its sphere of inquiry. To deny the difference is to create confusion and error. And yet these are directions, on the wheel as it were, so they are also related to each other. Therefore the relationship between them remains fuzzy, and not as sharply distinct as we might like. I agree therefore that a properly-informed individual or practitioner of either approach should be familiar with both, and their parallel validity. That being the case, then one's knowledge of the spiritual could inform knowledge of the objective, and vice versa, even as they remain different directions. That is a wise and holistic approach, perhaps carried on in the other direction called "philosophy." How science and spirit fully interact remains unresolved and ambiguous, in my opinion; and yet to be fully resolved as our knowledge and wisdom continues to grow. Therefore this is to me an interesting process evolving within our culture. I am not one to suppose that the relationship between science and spirituality has been recently set in stone for all ages to come.

I hope we can continue a liveable world, so that we can pursue this and other quests in the future.

I was on the debate team in high school and I was shocked by the poor reasoning and illogic used by my peers. Circular reasoning, appeal to tradition, appeal to popularity, denying the antecedent, affirming the consequent, post hoc ergo propter hoc, appeal to consequences, etc.

You can tell on a lot of messages boards-maybe not necessarily this one, but on many others. People just don't know how to debate in general and I think the Boomers really let that one go. As a child I wrote a lot of persuasive essays, but not once did I learn a single thing about debating until that college course I just told you about. This really says something because not everyone goes to college, especially in this economy, and Philosophy courses are not always required for certain majors. Especially not the one I took, which was Philosophy 201. I think to prophet archetypes, or rather Boomers in particular, debating to them is simply convincing your opponent to agree with you. So Xers and Yers have had to learn how to debate completely on their own. Perhaps that's why rationalism and secularism appeal to our archetypes more. I also think the silents were taught by the last nomads and civics (GIs and Lost) how to debate properly, who in turn learned to debate by simply reacting to the missionary's passion and zeal politicking. I wonder how the Boomers were taught, it would be interesting to hear from some of them.

Originally Posted by Felix5

The reason I brought up the faults of the previous generations, is that they have existed for at least more than 30 years have a strong effect on the world and have made their voices heard to an extent. Yers and Millennials? Not so much yet, we have to wait, I'm telling you what we were taught by our teachers. And this was a late Xer, early Yer and in community college of all places. I don't know how they teach philosophy in high school or university. I thought the experience was relevant though, since someone brought up the topic.

I would caution against over-generalization about how a generation thinks. A generation is a big group of folks.

I would caution against over-generalization about how a generation thinks. A generation is a big group of folks.


When do I ever do that? It's a given that Prophets are known for their fire and brimstone approach to politics and spirituality, their energy and moralizing. Of course not every person in this generation is like that, but as a mass, the Boomers have already proven that they are this archetype. Of course, we're not mentioning individual people, I already did that in regards to the people I know. My mother is a Joneser and although she has a tendency to see the spiritual world in a symbolic manner, she is a very rational person at heart. Not at all fitting of the description of the Prophet archetype.

The Boomer style of debating as a mass, follows the fire and brimstone formula. As individuals, I've seen some of the most rational people debate others. For example, I always Christopher Hitchens was extremely rational and composed in response to a great deal of people in his age group. Regardless of what his opinions are, his style of debating is cool and collected while expressing them in the manner of a debate.

When it comes to Xers, I don't know because I honestly don't too many of them. I've seen portrayals of them on tv, but I've always suspected there was something wrong there as they were always portrayed as Boomer/hippie clones except more alienated and individualized in their approach. Since the media was more Boomer/Silent run at that time in my childhood I can't honestly take that for the truth of the archetype of the nomad quest.