life

The Puzzle, Part Two, Expanded

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Inasmuch as they all agree about it, the existing science is Allistic, the existing picture of Humanity and Human Nature is Allistic, and the existing origin stories, the Story of Man, we used to say, is Allistic, and as such, it’s all true enough – for the Allistic.

Sure, some stuff was probably imagined by Autistics, but as I said, if the majority agrees, it’s Allistic. What you think is dependent upon the sort of brain you have.

From prehistory forward, since perhaps what we call the Neolithic Revolutions, the Story of Humanity is only the story of the Allistic Human, told by, for, and to Allistics, and understood by Allistics. “Nature,” in these contexts, as in “Human Nature,” refers to one’s biases, one’s tendencies, one’s expectations, the way one understands and deals with the world – in a word,  one’s neurotype. So “Human Nature,” in current, Allistic science and current, Allistic life is the basic version of the Allistic personality.

Neurotype and Nature precede one’s science, as mentioned above. The Nature of the brain doing the thinking must be part of one’s calculations, and the first part, Order of Operations. Full disclosure, this is a self-diagnosed Autist talking to you here.

Riane Eisler told the story of the ascendance of Homo Allistic in The Chalice and the Blade, I believe. I have some timing issues, I’m not sure she had it happening quite so far back as the Neolithic revolutions, but it’s a process, it’s not creation, it didn’t happen all at once, in fact it looks a little like it happened to much of the world only five hundred years ago, reading my theories into The Dawn of Everything, in some senses.

Eisler called it the Patriarchy, I believe, and that is surely true, but I think the patriarchy is Allism, one name for Allism, the patriarchy is Allism in terms of organization of society by gender, and as Eisler points out, it’s associated with conflict and war, and I think the more direct connection is that Allism is something very like the human warrior caste, that sexism is part of a setup where everyone is subservient to the warrior caste and class.

For a word, what do we call the Age of Allistic dominance? I won’t correct you if you say the Patriarchy, but perhaps I would rename the Anthropocene the Allistocene, after all, there were people and men before the trouble started, the existence of anthros is not what changed – it was their Natures, their neurotypes. The Patriarchy is still good for me, because maybe there didn’t used to be patriarchs, and then there were, it references a change within men, so to speak. It’s obviously not that there were suddenly men in the world.

Some OG feminist remind me, please? Did Eisler suggest why the change occurred? It seems to me that would have been important and I would have remembered that, but not if I disagreed, sometimes I don’t. But I surely would have remembered by now if she had referenced Neurotype and/or Allism which barely existed when that book was published. I hope I would have hatched on the spot!

It seems a distinction without a difference, I suppose, Human Nature vs the Nature of 80% of Humans. But the Devil, rather Lucifer, as in the inquisitive mind irrespective of authority, is in the details, isn’t it. You said “Human Nature,” and you weren’t fuzzy about it, you meant everybody, so that’s not 80% correct, that is 100% an incorrect statement of universality.

You don’t get points for “mostly universal,” I’m sorry.

And that is very much the point, the false statement of universality. That, in itself, breaks the world. It erases real people and real possibilities, specifically all the ones where we actually change anything and where we don’t simply drive the Earth off the cliff, sure that nothing can change.

And with other possibilities, now we can ask, how to have them?

I’m trying not to follow my usual gravity, I refuse to go to my usual talking points here, honestly, I’ll be ecstatic if anyone follows me this far. But the other, smaller percentage exists, other neurotypes exist, and so the possibilities do, and not only as possibilities either, but proven by their actual existence.

Really, you must believe there are other possibilities, and you must believe that what you do matters, it’s hard for the other possibilities to happen when you don’t.

Jeff

June 20th., 2024

My own commentary from social media:

I’m just giving orders, same as everybody else 😂

“You MUST believe X,” LOL

I suppose one could expand about the Chalice and the Blade, that as I do recall it, the reason in the book was what I said, the mere existence of men, which is always not a minority meme in the feminist movement, I spent most of my life agreeing with it myself.

But it is perhaps part of that conversation to posit Eisler as likely Allistic, and that it comes easier for the Allistic than it does to my sort, to accept another’s mere existence or “Nature,” as causative of things changing, things getting worse.

After all, that book sold more copies than there Are Autistics, I think. The world generally, inasmuch as they were not misogynist males, accepted it, as I did too, in a tentative, pending new information way. I always held the Allistic knowledge in a buffer, even before I had my own thoughts to replace it with.

But to spell it out, read the Chalice and the Blade, but think about Neurotype, they describe the Allistic takeover of a formerly diverse human world.

THAT is the true prehistory of humanity, according to non-Allistic people, of course I welcome any Allistic person to see it and agree.

But, #ActuallyAutistc , @actuallyautistic , THIS is what you’re supposed to believe, like back in the day, the book was what a good feminist was supposed to believe, according to me.

THIS is Autistic Genesis.

I’m not sure this is my superpower, only that if it’s not, I do not have one.

Thank you and apologies.

Jeff

June 22nd., 2024

Here’s the first part:

The Last Blog, the Puzzle

Paleolithic Emotions

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I think this is the third person in maybe a month or two that I have had this same collision with. I’m online, trying to tell people that evolution is as alive and well today as it has ever been, and it seems to fail the very same way each time.

Here’s the latest real example, the author of Chaos! Posted a popular soundbite from the late great E. O. Wilson.

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Peter Gleick@petergleick@fediscience.org

E.O. Wilson, who must have spent much of his life thinking about comparisons between ants (one of the major subjects of his research) and humans, once said:

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”

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Which I tried to turn into a lesson for people, clearly not in a productive way:

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the Amygdalai Lama@punishmenthurts@neurodifferent.me (Me)

This ought to be out of date. I love him too, but the idea of Paleolithic emotions smacks of the permanence of creationism, not the constant change of evolution.

Paleolithic people or chimpanzees are not the problem. The bloody CURRENT model is the problem.

This is an example of what I call “evolution in name only,” the new word, referencing the forever brain paths, where we blame some initial condition that really isn’t there.

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This is my usual train of thought, part of my whole divergent worldview. I don’t really expect people to understand or agree, and I’m afraid I’m getting short, I’m getting cynical that my long explanations are any better. I’m starting to just say it, bluffing, sort of, trying to make it sound like I know what I’m talking about and I don’t care if you get it – which is sort of true. Divergent, as I said.

I changed my mind about that, I guess, and I tried to continue, make sense of it for folks:

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Me again:

I mean, did evolution stop, regarding us alone? Why?

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Someone asked:

It didn’t stop… who said it stopped?

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Me again:

He said we have Paleolithic emotions, that means our emotions stopped evolving what, 12,000 years ago?

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Someone said:

Not really. It just means that our set of emotions is considered stable enough that evolution hasn’t made any breaking changes recently.

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Which I wasn’t having:

Me again:

Same answer different words.

EVERYTHING changed since then, everything. Everything but us and our feelings? It is SUCH Allistic science! EVERYTHING changed – because We are All the Same and Always Have Been.

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Someone said:

The Amygdalai Lama, why would you expect that evolution, for a trait so deep and for a species so complex, could produce any noticeable change in that trait, for the entire species, after such a short time?

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There were other things along with that, and I’ll put all my answers together:

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Me again:

Short time? Three, four, five hundred generations since the Neolithic revolutions? What is evolution if it doesn’t operate in every generation? What adds up to change if there is no change every generation?

What would be the point in adapting to something generations after the fact? Evolution is not an origin story; it is as real today as it ever was.

The environment is changing and so are we, you are probably different from your parents, because your world is, and whatever adaptations they made are in you.

Again, if evolution is real and it is, it is happening, always, we didn’t somehow stop it.

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Me again:

Why did traits “originate,” 12,000 years ago and not anymore? This is like religion, like in ancient times, God used to reveal Himself, used to appear and talk to people – just not anymore.

The thoughts map together perfectly.

You’re repeating yourself, “deep traits,” is circular, they’re “deep traits,” because you say they “originated,” 12,000 ya.

So, I will too: evolution is real, today, it is not an origin story that happened in prehistory. Evolution makes everything – not everything “except culture.”

World wars are evolution.

Bad evolution, but evolution.

When something didn’t exist, and then it does?

– that’s evolution.

Your insistence on long periods of time is out of date for every creature on Earth – except human beings, for some reason.

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Me again:

With the religion comparison, you can see how the shape of this thought existed about religion, long before Wallace and Darwin were born, I think this thought is an evolved one, about a Before Time and a Now.

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Someone argued that “in ways, nothing has changed,” or something:

Me again:

OK, so you don’t think there has been a noticeable change in human life since the Paleolithic?

The cities, the industry, the agriculture, the tech, the wars – not “noticeable? any of that? All there, always? I don’t get it. Is it simply circular, we were the same because we were the same?

Sorry, I don’t get it.

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Someone said (along with some other things):

“The cities, the industry”—those things aren’t “deep” traits encoded in genes.

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Me again:

“The cities, the industry,” – these are not traits, these are environments, new, different environments that living creatures adapt to, that’s my point.

You seem to think the environment keeps changing but the creature making it stays the same, at least anatomically and emotionally, and that’s not evolution. Again, that’s Before Time vs Now, something like the creationist shape of things.

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Me again:

Just because a creature starts having serious impacts on its environment and becomes its environment’s main driving factor, even – doesn’t mean it stops adapting to that environment, is my point, and that does seem to be what we think, if we think about it, doesn’t it? Like someone’s “in charge,” or something, us, or evolution, and of course not.

We are creating our environment, adapting to it and then recreating it every generation, getting more and more . . . something, let’s not divert into what exactly, but getting more and more adapted to and for something – this is not “Paleolithic emotions,” this is present day adaptation of our minds and our emotions.

And that is relevant and can be dealt with – whereas, sorry, you’re stuck with era-old emotions is pointless and hopeless. Again, the shape of creationism, fate.

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Me again:

I’m sure y’all got an emotion or two your Paleolithic ancestors didn’t have, like dreams of world domination, or fears of Armageddon.

And maybe we shed a few too.

Sure, there’re probably some common ones, why not?

But why does it have to sound like the Same, Forever?

Or if they’re the same, what does the past have to do with anything, if we’re still in that same era that way?

I mean, why is the past causative, but the present is not?

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That’s the shape of a creation myth, the past is causative, and the present is not, right?

Me again:

In the past, bears kept us in fight or flight mode, today, police keep us in fight or flight mode – why is the bear causative and the police are not? Maybe we think of the past as humanity’s childhood, our formative years?

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That would be a fallacy, just saying.

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Me again:

It occurs to me that I read a whole book about how we lost an ancient emotion to become this modern thing.

It was The Goodness Paradox, by Richard Wrangham, a lovely man, and he was promoting a sort of a Dual Nature for humanity, to explain the conflicts, but the main thread of the book was that chimpanzees and animals generally have a reactive sort of violence, that they fight when attacked or put upon unreasonably, and that what humans developed was a more proactive sort of violence, where we suppress our natural reaction to bullying and authority, and live with, giving and taking a more planned sort of violence, punishments, and war and whatnot – but that the natural chimpanzee reactivity is why they are terrible employees and you are not.

So, there’s a Paleolithic emotion we don’t actually have anymore, and a case that the violence our world suffers now is not incumbent, the old thing in the world, but our NEW innovation.

Stay and learn, they who have ears to hear, probably meaning neurology to hear.

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Me again:

I hadn’t changed topics. I thought the Goodness Paradox made the case that the troublesome emotions are new ones, not the OG primate ones.

But there’s a matter of interpretation, of time scales – whenever this happened, if it began 300,000 years ago when they start counting us as human, I would still say that is “new,” because we are new, and that we should think about our latest modifications as new, the latest, not the OG features: these features changed and we became human, this is our current species, and what changed to make us human is our most recent history, not our genesis.

It’s sort of the point of evolution that there is no genesis.

And if it’s only twelve thousand years ago, then I think it’s REALLY new. Part of my theory is that Allistics have been in the majority, or had the upper hand in this period, for twelve to fifteen thousand years now – and that is a flash in the pan for a species and they have soiled the bed spectacularly in no time, that the Allistic isn’t a viable genetic option.

Sorry, too much?

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Me again:

Really, what I replace the “Paleolithic Emotions,” meme with is the Antisocialization we all get in our lives today, we do not have to go cherry picking the deep past for emotions that of course we are going to have if we are treated badly, and we are, this is really what I think.

Sorry about that, it’s the ’tism, everything comes out sideways.

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Having said that, it’s all part of it, creating this Antisocialization is what I call the new “emotion,” the new emotional manipulation, and I think it became the dominant way of life during what we call the Neolithic Revolutions, and this is not far from what E.O. said, that we are living with something from back then, except it’s crucial in my mind that what it is we are living with is not an old, “natural,” set of forever emotions, but a newer and more sinister thing than normal animal emotions, a sort of a hack, a system of making ourselves feel bad, of forcing people into their worst emotions.

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Somebody said I’m simply taking a pithy soundbite too seriously.

Me again:

Ah, OK . . .

If it were a one-off, maybe – and maybe it was for him, I can’t say. I don’t build these edifices over a single utterance, though, the whole world agrees with him . . . perhaps literally isn’t the word, is it, uh, mythologically? As a background to what they think about?

Yes, it’s the normal narrative: we had Original Sin, and now we have Paleolithic Emotions, it maps perfectly, so everybody basically believes it – whether the great man really did in his complex thoughts or not.

Trivers said we all speak in single notes and melodies, and E.O. spoke in chords, every word having six meanings, honestly, I know I am no-one to take on E.O. Wilson.

But this expresses a social belief, a common one. That’s what I’m arguing with. The popularity of the meme, not the author.

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Same as those ones from Voltaire and Chomsky. Ha.

Jeff

June 2nd., 2024

The Law VS Evolution: Taking the Courts to Court

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No single Creator made this world. Nothing has an eternal Nature, and no-one needs to be controlled for it. The human world is made by humans, if we’re evil or broken, that’s on us and us alone, and to a great degree we are those things and it is on us, something we’re doing. Something we are, most of us say, the Nature thing again, but no, I’m sorry, that’s off the table, at least it is in my kitchen and that’s where you are right now, it’s something we do.

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In evolution, otherwise known as life, what we do and what we are travel together. What you do is what you are, what you do is what you are becoming.

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What we do is a lot of abuse to control the assumed Nature, and that eternal Nature isn’t really there, so what’s left? A lot of abuse to be what we are, to be what we are becoming, which, too obvious, but saying two plus two is a writer’s job, so: abuse victims and abusers. It’s on us, and no-one else. And again, always, it’s evolution, this isn’t something that happens to some eternal model of human in every life, all this is cumulative. In theory, and surely in an invisible reality, in the potful of water and frogs, every generation in a world of controlling abuse gets more so, more abusive, more abused.

Also, sorry to say, this doesn’t happen in the wild, and education won’t do it. I’m very much a privileged person, I don’t know anyone who didn’t go to school, but they all believe in the Nature. This happens at the top of our society, in the institutions. It is precisely the institutions of control that are at the centre of it. Who is rioting? The police, right? The peacekeepers, leading the charge for abuse in general.

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I mean, Law is based in the Natures, and as such is against natural law, meaning evolution. Law makes crime and criminals, and always, life is evolution, so it makes them cumulatively. It is amazing to watch police budgets take over everything, and they cannot imagine that it’s just stupid and misguided. They say: the people are getting worse, we need more money, as though the change happened in their absence, as if they have only been trying their way for a month.

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The simple logic, police are here, and people are getting worse, that’s two plus two in evolution, otherwise known as real life, but there is this matter of neurotype. Two plus two isn’t simple for everyone.

Jeff

May 7th., 2024

The Last Blog, the Puzzle

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I’m finished. I’m done, said it all or said enough for the world for a few centuries anyway. But I will confess, it’s not very clear, the blog’s a mess of divergent thinking and divergent grammar to boot and I personally could never suffer through enough of it to get the point, and I don’t expect anyone else to.

I’ve been fantasizing about auditing it for quality and relevance, see which ones were downright embarrassing and would turn you away and harm the cause and so need to be deleted, but honestly that thought centres around only a few entries, and any expansion of the criteria may wipe the hole thing out. Why bother.

Just know this: it was a journey, so the focus . . . evolves, probably from trying to express myself within the parameters of the NT science and psychology I began with to combat spanking, to evo sort of theories about why we spank, and then to neurodiversity based ideas about it, about how spanking pretty much defines and directs the majority neurotype.

It’s been a few years since I’ve boasted, but the kernel of the idea I began with has not changed and it has survived and evolved through all challenges, absorbing or simply refuting all challenges, but this only means that I am corroborating myself, it only means that within my view, I can make it all fit in a way that doesn’t offend my neurology. Not to minimize it completely, the whole world of human beings offends my neurology. It wasn’t easy finding my own mind. The whole world seemed to fight me.

On a personal level, this has been horribly, fantastically true.

I’ve learned something very recently, so it’s still hot, but . . . yeah.

Back to the blog, what I say here probably has its whole development in the blog somewhere, not that me saying it is a citation, but it’s an attempt to pre-emptively stop you thinking there isn’t a whole lot of thought behind this rather short iteration, the puzzle.

Spanking makes for authoritarianism.

No-one gets “better,” as in nicer from punitive abuse, all that is just words, and lies to boot. An environment of threat and abuse in childhood changes people, maybe just Allistic people. It sets an epigenetic option for authoritarianism, for violence.

Because evolution is how the world works, not how your stupid Dad said it works, by threats and deterrents. We evolve, we do not avoid.

But they won’t stop, this is the puzzle.

Either they are “nice,” people who believe the words or they are less nice people who believe in the result, the aggression, and call it strength. Neither sort will stop, the last statistic I heard, surely a decade or two old by now, said that eighty-five percent of Americans self reported spanking (doing it to children, not getting spanked. This clarification is necessary on social media). The rise of fascism would seem to suggest that it has not lessened more recently.

It makes them aggressive, spanking, and they won’t stop, because they are aggressive and aggressive is good, when you’ve been spanked. It is the most vicious of vicious circles, and it is the puzzle of the age, the one that because it hasn’t been solved, we cannot stop the rich from burning the oil, because the authoritarianism of money is to be expected when you’ve been spanked, because toxic madness is not something a spanked population can imagine life without. Spanking blots out the real world for the human social world of control, we are all forced to a choice by spanking, believe my mind and the reality I see, or believe Mom and Dad and survive?

Spanking pushes them over the edge into purely social. The violence in the environment sets them up to learn violence and hate, this is adaptation, learn it or fade away. The world is coming to a bad end, and we created an environment of threat and violence . . . weird to say: on purpose. I mean, spanking and cops, this is intentional, right? They certainly own it when they spank, it’s all You will do it My Way. They don’t seem to think it’s an accident when they do it.

The puzzle is to make them see it, to stop the spanking and watch their stupid “Natures,” miraculously change for the better, to convince an angry, aggressive creature that life would be better without it, that they themselves need to want to evolve in the other direction and it’s already too late, but like the old saying, the best time is generations ago, but second best is now.

Jeff

April 10th., 2024

There’s a Part Two:

The Puzzle, Part Two

False Legacies, Autism and Origin Stories

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My extrapolated, speculative theory of neurodiversity ought to turn the existing human origin story on its head.

It’s difficult, maybe impossible to express it, but I cannot stop trying.

First, the existing view is new, since Wallace and Darwin, kind of thing – and in the sense that the existing origin story isn’t that, but the same as since we started keeping any sort of history – that’s new too, in this conversation, in deep time where our species is hundreds of thousands or millions of years old.

The current view, looking back, is new, in terms of our species’ existence. Stretch it to the neolithic revolution, still new, relatively.

You would have to convince me that this present view of a progressive trajectory existed before then, during the tens of thousands of years when we were all sort of Indigenous the world over and not building big permanent cities, and I can’t imagine how you would. Perhaps it existed intermittently, during the empire parts of the cycle the Davids identified in The Dawn of Everything, but it didn’t rule always and forever. I don’t suppose we know how far into the past that pattern extends either.

But that’s step one, everything we think about the deep past is new, coming from modern minds.

New thought:

in creation stories, we arrive fully formed, human-hairless, and this suggests what I’m getting at: that the current origin stories tell of the creation of the new human, fully formed, suggesting that the story is recent, not an ape man story, that this mythical creation takes place in literal modern times, while upright, hairless, story telling people already inhabit the Earth.

For me, it is as easy to imagine these stories as describing the arrival of a type of person, the modern sort, rather than all people. Saying it is “the people,” like all the people – this is one thing this modern sort continues to do ever since also.

This idea, that creation stories take place during literal times, is borne out by the fact that every human group has its own, and generally does not credit their creator with making all the other peoples. They have their own, so this must be the case, that these stories all somehow acknowledge a creation event while acknowledging the existence of other peoples at the same time?

Ah, like Adam and Eve’s kids finding wives from somewhere, right?

I’m sorry, it’s a stretch.

But if anyone does build an Autistic origin story, it isn’t going to be compatible with the existing framework, a good version of this attempt is going to be a leap too.

But for me, the Allistic origin story, with the patriarchy and the rough Nature, has always been too much of a stretch, a leap this Autistic mind has never been able to make.

But whether their origin stories acknowledge creation as a neurotype event or not, the point is, the origin stories (and so the law and the philosophy and the science) are new and Allistic, our origin stories are only the Allistics’ origin stories.

This is a sliver, a thin slice of the logic from the other side here, but it’s long enough to pretend to draw a conclusion, at least, and then we can argue about that.

It ought to turn the human story on its head because it makes everything they claim as the way of the world forever not that at all, and it makes the mad human lifestyle not at all sustainable over three million years but rather as having destroyed the world in no time, since the neolithic revolution.

It ought to make clear what the problems are and stop burying them in an invented eternity.

Allistic “forever,” is NO TIME AT ALL, and if we were allowed to see it , we would see a new thing that isn’t working, at ALL.

I am about one beer from saying that spanking hails back to the neolithic revolution, and that seems radical as fuck, but farming changed lifestyles massively, didn’t it, and . . . and it sort of has to be that way, everything dates to then.

If not then, even earlier.

OK, not yet. There isn’t much about spanking in the Dawn of Everything, and a great sense that it wasn’t a thing on Turtle Island.

Twelve thousand years old in the Euro’s “Old world,” but hardly thought of here, is a little difficult, but . . . maybe? There are big differences. Speculation, to be sure.

That’s a new one, I think there’s an idea that spanking and childhood generally are far newer than that, even as recent as the enlightenment, this is the reachiest reach I will have made yet, how could it possibly be?

Ah, The Dawn of Everything again – what if it wasn’t a thing for the Turtle Islanders and what if the enlightenment they started meant that for the first time anyone in Europe bothered to NAME children and childrearing, and abuse?

Not proof, obviously.

But maybe?

I could be like a TV producer sort about it, like Ancient Aliens, refer you to “many legends,” that suggest something happened suddenly around twelve thousand years ago, of course there was a great leap in global warming and floods, inundation of any possible coastal cities, and there was the agricultural revolution and people have theorized many things to explain something sudden, from creation stories, to alien visitors to the far more reasonable and common weird magic that happened, “due to increased population/city size,” with no agreed upon mechanism for that.

I have seen talk of another sort of mind in or before ancient times, the “bicameral mind,” and this is closer to saying “a neurotype event,” like I’m trying to make happen.

It would seem self evident that if the common sort of mind changes, that the world would change subsequently, so perhaps, rather than thinking some Autistic savant created the agricultural revolution, it makes more sense to think that the population of Allistics passed some tipping point then, and people gave up their freedoms for something else – security from one another, they’ve always said this was it forever, maybe more so this recently – and started building fences and whatnot.

I suppose I’m talking about the same event the Chalice and the Blade was about too. Of course some of these things are more recent than that twelve thousand years. Was a long time ago, reading that one, I don’t remember the timeline.

Jeff

Feb. 28th., 2024

The Everybody Pascal’s Wager

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Pascal’s Wager, you know, it’s like risk/reward in golf, the odds get worse as the rewards or the punishment gets greater, how does it go again, “Sure, the odds of the Christian salvation story are not good, but the price, should it be true and you didn’t choose it, is terrible, eternal,” something like that?

It is predicated on the idea that it is highly unlikely that what you believe can make you live forever, but what if? You don’t want to be the only one sitting at home in your urn on the mantle when everyone else is flying around enjoying their lute lessons, do you? Ha – it’s social, conforming stuff about the afterlife.

Well not really, of course.

But people do appear to make the choice, I suppose some need the reward, or fear the punishment more than others?

I would like to adapt that, from Christianity to everyone, exactly like I have adapted their Original Sin for everyone as the Human Nature myth.

Most people take the long shot in a version of Pascal’s Wager.

You know what I’m going to say, if you’ve read one of my rants, you’ve read them all. We take it every time we provide a deterrent, every time we solve our problems with abuse. Most people bet the world that their deterrents are “virtual,” and not really hurting anybody, not really affecting anything, but it’s a landscape of fear. It changes everything.

If you haven’t heard that term, it’s worth a look.

Short and sweet, when Yellowstone Park was all herbivores, the herbage didn’t have a chance, and much smaller life dependent of the sweetest of it was not thriving, not coming back, but the re-introduction of wolves and grizzly bears changed the herbivores’ lifestyle, they weren’t free to be out in the open eating the only the best stuff  and balance was restored. Landscape of Fear. I think it’s an episode of Nature or some such. National Geographic, maybe.

It makes, vast, forever changes to your lifestyle. From diet to habitat to everything. It is the furthest thing from virtual because reality is not virtual and reality doesn’t have buttons that don’t do anything, nothing is virtual. What you lose are the same things the elk lost in Yellowstone: free, open spaces, and the best food, the sun on your hide. The freedom to go where you like. Security for your children.

I don’t really know, or at least it is not my place to talk about what the Christians lose betting on Pascal, but they don’t win the prize that is offered, I don’t take that bet so I don’t see the reward, so I say this, that they do not win the prize for making the gamble. If they live well, I hope they win the prizes we get for that. But I assure you, we win no prizes in the everyone version of the game. OK, stupid prizes, as they say, war is not much of a prize, is it? From yesterday’s blog, about Nature and Nurture being a dodge:

The creation of deterrents is like some kind of rebellion against evolution, the plan of deterrents is that we make people and things better, by intentionally adding stress and fear to the environment everywhere they turn. “Deterrent,” is literally another word for environmental danger. A world of deterrents is a world of predators and a life based in terror, in the fight or flight response, in our amygdalae.

Morally, developmentally, every way, this is evolution in reverse, to simpler forms, to a life, “rough in tooth and claw.”

I suppose under the duress of the grizzlies and the wolves, the elk are never going to have enough leisure time to develop written language and pottery and under the iron rule of ourselves we are never going to have our utopias and reach the stars. It’s not balance when you do it yourself, apparently, the humans living from their amygdalae has not produced balance or the restoration of the environment, oh, gawd, did I have to say that? I’m sorry, I usually err on the side of brevity, I usually try not to waste your time.

Obviously, the fact that humans live in the fear while simultaneously dishing it out is different than it is for the elk and the bison. Like Sapolsky says, there is never a stress free time for us when we know the predator has just eaten or something. But, getting back to simpler matters, how is the deterrent of an actual spanking or an actual prison sentence any more virtual than the deterrent of an actual pack of wolves?

It is not, or the way it can be is a matter of your neurotype, a matter of how you process that information, maybe. Evolution, for good or ill, operates with or without your understanding though, and none of these things are virtual, and so the odds of winning the Punishment Cult’s version of Pascal’s Wager – wait, what is the tease, what is the reward? What is it in lieu of eternal life in this analogy?

If we believe in Human Nature, that we are born flawed and need to be controlled and directed and so we are controlled through the deterrents and then, what?

Civilization?

Don’t tell me it’s supposed to be peace? Because that isn’t working out.

I know, mere survival. Not peace so much as strength and victory.

About that, I’m sorry to tell you, that isn’t working out either.

Also from yesterday’s exploration:

It means everything, whether we see life as evolution or deterrents and punishments, if you believe in the latter, you make the environment worse, and the reality of evolution changes you to match. If you believed in evolution, you would see rewards instead, and that good things make good people.

In theory, you would build good things, make the environment better, easier for people, remove the fear wherever possible – certainly stop creating it all day every day your bloody self – and watch people adapt to be better, kinder, and smarter instead. Or, you know, gamble it all for a shitty life during wartime, why not.

You do you.

Jeff

Jan. 10th., 2024

Nature Plus Nurture is Pseudoscience

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I think evolution means Nurture becomes Nature, isn’t that right?

It’s not “You have a Nature – plus there’s some nurture,” – this is more of the Human Nature in new words I’m always on about, creationism in new words. You do  not simply “have,” a Nature, in the real world of evolution. We make our Natures in the real world of evolution, always, every day.

That’s new. I didn’t think the Nature and Nurture meme was going to be so easily busted, so wrong, so much more of the same – but it is. That’s what it means with the current cast of characters, they who have ears, etc. They can be generous and add a little Nurture , as long as the Nature is still in there, because they aren’t losing an inch of ground. And so, zero change.

Big day, busting that one! I need to mark it on my calendar.

Evolution says no static Nature and so the scientific community responds with, OK, you can have a little Nurture too? That was not the question, was it? We said, “no Natures, things change.” Natures plus, is “yes Natures,” again, it’s just a bloody bait and switch.

It gives up the whole principle.

“Natures,” preclude evolution, it’s not even a compromise. Nature and Nurture doesn’t mean anything, does it, it’s like no air “and” no water, the second part is meaningless – it’s total capitulation. Majority type communication, yes, but no, and no we’re not changing anything.

I think they thought that one was unassailable. I mean, they do, “Natures,” are a feature of the normal mind, the same way Kant showed space and time to be. Evolution isn’t displacing it as it ought to if life and knowledge were a free meritocracy of accuracy. There is more to it, there is neurotype, and evolution just doesn’t seem to be part of the majority sort of human.

I’m not name-calling, I’m not happy about it, and I won’t be happy simply being able to say it and feel superior about it. It’s just a fact of the world, one we really ought to consider. There are several neurotypes, but “omniscient,” isn’t one of them, we all have more-abilities and less-abilities, superpowers and built in deficiencies. Normal folks don’t mind talking about the minority neurotype’s deficiencies right in front of us, and frankly, ours aren’t as important as theirs, just by numbers.

Hey – the Kant analogy – so I suppose since time and space are properties of “the mind,” I suppose it is possible to speculate about a neurotype that doesn’t have those too? Ahem. Never mind. This is not the place to imagine a real scientific basis for all manner of paranormal stuff, eye on the prize, Lad. Ha. Moving on.

If I thought this was the end of the conversation, normal people just can’t get it, I wouldn’t bother, I would be slack jawed, fixed on the television, which happens often enough, right now. If I was stuck on “Natures,” that might be the end of it, but I am not, I am making a real effort to apply evolution to my thinking, and so something must be making it so, there is a selective pressure to create the attitude we see as believing in Human Nature, it is a thing humans have evolved into, and so it is a thing we could evolve away from, and that thing, that pressure is punishment.

The creation of deterrents is like some kind of rebellion against evolution, the plan of deterrents is that we make people and things better, by intentionally adding stress and fear to the environment everywhere they turn. “Deterrent,” is literally another word for environmental danger. A world of deterrents is a world of predators and a life based in terror, in the fight or flight response, in our amygdalae.

Morally, developmentally, every way, this is evolution in reverse, to simpler forms, to a life, “rough in tooth and claw.”

We are actively evolving ourselves right now. It doesn’t stop just because you don’t grok it, and I don’t know if you noticed, we are not evolving ourselves to the stars and the utopia, it is to what we see, to history as it is.

So based on the facts of the world, it is as I say, we mostly do not apply evolution consciously, consciously we say “Human nature,” every ten minutes, even when we are alone. Less consciously, we are forever creating hazards where there are none, driving us to conflict in the supposed effort to drive us away from it. It means everything.

It means everything, whether we see life as evolution or deterrents and punishments, if you believe in the latter, you make the environment worse, and the reality of evolution changes you to match. If you believed in evolution, you would see rewards instead, and that good things make good people. I know, it doesn’t look like a choice, same as time and space.

The difference is our early experience. The difference is whether Mom and Dad are hazards or safety. The difference is spanking. I think most people would get evolution if they weren’t spanked, I think that deficiency gets reinforced, and cemented in place through epigenetics, by spanking. Evolution is not to be found in your amygdala. I have always thought that we could start to change things if we changed that one thing.

There is resistance, don’t get me started.

Jeff

Jan. 9th., 2024