Psychophilosophically, furthermore, pscyhopathiphilosophically, we are hardwired by evolutionary changes. This means hardwired for cooperation, but also for individualism — god must be atheist

So, for instance, an apparatchik of the communist party is overriding his hardwired beliefs in individualism and cooperation and choosing party ideology. Or is that ideology hardwired in him?

Perhaps you didn't delve all that deeply into New Age philosophy. — Punshhh

It’s not so much what my opinion of it is as it hasn’t really had a huge impact on the world at large. I haven’t seen evidence of it entering public institutions or having major cultural effects. I have nothing against, either.

You seem to have a bright streak of mystical romantic idealism. That's just a guess, and not meant to be critical of you. Am I way off? — Bitter Crank

I never thought of myself in specific terms. But I’d be interested to hear more.

I was talking to someone this morning about religion, whether we would ever have a world free of religion, one that functioned without unquestioned belief and actions in the name of God, where our institutions were not influenced by these beliefs.

I’d suggested that there were probably more atheists in the world than there’d ever been, that in itself was a change and some progress. But it wasn’t really a successful successor to religion because it claimed there was nothing, when in fact there had to be something. So I didn’t see how atheism could offer anything to replace religion and form the basis for a better world.

Nor did the alternative spirituality of new wave religions offer any long term or obvious benefits.

I did suggest though that climate change may be that replacement. It offers a relationship with something bigger than ourselves, which is the planet, life and the universe. Climate change is a quasi religion that promises a better world, a closer, more meaningful relationship with the environment. It’s message and quest are beyond question; who would not think it imperative to save the world, who would not want to embrace such a beautiful existence?The future, once we overcome climate damage, is golden, Edenic, perfect in its balance between needs and resources, everyone happy, everyone taking only what they need, everyone giving and sharing. An end to capitalism, an end to greed, an end to poverty.

The battle with climate change is about reaching this place. The fight is merely the road to get there, the good and righteous fight of all pilgrims. All will be rewarded with a better world, but you have to give up everything you have, everything you’ve ever thought or believed to get there so that you can pass through the eye of the needle.

Silly we, thinking that drought might be caused by something other than a lack of rain! — Bitter Crank

Well I said that because there’s the suggestion that climate change temperatures cause the fires. I can’t speak for other regions in the world but for Australia it’s this;

Four factors contribute to the dryness of the Australian landmass:
Cold ocean currents off the west coast
Low elevation of landforms
Dominance of high-pressure systems
Shape of the landmass
(Wikipedia)

I’ve just realised the book I had wasn’t ‘Archetypes and the Collective Unconsciousness’ so I might look that up. Thanks.

Is it the fate of an uncompromising philosopher in this setting, to perhaps make threads that nobody appreciates or responds to? Is it the fate of an uncompromising artist to not have their art enjoyed by others? Or is it just difficult to go out on a limb, however, sometimes it can work out? — Judaka

I think it’s very likely that others will not respond to uncompromising posts. They make begin the conversation then pass. As for an artist it’s difficult to know if they’re ever compromising. Picasso, though his work appeared original and compromising, might very well have compromised at a particular period to reach the people buying art at that time. But he appeared to be uncompromising which appealed to the market.

It is quite difficult to go out on a limb. You may be producing absolute rubbish or you may strike a vein.

It’s interesting that we’re using the word compromise, which is not so removed from collaboration. We certainly understand the meaning and use of compromise. If you asked why do we compromise then the answer would not be so difficult. Isn’t it to get at least part of what we want instead of losing everything?

To be fair the level of drought and fires is the result of lack of rain. I think the balance of nature in Australia is exactly what’s happening now and always has been.

There is, however, no such benchmark as provability or falsifiability in philosophy. — alcontali

That may be true and you may not try to persuade others of your viewpoint, but plenty of others here give it a go. And many of us try to change the political positions of our friends and associates. Maybe not so much now but definitely in our early years. If you were a capitalist you are very likely to argue with a communist over ideologies or vice versa. But that question was probably the least important in my post.

My primary interest was whether your choice of philosopher and philosophies is hardwired. And whether anyone has switched horses along the way, and if so how did it happen? Was it through conversation with others, reading, or a revelation of sorts?

I wonder whether people really feel comfortable putting other ideas and priorities on display? — Judaka

I think being really honest and working from an original thought of your own, to develop even the merest seed, and putting it out there is quite difficult. Some of the OPs I’ve put up have almost disappeared without trace. No one seemed to engage with them. Maybe they were nonsense? I have no idea. But to get people to engage with you then I guess you have to appear collaborative and your post needs to be reasonably accessible. So collaboration may be a tool of making ground. It also involves some compromise. Artists don’t compromise, they don’t collaborate unless it’s in their interests. They really have an unhealthy obsession in relation to the rest of the world. Philosophers are no different. When I read about their lives I see nothing any different from the driven artist.

That’s a very interesting point. I’m hoping that people are going to look at climate change a little differently than we have been.

I’d just like to go back to this statement of mine.

We create ourselves in self indulgent ways, — Brett

It might be more accurate that we create ourselves because we are so very little.

Who exactly are we? Some of us might have been in the position where we find yourself reduced to nothing but the moment, we no longer have anything to grab onto to define who we are. When we retire we no longer have a job or skill that defines us, if we move away from where we have always lived there are no longer others who act like a mirror to our existence. Eventually we find that ee only exist in the moment, if we are talking to someone all that is real is how we treat that other person, it’s not really about us. Our identity is totally constructed. Some of my friends are artists, I know that that’s their identity, not being fathers or husbands, which is just another identity anyway.

I think collaborating is natural, it’s been a constructive behaviour in our evolution, but I don’t think the necessity is there any longer except on a superficial level, or maybe altruistic level. I don’t think the world requires us to be collaborative anymore to achieve our individual wants. That may not be a very pleasant thing to realise. Maybe collaboration is like an aspect of morality, a holdover from the past and it feels a little threatening morally to ditch it altogether. So we cling to it. Virtue signalling is an obvious example I think.

To be honest I don’t see much collaboration going on here, despite what people might think. Conversations begin well enough then very quickly get acrimonious. I don’t see a lot of listening and sharing, what I call humility and curiosity, taking place.

So we are not really who we say we are, we’re just constructed identities and collaboration is a civilised item in our bag of tricks.

For a lighter approach (written for public) I’d opt for “Man and His Symbols” — I like sushi

I did have “Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious” and “Man and His Symbols” and in a moment of thinking I was done with Jung then sold them. Maybe there was a reason for feeling that way, but I can’t remember now.

There is no need for any intellectual content, the intellectual argument has already been won. — Punshhh

So why the interview, then, if the war is won? If the intellectual war is won everything else should follow. After all the science is in.

Does informed necessarily mean enlightened? Not in a spiritual sense but in knowing.

What is it to be post-literate? — thing

That’s an interesting point; to be post literate and yet to feel informed. And yet we are informed in this most primitive sense.

I think in many ways we have very small minds. Some people really make a difference through their actions. Which is why I sometimes get short with people, though I know I’m no different; talk the talk or walk the walk. If you’re typing away here then you’re not doing the walk. But we can create something of ourselves by our opinions and posts and altruistic ideas. We’re probably good people but essentially selfish and lazy. I think very few people live a philosophical life, what and who are we? We create ourselves in self indulgent ways, in ways we don’t have to pay for.

Greta talking to Sir David Attenborough, a testament to how important this issue is. — Punshhh

I feel that it’s just a symbolic gesture. Greta and Attenborough; both tv factoids. What exactly is meant to come out of it?

He has a degree in natural sciences. Other than that he’s a talking head.

Edit: of course it’s a publicity stunt, I get that. But how can anyone take it seriously. What could Greta possibly have to contribute intellectually.

Is it the case do you think, that there is more scepticism on this in the US than elsewhere? — Punshhh

I don’t know. I have to question myself often about how much I really know about the US.

, and was severely skeptical almost to the point of nihilism by the time I finished college — Pfhorrest

Sceptical of what?

I began on the left politically. But philosophically I always leaned in the direction of anthropology and a Darwinian point of view. I tend to find analytical philosophy uninspiring and have always leaned towards a sort of phenomenological view of life. If I drift in another direction I usually return to that.

Edit: but I don’t remember consciously choosing any of those.

I continue with this OP in the hope of clarifying ideas I have. They may not be cohesive but other posts may help me formulate something I’m trying to grasp, or straighten me out, or shoot me down in flames.

What the media, including the Internet, has done is allow the development of a universal unconsciousness, or maybe a universal consciousness (I’m not sure), that contains more ideas and beliefs, more signs than a single mind has so far had to cope with.

Though some of those ideas or beliefs are not part of our world they bear down on us alongside, or intermingled with, our own cultural ideas. This is happening to everyone to one degree or another.

This “world” is made up elements like headlines and images, archetypal in their simplicity and delivered to us rapidly without real explanation or even meaning: the burning building, the car crash, the shootings, the tyrant, the armies, the warlords, the burning forests, the angry mob, the weeping woman, they’re mythical images that come and go like takeaways, eroded of meaning but still having a shadow. Through these images, weak as they might be, we interpret the world, or struggle with it.

But there is no world like that, where everything happens in one place at the same time, every second of the day, that goes with us wherever and whatever we do.

Because we no longer place value in the importance of images and ideas, by that I mean they have become “ mere representation”, eroded of meaning, they are consumed without thought or understanding.

If you extrapolated the psychological conditions of a tribe in the Amazon, pre contact, extrapolated that to a global level you might have some idea what I’m reaching out for. The technology is no different than a carving of an animal or spirit that instilled fear in someone passing by, or the words spoken by a shaman, or secret mens’ business; so little understanding of it but so profoundly affected by it.

I imagine once someone would have had to go to a specific place to see such images; a church, a burial site, sacred places anyway. Now the images appear on television, on the side of a bus, on a pack of cigarettes or your child’s t-shirt.

So this “world” is possibly something very primitive, acted out, or renewed, in a modern condition. Like a primitive language taking on a guise in a new world, taking us back to the primitive beings we were.

Sure. Thanks.

you’re not killing him just because you didn’t save him. — Pfhorrest

How far down the line can this be taken before it begins to wobble? I know his names been brought up but I can't remember in what context; Manson sending the girls out to specifically murder someone.

Mapping the medium seems to be a podcast run by Catherine Tyrrell. I'm happy to be corrected.

Unless that person is here to promote something.

s

I no longer debate these things.

I don't have to, or need to. — Mapping the Medium

I don't understand why you're here then.

Who exactly are you angry at?

There is no way of knowing for sure how having a child will influence the world. — Mac

There is something that I have not seen mentioned on any OPs about this issue, ( though I may have missed it) which is about a child’s influence on the world. Unless you had a child you would not know of this experience, though you may be told about it, but then it’s not an experience that can have an affect because you didn’t have a child.

This experience is learning about yourself by watching your child grow. As the child grows you will see aspects of your own life more clearly, it will help you understand why you do things, who you are, how you are so like other people and so unlike, You will gain a greater understanding of your own parents and the relationship you had with your parents and put your own behaviour in perspective. You will experience a shift in solipsistic views of the world, about giving up your time for others, of sharing and compromising, caring, a greater understanding of time and life and death, and whether you have loved and been loved in a way that is specific to a child.

Surely this must have an affect on the world.

Oh, oh.

Though, if I understand correctly, that “homosexual” gene can always be passed on by a heterosexual couple, correct?

But I'm not saying that this is the only reason for homosexuality - I'm just saying that this makes it practically a necessity of evolution. — Qmeri

Sure, I understand that. I think where I might be tripping up is that you mean ‘an interest in other men’, that the gene creates. But doesn’t that mean he would not be homosexual, but only have an interest in men?

Okay, I think I get it. But if a man had a sexual interest in other men and only other men how would that gene be passed on?

Is it suggesting there could be a homosexual gene?

I’m finding it difficult to connect these two statements.

If this new gene is in a chromosome that is shared between the sexes (which is the most probable option) and it does not decrease the probability of reproduction of the other sex as much as it improves the other, then it will be chosen by evolution.

Therefore, homosexuality and bisexuality are inevitabilities of evolution. Any thoughts? — Qmeri

Hi, @Mapping the Medium. I’ve had an on again off again relationship with Jung. Very few people respond to any mention of Jung and if they do it’s more a simple acknowledgment of his existence.
So I’d be interested in any good books you know of about his work. I’m really the sort of person who rarely read philosophers’ original work and more into work written about their philosophy. Though I could be steered into any accessible work of his.

Your post is interesting in the assumptions you make of others.

First I imagine @Bitter Crank post isn’t addressing the problem in terms of straws and butcher paper. I imagine he’s talking about the power and consequence of China, or India, as well as the internal conflicts of America and the great cultural changes going on all around the world. Climate change seems to be about more than the weather, it’s become some sort of psychic shift in who we think we are and what we should be. Hence the heated differences on this forum. So I imagine he’s talking about some sort of existential experience in the contemporary world, as I am.

Secondly, you really should consider who you might be addressing, what age they might be. For me and my age group we used cloth diapers, we received our food in paper wrapping or bags, we refused plastic bags many years ago, we actively engaged with social issues, we demonstrated and spent time in jail, obviously most people on this forum are well read and educated. Do you think we don’t embrace those ideals anymore, that we don’t actively engage with the world in the way we always have.

In one of your posts you mentioned respect for elders but you fail to live up to it yourself.

Yes, I have read a bit on ideas of The Spectacle;
“All that once was directly lived has become mere representation."

It also brings to mind Baudrillard’s ideas on the erosion of meaning and simulacra.

Maybe this is the way we have to live, it’s the only thing that makes sense, even though it does not. Migod, I’m beginning to sound like a French post-structuralist.

This I like, too;

“It's the water in which we swim, a contingent development dimly conceived as necessity itself. It needs no ideological support, having become a habit of interpretation

And, in the case of global warming, it doesn't matter what you and I believe. The world isn't doing a whole lot about reducing CO2 and methane emissions, and that includes every nation on earth. — Bitter Crank

That’s the first truth of climate change.

The second truth is that we cannot agree on how much CO2 is being released. If we can’t agree on that then we can’t agree on consequences..

The third truth is that disagreement is healthy. If it were not for that we would still believe the sun revolves around the earth.

The fourth truth is that humans are the most adaptable species on the planet, and if not of all species then of mammals. Humans live and thrive all across the planet, this is where we were born.

I have written elsewhere that actually making the kind of changes that I and other extremists think are necessary, and doing so at the speed that might be advisable to save the climate, would initially be a cultural, health, and economic disaster which would be responsible for many deaths. How? By producing massive turmoil and disruption in almost all human activities! — Bitter Crank

This is more than likely. We are extraordinarily adaptable but that sort of pressure might be too much. It’s social engineering on a massive scale. I don’t believe social engineering works on even a small scale (that’s not a truth, that’s just me).

Final truth;

I can safely pontificate all I want because the levers of power are nowhere even remotely close to my reach. — Bitter Crank

I think you'd be interested in some media studies. — Wayfarer

I have read a bit on media studies. Marshall McLuhan I’m familiar with. I did quickly check out your reference to Postman. Their work is always interesting to read in light of things. But in someways I see them as not so much clarifying things as adding to the white noise. I’m not even sure what terms to use in these posts. It’s like the media is just the stone the AI writes on. This is the only way I can write about how things look to me. I know it’s a bit nebulous but if I use standard terms then the understanding becomes standard and so to the response.

And have you looked up the actual cases, looked at the professional records of those scientists? Everyone who claimed to have been "excommunicated" I ever looked up was either not actually a climate scientist or an obvious hack. — Echarmion

I don’t really like doing this sort of thing, it just leads to an endless back and forward of who’s who and who’s not, but you insist I never give an answer, so here goes.

Lennart O. Bengtsson
Head of Research and later Director at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading in the UK (1976  — 1990), and as Director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg (1991  — 2000). Bengtsson is currently Senior Research Fellow with the Environmental Systems Science Centre at the University of Reading, as well as Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.

Bengtsson’s scientific work has been wide-ranging, including everything from climate modelling and numerical weather prediction to climate data and data assimilation studies. Most recently, he has been involved in studies and modeling of the water cycle and extreme events.


John R. Christy
He holds a Ph.D. (1987) in atmospheric science from the University of Illinois. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Christy is best known for work he did with Roy W. Spencer beginning in 1979 on establishing reliable global temperature data sets derived from microwave radiation probes collected by satellites. Theirs was the first successful attempt to use such satellite data collection for the purpose of establishing long-term temperature records.

Christy has long been heavily involved in the climate change/global warming discussion, having been a Contributor or Lead Author to five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports relating to satellite temperature records.


Richard S. Lindzen
He holds a Ph.D. (1964) in applied mathematics from Harvard University. He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT.
Already in his Ph.D. dissertation, Lindzen made his first significant contribution to science, laying the groundwork for our understanding of the physics of the ozone layer of the atmosphere.[22] After that, he solved a problem that had been discussed for over 100 years by some of the best minds in physics, including Lord Kelvin, namely, the physics of atmospheric tides (daily variations in global air pressure).[23] Next, he discovered the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), a cyclical reversal in the prevailing winds in the stratosphere above the tropical zone.[24] Then, Lindzen and a colleague proposed an explanation for the “superrotation” of the highest layer of Venus’s atmosphere (some 50 times faster than the planet itself), a model that is still being debated.