I suspect that very few extroverts would be members of a philosophy forum — Galuchat

I sense that when people are talking about introversion and extroversion they often do not have the same things in mind.

To me introversion is directing energy inward while extroversion is directing energy outward.

I think that talking about shyness, quiet/reserved, social skills, intelligence, being a "people person", etc. is missing the point. A friend once described himself as a "shy extrovert". I think of myself as deeply introverted, but too often I end up dominating conversations (I don't like it; I certainly do not like being the center of attention).

When you say that you suspect that few extroverts would be members of a philosophy forum, what makes you say this? Is it your idea of extroversion that makes you say it? Is it something about the nature of philosophy?

Most cashiers I encounter don't say much that isn't related to the utility of the transaction. A few of them are somewhat dour with an inverted Mona Lisa's smile.

I found UK cashiers seemingly more gloomy and disinterested than USA cashiers from my locality.

Hair cutting folks are the small talk monsters. — Nils Loc

Even if it is not in some extremely defined role like cashier, extroversion feels fake, I have noticed.

Even if it is part of spontaneous conversation, extroversion feels fake.

It makes sense to me that happiness is the evolved chemical reward for doing things beneficial to survival and suffering is the punishment. — MonfortS26

Maybe I am misconstruing those words, but they seem to be saying that a sufferer's suffering is due to his/her own failure.

Therefore, a rape victim's suffering is due to his/her own failure to do "things beneficial to survival"; a hospitalized victim of a crash caused by another driver who was DUI is his/her own failure to do "things beneficial to survival"; the suffering of a disenfranchised African-American in the Jim Crow South was his/her own failure to do "things beneficial to survival"; etc.

I think we are all too inclined to be village worthies, and so to learn nothing and build nothing. — unenlightened

In a system where it is hammered into everybody's head almost from the moment of their birth that they have two choices, earn a college degree and prosper or don't earn a college degree and live in poverty, and where the demand for and supply of professors are therefore inflated, is it really a surprise that a lot of people in academia spend their careers that way?

There are only so many new, constructive, original ideas that can be produced. Is it any surprise, therefore, that in an industry where it is "publish or perish" the output is a lot of "learn nothing and build nothing"?

What i think is that the inevitable fear of death which to them, preoccupied with it as they are, is so scary that they convince themselves, with the power of the group, that death does not hold a negative connotation. The highest level of death denial makes a full circle to come back to the full embrace of it. — eddiedean

Sounds kind of like what I have heard some climate change deniers say: climate change is a good thing because every place will have Florida weather.

I'm not sure at all how to phrase this, but: what is the origin of the spiritual sense of beauty?

I understand the evolutionary benefits of finding symmetrical faces and strong colors aesthetically pleasing, but what is the origin of the kind of beauty that has a non material trigger?

How come you may experience a "spiritual" kind of beauty, for example, when listening to beautiful music, reading something beautiful, or just being with friends & family?

It would be simple enough if it were just an ordinary survival mechanism, but people do find tragic movies and depressing music beautiful as well, so I can't see how that makes sense. — Daniel Sjöstedt

Notice that you follow "evolutionary benefits" with "pleasing".

Not all beauty is "pleasing".

Some beauty is humbling. Some is sobering. Some is soothing. Some is awe-inspiring.

Serenity. Awe. Wonder. Harmony. Joy. Humility. Delight.

Beauty goes way beyond sensual pleasure and the absence of certain sensual irritants such as noise, asymmetry, etc.

So, you're an enrolled student? You're writing academic work for assessment in a degree or non-degree class? If so, would you consider enrolling in history? That would provide an opportunity for feedback, assessment and guidance. — Wayfarer

I have not been enrolled for 16 years. I have 58 credit hours. If I was to change my major to history I would, being in my junior year, be expected to take a class in writing history and produce a research paper immediately.

That scares me.

I did have a conversation with a customer at one of my jobs the other day about a topic from local history that I have imagined writing a scholarly paper on. I can now say that I have at least a few minutes of practice interviewing sources.

To learn and create something new takes lots of patience. I am still practicing drawing ovals as I learn how to draw. It is only frustrating or empty if I've expects too much in one lifetime. Small steps are fine and require a lot less energy. — Rich

I've spent too much of my life worrying about and trying to be something I am not: an extrovert.

And I think that it is more about lifestyle, goals, etc. than it is about personality. When I was in middle school and high school I had several close friends and was active in a lot of social activities such as church. But as a young adult I made a commitment to certain causes and chose to forgo a lot of things, make a lot of sacrifices, and accept the struggles and suffering that come with the territory. The result has been a lonely existence.

I honestly don't know what other people have in mind most of the time when they talk about extroversion and introversion. I think of myself as deeply introverted because no matter what I am doing--working at one of my two jobs; grocery shopping; driving a car; sitting in the stands at a baseball game--I am busy very deep inside creating, imagining, problem solving, etc. For example, when I was walking the concourses at Cincinnati Reds games at Riverfront Stadium in the 80's and 90's I was probably busy inside imagining that it was the mid-70's and what the place felt like, the people looked like, etc. as I was about to watch one of the great teams of the Big Red Machine era. But it's not like I don't initiate conversation with people (including strangers), take charge in the workplace, talk to the point that people wish I would shut up, etc.

The extroverted way of relating to the world leaves a lot out. I remember what it was like being with friends a lot of the time and having hours and hours of uninterrupted direct social interaction. I have known what it is like since then to be in solitude a lot of the time and to tune out a lot of the background noise when I am around people. I would not trade the experiences that the latter two have yielded for anything.

But if anybody needs another partner in extreme extroverted social interaction I am sure that I could play the role well. However, not many people are interested in having such interaction with a person who overwhelmingly has things like intellectual matters on his mind.

If we are taking about functioning better, that is one thing.

But if we are talking about trauma, pain, etc. then what I believe David Smail said (from a clinical psychology perspective, not a religion/mysticism/spiritual perspective) is what I would say: the damage is done and all we can do is learn to live with it.

This sounds like the manifest image vs. scientific image problem.

Introvert/extrovert are just different things to do in life. It was interesting for me to try out being an extrovert, but it was always me. I was funny and enjoyed the laughter. Just an experiment. — Rich

It always leaves me feeling empty and unfulfilled.

But if the other person/people enjoyed​ the exchange and it helped us connect then it was a good thing.

They are personality traits actually. "They" say extroverts are happier than introverts, and that introverts often want to be more extrovert if only they knew how. They also say that introverts can be trained to be more extrovert. "They" are psychologists who have performed experiments etc. I think they may be right, in moderation. — Jake Tarragon

The "knew how" and "trained" make it sound like introversion and extroversion are abilities/skills and that they are learned.

Someone who is extroverted may be more likely to acquire certain abilities/skills, but they are not the same thing as the trait.

Unless "they" mean that introverts wish they had the coping skills to better live with a social world dominated by extroverts or had some more of the soft skills that extroverts are more likely to have developed, I would have to strongly disagree. Some of the people most outspoken about their introversion say that they wish that the world was quieter, not wish that they could better contribute to the non-quiet.

If we're talking about shy people​ that's a different story. A lot of shy people probably do wish they could be more outgoing.

There are many ways to describe it I guess. One way might be that it is more comfortable being introverted or extraverted. And it does take a lot of effort to act otherwise. The soul runs deep like a lake, and only so much on the surface can probably change in one lifetime. It's just something sometime may try to change if one wishes. I was quite introverted until college when I decided I would try to change a bit. — Rich

If it is what the people one is with need from him/her then that is reason to do it without any​ problem, just like if one is comfortable working at a normal pace but his/her boss needs him/her to work with more urgency then that is a good reason to comply without any problem.

We all have to be flexible, adaptable, etc. to function socially.

But redirecting energy, attention, focus, etc. outward because it is how "normal people" act has always felt fake to me.

The job of cashier requires that you accept people's money for the good you're selling and to exchange niceties in order to have them return and buy other things. It's no more fake that you act like a guy who rings people up than it is that you act like someone who cares about your customers' day. You're just doing a job. — Hanover

One can act like he/she cares without being "outgoing"--without channeling all energy outward.

I did not say that any role I am in requires anything. I said that I am using a role I am now in--fast-paced interaction with many people in a small time frame--to practice channeling energy outward, and that the results feel fake.

You're being paid to act like a cashier. Do that. — Hanover

And I am using the opportunity to practice something that I am not paid for but is apparently morally required: extroversion.

Insisting upon being yourself isn't always the best way to get along with others. — Hanover

It is others demanding/insisting on something (extroversion), not me.

Obviously we see why there would be an intolerance for shyness in the service industry. Extroverted traits and pro social skills will always be preferred in these settings. — Nils Loc

One can be shy and have good interpersonal skills.

One can be extroverted and have poor interpersonal skills.

Introversion, extroversion and shyness are not about skills/abilities.

think conversation is a social skill and that you can down regulate the fear response that gets in the way with practice. Just because it feels fake now doesn't mean it will always feel fake. — Nils Loc

I did not say that I do or do not have certain skills. I have good skills as a conversationalist. I have good public speaking and presentational skills.

I said that I am deeply introverted. That means that I am often far away in my own internal world remembering something, writing something, etc.

If I am reaching out and speaking because I have something to say that I have thought about deeply, that's one thing. If I am be outgoing for the sake of being outgoing, that is another.

The latter is forced extroversion and the results feel fake.

Why isn't all the anonymous conversation generated here not an example of extroversion? Do your posts feel phony to you? — Nils Loc

Because I am purposefully reaching out when I am ready to talk about something I have thought about. It's not empty, on-demand interaction for the sake of interaction.

Sounds conspiracy-ish, over thought and baseless. The people behind that movement are intelligent enough to neither come up with such an agenda nor to not believe in intelligent design. — BlueBanana

It's not a conspiracy theory.

He sheds light on a lot of the politics of evolution, like how when the anti-evolution people were voted off the Kansas state school board they got elected again later by changing their strategy: instead of directly trying to get evolution taught in the classroom they stopped talking about evolution and instead tried to change the definition of science.

Extroversion and introversion are not skills.

They are personal preferences.

And, yeah, if one prefers to relate to the world one way but is forced to relate to the world another way, it can be exhausting.

Until now everything that I have written in this thread has been a lot of my own observations or a few recollections of what I read many years ago.

Time to bring in other sources.

This is just one of many about geographic illiteracy that I easily found in little time this evening:

"Our ignorance about the world and about each other has finally taken its toll, in the unlikely form of Donald Trump. Trump represents the most simplistic answers to the questions that we explored in geography, and he preys on the unfamiliarity – and, indeed, mistrust – that divides Red places from Blue..." -- Geographic Illiteracy And The Rise Of Trump


As a native and lifelong resident of a "red state" I know what the author means. As a person who has never been a conservative, I have always felt like my home state is misunderstood, and have become increasingly saddened by the hostility of "blue states" and liberal elites towards us.

The phrase "flyover country" is, to me, an expression of a lack of appreciation of the diverse human and physical landscapes in the U.S., and is sad. But I only heard it once before the 2016 presidential election. Now it seems to make regular appearances in political analysis and commentary.

Intuition is the final, deepest layer through which things are filtered.

What should the focus of a government be? How much power should it have? — MonfortS26

A government is the institution or set of institutions that people in a group give authority to.

Its focus should be on preserving and maintaining the group.

It should have the degree of power that preserves and maintains the group.

Cavacava — Cavacava

To be clear, I have been talking about removing symbols being a tactic employed by parties from outside the communities where the symbols are located.

A local decision by local people to remove a symbol because they need to heal, because the things it is taken to represent go against their values, etc. is appropriate.

And if there is interiority, then that is where consciousness resides. You can’t see it, but it’s real. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Not only invisible, but it's completely unnecessary (and therefore unparsimonious) for explaining our experience.

Real? So you imagine....and overactive imagination is what we're talking about here.

For example, you and I are attempting to reach mutual understanding right now. And we say, aha, I understand what you’re saying. But you can’t point to that understanding. Where does it exist? — WISDOMfromPO-MO
In your imagination, if you're referring to some imaginary Mind entity separate from the body.

The animal is unitary, and needn't be unparsimoniously divided into body and mind. — Michael Ossipoff

You are responding to Ken Wilber's words, not my words.

It's not up to me, the town planned to remove the statue....these thugs came in and created holy hell. I don't see any statues of Hitler up in Germany. — Cavacava

Again, I can't go along with your idea--as expressed in your original post in this thread--that removing symbols from the environment is the path to healing and justice.

Symbols are arbitrary and therefore can mean different things to different people. What looks like a statue of a champion of racism and bigotry to you might look light a statue of a heroic freedom fighter to someone else.

If you have got solid scientific evidence that removing symbols from the environment has the powerful effects that you claim it has, then please provide it.

I suspect that what really happens is that over time symbols gradually lose any powerful meaning and are quietly removed from the environment as part of housekeeping, not as part of revolutionary change.

So, are you in favor of removal of Robert E Lee's statue or are you suggesting that it be archived in some manner? — Cavacava

A witch hunt to try to remove any historical sign of oppression and injustice is not the path to healing, better relations between diverse groups, and a more just society.

For one thing, pre-history, history and their relics/artifacts are not as cut and dried as ideologues would have us believe. Consider what Morris Berman says as reported here:

“The treatment of the South by the North,” Berman says, “was the template for the way the United States would come to treat any nation it regarded as an enemy: not merely a scorched earth policy, but also a ‘scorched soul’ policy” that it would use in Hawaii, the Philippines, Cuba, Japan, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and anywhere else it could achieve it..."

Maybe to some people a Robert E. Lee statue symbolizes slavery, racism, and centuries of oppression. Maybe to other people it symbolizes resistance to an evil empire that destroys societies and cultures wherever it goes. Fighting over removing or leaving that statue divides us and distracts us from the systemic sources of the pain of both groups, and it won't make the events of the past or their consequences go away.

How to treat the past — Bitter Crank

Reparations in some form or the other are needed if we want to see subsequent generations to become freed from the bigotry that is still so ingrained in our culture. Removal of the statues of historic oppressors is only one small step. — Cavacava

If the idea is that public resources should not pay for the creation, presentation, storage and preservation of symbols of injustice and oppression, that is one thing.

If the idea is that all such symbols should be eradicated, that is another.

Context matters. If something is being kept as a record, artifact, etc. from history and pre-history, that is one thing. If something is being kept to glorify injustice and oppression, that is another.

Changing the name of a place​ won't cost us any cultural resources. Relocating something won't cost us any cultural resources.

But trying to eradicate records of the past will cost us valuable cultural resources that tell us who we are and how we got to where we are. A sanitized, sugar-coated past is not reality and cannot be used to heal or to make positive, permanent change.

Education standards in middle and high school should require competence in "general education". The subjects of "general education" include (minimum)

American history (2 years)
World history -- particularly western civilization (1 year, minimum)
World literature and composition (2 years)
American literature and composition (2 years)
British literature and composition (1 year)
General Science (2 years, minimum)
biology (2 years, minimum)
geography (2 years, minimum)
a foreign language (2 years, minimum)
personal finance (1 year)
Less general education includes:
Additional classes in math and science (algebra, geometry, etc.; chemistry, physics, etc.)
vocational classes (focused on practical tasks)

Obviously, subjects taught in 7th grade will be have a less complex presentation than the same subjects taught in the 11th or 12th grade. Geography needs to be included in elementary school to present the general kinds of information--a good grasp of the size and organization of the United States (or Europe for British and European students).

Maybe this seems old fashioned. — Bitter Crank

Don't forget that there maybe has never been more opportunities than now to think geographically.

GIS software for 3rd graders to play with is probably possible.

At least when I was in high school (back in the carboniferous period) there was little to no instruction on ordinary economic life. Geography is the best field to cover economic life. Where do goods come from? How are they distributed? What does location, location, location mean? How are seaports, canals, rivers, railroads, highways, airports... work together? How is it that a fragile tropical fruit (the banana) is everybody's favorite, and cheap? Why aren't the apples in the store grown locally? (A lot of it is G E O G R A P H Y.) — Bitter Crank

I don't disagree.

If a lot of people have that foundation of knowledge then something else must explain their no-more-than-minimal awareness and appreciation. Maybe geographers are horrible at public relations--maybe they need to hire the same public relations professionals that physicists do. "The science of Geography. Be a part of STEM: be a geographer!"

But eventually it comes down to a coin toss?... — praxis

You are distorting my words.

I said I don't know how the geography-illiterate think about where things are located. Geography is a science, so if a person has not thought geographically then maybe he/she thinks that the locations of things are random.

So etc. could be referring to any geographical element? Okay... — praxis

I don't know what point you are trying to make.

Anything--beer consumption; pornography downloads; ice storms; insurance sales; bee colonies--that has a location or locations on the Earth can be mapped and analyzed geographically.

That is what separates geography from other social and physical sciences: it is concerned with the spatial/aerial context of phenomena.

Sociology, economics, geology, biology, etc. can all be done without any reference to or account of latitude and longitude--without any reference to or account of location on the Earth.

Geography assumes that the locations of things on the Earth are not only not random, they play a role in those things' character, behavior, interactions with each other, affect on each other, etc.

Yup, them there country folk are real morons. — praxis

Just now I did a Google search for the phrase "New Yorkers are provincial".

368 results.

I guess you think that when a local professor of geography called certain behavior in the city that I live in "provincialism" he was calling his fellow residents "real morons".

I guess you think that when a woman in the city I live in said that when she moved here she thought that the place was "very provincial" she was saying that people here are "real morons".

No, nobody is saying that anybody is a moron. They are simply saying that some people lack a holistic perspective on people and places. Apparently that lack of holistic geographic perspective is greater in some places (including heavily, densely populated urban areas) than others. Heck, California wants to secede from the U.S.; Silicon Valley thinks that it now controls the world; yet, when I bring up people being provincial what comes to your mind is "country folk". You prove the point of this thread with much of what you say.

I don't want to hijack the thread with something that is a completely different topic, but with that risk I bring up two problems I have had with "observed events":

1.) For many years now I have asked--a few times out loud--if any two observed events are in any way identical. Even if they are in some small ways identical, isn't it a giant, maybe inappropriate, leap in reasoning to say that any two or more observed events together tell us anything about reality other than their own individual selves? An experiment might be repeated exactly like another experiment, but they were conducted at different points in time and space. Are they really identical? One could have been done in North America and the other in Europe, but even if they were both done in the exact same lab, the lab is not in the same place both times (the Earth is not in exactly the same place in its orbit each time, even if it is the same month).

2.) More recently I have asked how do we know that the observations people make during observed events are in any way objective. It could be that only people who will report the same observations are drawn to observing a particular event. How do we know that the latter has not happened?

Well, Thorongil, this is the sum and substance of school for a good share of the population. I've said elsewhere that maybe 20% of students get a good to excellent education. It isn't an accident. The 20% get good education because their parents move into good school districts, or send their children to good private schools. 20% of the school population actually have a bright future. The other 80%, not so much.

Why doesn't everybody get a good to excellent education, when the benefits are so obvious? Because, in the big world of real politic many students are going to be economically irrelevant to a large extent and it just doesn't matter whether they know where Iowa, France, or New Zealand is. It doesn't matter whether they know shit from shinola. It doesn't matter if they know anything at all.

Irrelevant, useless people is what results when economies are organized only to maximize profit for stockholders. Production requiring low skills is transferred to the lowest wage countries. Some goods require lots of skilled workers, large overhead, and investment, but those industries don't employ huge numbers of people.

Irrelevant, useless people will still eat and buy stuff, so they have a function after all, but advertising on television or the internet can take care of teaching them what kind of junk they should buy. — Bitter Crank

And then the people who got a good education sound alarms about how many other people are science-illiterate; don't believe in evolution; don't know what GDP or trade deficits are; etc.

If they are going to be consistent then they should sound alarms about the worst literacy problem of them all: geographic illiteracy.

By "worst" I don't necessarily mean the one with the biggest consequences. I mean the one that is the deepest--intelligent design adherents at least know about evolution; the geography-illiterate are completely oblivious to geography--and the most widespread.

Intuitively, the location of cities primarily developed around major ports or other hubs of transportation... — praxis

A helpful model is to think of cities as nodes in networks. The corn is grown in this non-urban space. The corn is then sold in that small town. All of the corn in the area sold in that small town is then sold to a manufacturer in a medium-size city where it is processed into corn syrup. That corn syrup is then sold to a bottled beverage manufacturer in a big city. Etc.

But before people can understand and appreciate the location of their settlement, they have to be aware of things like that network.

Isn't the location of soils and water geology?... — praxis

Geology is not concerned much with location like physical geography is, the way that I understand it. Geology is simply concerned with how geologic systems, processes and materials work and/or are composed/made.

Given the categorical disparity between cities and soil & water, I'm not sure what etc. may be referring to... — praxis

But you started out talking about the relationship between cities and ports (water).

And you don't think that the type, amount and quality of soil in a location is going to affect what type of industry is there, what type of food is grown locally, where roads can be built, etc.?

I not sure why anyone would think "places" are in vacuums that don't affect​ each other. Are these places very far apart? — praxis

Everything that happens at every point of latitude and longitude--a trade deal signed; an earthquake; an invention; an election; etc.--affects everything that happens at every other point of latitude and longitude. The geography-illiterate might be so provincial that they do not see the small range of latitude and longitude that they work and live in being affected by or affecting any other place.

The ugly truth is that we have the time and resources to do this now, but we still don't do it. Don't expect that some fairy tail AI will make this possible. — praxis

When you are arriving 10 hours early or something like that to be first in line for Black Friday deals, you don't have time to worry about reducing poverty, controlling superbugs, reducing psychological distress in the population, etc.

You sure don't have time for those things if you then spend most of your free time in front of that TV set you saved a small fortune on at that Black Friday sale.

If AI is doing all of the work of making things then people will be consuming those things 24/7/365. It will be Black Friday all of the time.

Isn't replacing labor in our capitalist system the reason for automation with AI? That capitalist system will still be there along with one if its requirements: people willing to consume more and more stuff. And they will have all day, all week, all year to do it.

Until we run out of things that we can commodify and material and energy to make commodities with, that is.

In what way does my statement above remind you of interiority concept? From what I've read, his concept revolves around transcending the rational world and entering a divine one. Maybe I'm reading the wrong book, but that's what I'm getting so far. — Anonymys

From this interview:

"At this point, you enter the philosophy of science, and the argument is endless. Is there nothing but physical stuff in the universe? Or is there some sort of interiority? We’re not talking about ghosts and goblins and souls and all that kind of stuff. Just: Is there interiority? Is there an inside to the universe? And if there is interiority, then that is where consciousness resides. You can’t see it, but it’s real. This is the claim that phenomenology makes.

For example, you and I are attempting to reach mutual understanding right now. And we say, aha, I understand what you’re saying. But you can’t point to that understanding. Where does it exist? But if you take a phenomenology of our interior states, then you look at them as being real in themselves. And that’s where values lie and meaning lies. If you try to reduce those to matter, you not only lose all those distinctions, but you can’t even make the claim that some are right and some are wrong..."

The Lutheran insight that work is a central human act remains:



…the works of monks and priests, however holy and arduous they may be, do not differ one whit in the sight of God from the works of the rustic laborer in the field or the woman going about her household tasks…all works are measured before God by faith alone.
Martin Luther

It doesn't matter whether the work is domestic duties, civic duties, or wage-earning employment: work is holy.

If human labor is replaced by entirely mechanical production, then it will be a life-and-death matter to redefine the meaning and value of ordinary people, and ordinary work. Without vocation, (however that is defined) Homo Operatur will be hard pressed to fill his years with meaning, or even survive. — Bitter Crank

I can't find any excerpt that I could neatly quote here, so I can only direct people to the full essay. But your words remind me of what Wendell Berry says about work, art, economy, etc. in Christianity and The Survival of Creation.

When I stated " Some may call it identity, others may call it your inner being." I was simply saying that your identity is something that is there when others are not, who you truely are, or, your inner self. Not just how you appear to be. — Anonymys

Reminds me a little of Ken Wilber's concept of interiority.

I hate to break it to you, but Kyrie Irving is not a reliable source on such matters. (Neither is he a reliable Cavalier, the bastard.) — Thorongil

Don't worry, cities like Cleveland may not even have major sports teams much longer.

Just ask San Diego and Oakland, California. They still have the Padres and the A's at least--for now.

Think geographically for a little while and you might see the Beijing Browns and no more Cleveland Browns.

Nobody ever said that geographic thinking would never be painful.

A mix of apathy on the part of students and poor teaching. — Thorongil

I don't know about every school district, but in the ones that I am familiar with the science of geography is non-existent in the elementary and secondary school curriculum. The only geography in the curriculum is memorizing the names of places and their locations on political maps, and teachers do an excellent job at guiding students through such a simple task.

If we wanted students to experience the science of geography at that level of schooling, a fun assignment would be to have them research the history of the site of the apartment or house they live in. Maybe when the community was first incorporated it was a plot with corn growing on it. Maybe later it was the site of a general store. Maybe then suburban development started to encroach on the area and the apartment/house was then built as part of a compromise--the developer wanted to build a big enclosed regional mall, but a mixed-use development with churches, some retail, some office space, and some residential buildings was the only thing every interested party could agree on.

As far as I know, nobody gets to experience any of that kind of research until they get to the college level. And it is not offered at every institution like philosophy, economics, sociology, etc. are. Therefore, depending on where you go to college, you might not only never be able to major in geography, you might not ever be able to take one single geography course to meet a social or natural sciences requirement for graduation.

Evolutionary theory, physics, economics, etc. are not the real empty gaping hole in our individual and collective knowledge bases. The science of geography is.

No matter what path you are on, no matter what you "believe", no matter what you search for, no matter what approach you take, etc., probably at least one person will tell you that it is unequivocally wrong.

Just look at all of the exchanges in this thread.

One person says this. Another person says that. Another person says he agrees with this. Another person says he agrees with that.

If there is anything that 99.9% of people seem to have in common, it is that they believe that there is categorically one behavior or set of behaviors that every person's life must be reduced to.

Another thing that they all have in common: they almost never seem to have any concrete, vetted evidence of the consequences of failure to reduce life to such a behavior or set of behaviors. It is always a lot of speculation, anecdotes about violent conflicts/confrontations that historians have narrativized (as if the work of historians is unbiased and infallible), utopian fantasies about how the world would be perfect if everybody accepted this belief and rejected that belief, etc. They act as if they are reporting relationships that are as certain to rational people as the relationship between ocean tides and the moon.

And if you point out the oppressive/repressive nature of their whole struggle over beliefs, spirituality, etc. they will play the "relativism" card against you like it is somehow a trump card. Maybe it is a trump card--in a game where they have made the rules.

The challenge in life is not finding the right way, the coherent way, that rational way, etc. The challenge in life, as this thread so clearly illustrates, is safely navigating one's way through the cesspool of collective human thought and somehow experiencing some fulfillment and satisfaction along the way.

They might do not know "push and pull factors" as one of the geographer's theoretical devices, but they know it from history and from everyday practice. Most of us live in places which either produce or accept immigrants (or both), so we're aware, to a certain extent, of push and pull factors... — Πετροκότσυφας

Judging by the content of the immigration debate in the U.S. the last two decades, I would say, no, 99.9% of people in the U.S. are not aware of push and pull factors.

Pull factors, such as low-paying, dangerous jobs that Americans won't fill having to be filled by immigrants--"documented" or "undocumented"--almost never make an appearance in the conversation.

A little more geographic literacy would probably have resulted in a different conversation/debate and may have resulted in different political outcomes (no Donald Trump presidency).

We might not be able to theorise on an abstract level about such issues, but most, when it comes to our built environments, are aware of practical considerations such as the existence of green spaces, open spaces, water sources, dumpsites etc. — Πετροκότσυφας

I would argue that such "practical" awareness does little good for the overwhelming majority of individuals.

A little more geographic literacy might lead to them seeing the big-picture consequences that buying a McMansion in the suburbs has to their quality of life, health, happiness, etc. and make them look to instead, oh, buy a condo that was built as urban infill.

Now, of course, most of our understanding regarding such topics is usually quite simplistic, but that's more or less expected. — Πετροκότσυφας

The same "more or less expected" could be said about evolutionary theory, physics, and economics.

Yet, we have no patience for economic illiteracy, the lack of belief in evolution, etc.

If we are going to be consistent then we need to give the gaping hole of geographic illiteracy at least the same concern and attention.

Also, I think that it's not terribly surprising that most people do not know what GIS is. Most of us are not big in electromagnetism either, despite the fact that we can turn the radio on. Specialisation comes with a cost. — Πετροκότσυφας

Nonetheless, it is powerful evidence of widespread geographic illiteracy.

Most people will never hear of or use CAD, but if you ask them about it they could probably imagine what it is and what it is used for.

I doubt that many people who have no familiarity with GIS could imagine what its applications are.

Expect that consumer lifestyle to dominate even more if AI takes over a lot of the work we do. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

In other words, it will be Black Friday every hour of the day, every day of the year.