TIME TO SHAPE UP ON WHAT WISDOM IS REALLY CAPABLE OF: ANYTHING EXCITING. Neurology Is A Moral System, But It’s Not Found In Books… Yet.
[Future and necessary wisdom: fasten seat belts and read at your own risk…]
Humanity’s definition? Thinking better. That’s reflected in the name “Sapiens” (from sapere “to taste, have taste, be wise,”… there is no wisdom, or intelligence, without perception). It turns out that, to think better, one needs lots of neural connections (axons, dendrites), and those in turn grow from emotional topology, aka emotional logic.
So far, so good.
Thus, the greater the passions, the greater the ability to shake up the old connections, the old brain geometry, and build a new, better brain, that is more fitting to reality. Hence passions, strong emotions, help steer that pot known as the brain. That is why some think afresh while walking (it happens even to physicists; that idea that walking helps is so old, a philosophical school, the Peripatetic, founded by Aristotle, was built around it). That’s also hard sports, and more generally a dangerous life foster more brazen thinking. Advanced thinkers, throughout the ages, have tended to end badly. It’s not just because new, correct thinking messes up conventional brains made of concrete common wisdom. It’s also because advanced thinkers need the passions that danger provide with…
Passions often invoked positively are “love”, “compassion”, “mercy”, “generosity”, etc Also positive, but often dangerous, controversial, “sex”, “curiosity”, the spirit of inquiry… And then there are passions viewed generally negatively, like “anger” (although found in Christ, Muhammad besides all revolutionaries worth the label)… Or, even more negative, “hatred” (often alleged by the eyes of others, those observing the beholder). And of course jealousy, greed, etc.
However… Let’s consider lions fighting, fangs and claws out. How do humans fight?
Lions Fighting, Woman Involved lurks behind (of course). Humans fight mostly with thoughts, though, not tooth and claw. So human fighting fosters more advanced human thinking…. Which is all very humanistic. Another serious twist on moronic conventional humanism… Talk about fight club! Brawling lions in a serious fight because one horny lion got interrupted during a steamy morning romp. The frisky lion and his mate were not happy at being disturbed during their raunchy session. The king of the jungle launched a brutal attack as he chased the intermeddler away before picking up where he left off. The fierce lions launched at each other during the ten minute scuffle, roaring aggressively as they fought it out over who gets the girl. [Photographer Johan Pieter Meiring, from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, captured the scene at Kruger National Parks…]
Such a negationist attitude about ourselves insures we can’t understand anything important, looking forward.
Once a friend of mine, an emergency MD, told me all this may all be true, but we have to forget it now, all this prehistoric way of thinking, as we are in a world too evolved for this embarrassing heritage of ours. What I know, instead is that there is no thinking, but prehistoric thinking. Sorry, folks, we, you can’t get out of ourselves. Maybe sad to some, but it’s a fact. Losing track of this sorry state of affairs brings mayhem… because then we, and history, forsake the drastic precautions which need to be taken!
What I see, then, is a world so evolved it’s bringing its own demise, and not evolved enough to survive it. And the major problem has been, as with many of my friends, all too often ex-friends, that they were not passionate enough to pay attention to the evil mechanisms at play (fortunately Trump Derangement Syndrome has extracted many a fake liberal out of his or her self-satisfied torpor).
And there comes the twist. Human beings have been evolutionarily selected as the best thinking machines (by the holocaust alluded to above). So the pressure to think better (that is more fitting to the world as it is) is extreme, overwhelming, the main driver of human psychology (and not reproduction as the naive believe, confusing humans and rabbits).
And how does one think better, that is, continually afresh?
With more passions.
So, right, populations where passions are allowed to flow, everything else being equal, will be more mentally creative.
But not just that.
Suppose the positive passions can’t be deployed (say no love object, everybody hates you, etc.; not far-fetched, that was pretty much the situation of the Jews in a sea of hateful Catholics, after Roman emperor Theodosius I decided to “punish” heretics, around 380 CE… and again, after the hiatus of 5 centuries of Frankish tolerance came to an end; countless minorities found themselves in that situation, most minorities so excluded and hated are not around anymore to speak about it; some barely cling by: the 2018 Peace Nobel was awarded to a Yazidi lady, after Islam Fundamentalists tried to kill them all in the last few years)
So suppose no love is forthcoming, nor could ever come. What’s the next best thing to steer the mental pot in one’s head? Hatred.
Ridiculously, conventional “humanism”, not too human, has ignored this.
“Best” and “Worst” as moral categories are not logical categories, only truth determines the latter [Chad Gold Picture, thanks!]
And what if objects of passion are not readily available?
There is simple way out, coming to the rescue: danger. Danger itself. Danger should in little time brings passions back up, thus thinking afresh. Thereof the fascination of human beings with risk taking: it’s more than a thought adjuvant, it’s a thought creator (another uncomfortable fact for Conventional Wisdom and Conventional Humanism).
Verily, wisdom is the most complicated thing… Understanding how wisdom works is crucial to predicting the future, and optimizing it (because if the good doesn’t develop new, more powerful wisdom, the bad and the ugly will). I emote, thus I think creatively, hence I am a human being in full…
Patrice Ayme
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Note 1: a professional philosopher, MP, told me haughtily that there was no such thing as “emotional logic”. He had read that in textbooks. Right. Creators of ideas don’t get them in textbooks.
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Note 2: The Yellow Jackets in France have pivoted to fight for RICs (Referendums Initiative Citizens). As the two honest to goodness RIChest states, California and Suisse already have (not coincidentally: RIC make RICH). This is going to be a tremendous fight for improving civilization., mobilizing the collective debating power, hence intelligence humanity needs to survive. Officially six Yellow Jackets have died from their protest (latest was a French protester crushed by a Polish truck driver, who was arrested…) The Yellow Jackets need lots of war hormones, as they fight the huge forces of established evil, sucking at the teat of an exhausted planet…
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Note 3: Yes, today, I went down a wind slab (although I was on the lookout to avoid them). I had missed the rocky ridge further east, which was safe (when I realized it I was too lazy and getting too cold to go back up; anyway when one is on the slab, it’s already too late). It was probably way too thin to be dangerous, but, still, I was distinctly not amused, and used special tricks I evolved in such cases (go straight down the anchor points, not where the snow is thickest). Doing a wind slab every few years: nothing like it to realize what the human brain is really for….
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Note 4: Yes, hatred can be a very good thing: watch these millions of rabid Trump haters, foaming at the mouth. Five years ago, they couldn’t give a hoot about politics, and talking to them was like talking to fishes in aquariums. They aren’t yet intelligent, but, at least, less boring.
Now, propelled by their need to hate, they love (hating) Trump so much, politics is all they think they do. Let them hate away! They have now become politically receptive, however naive and ignorant they may still be… Passion is there at least, serious thinking may start, anytime…
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Note 5: An example of new, more powerful wisdom, has been the idea of “not leaving our children with debts”, used massively to justify crazy European economic policies impoverishing, often to the point of famine, most Europeans. This is fake wisdom, but the bad and the ugly plutocrats of Europe have used it with a vengeance.
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Note 6: The fascination with risk taking was no doubt a factor, when Nazi collaborator De Beauvoir & Nazi entertainer Sartre practiced “contingent relationships”, leaving a trail of tears, depression (and official sanctions) behind them. Beauvoir ended at Radio Vichy… in 1944 from being dismissed of her job for seducing a child. 1944? That’s when the Nazis were sure to lose, so either Beauvoir was super arrogant from her relationships, or she enjoyed the obvious risk… If risk entices intellectualization, as I claim, this is explains it… Neurohormones: serious, so is sex…
Tags: Danger, Emotional Logic, Hatred, Love, Passion
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
December 16, 2018 at 3:46 pm |
Old Blaise said, “le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.” C’est le coeur qui se rebelle contre l’injustice.
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December 17, 2018 at 9:50 am |
Pascal should have said: emotional logic has its topology which linear logic doesn’t. But of course the concept of topology was coined two centuries after Blaise and his damaged brain, croaked (autopsy showed a damaged brain….)
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December 16, 2018 at 5:09 pm |
Patrice,
Passion powers us, as logic steers.
There are two basic methods of reason. Reductionism and contextualization.
To distill an issue down to its basic elements, or to place it in the context and frame that gives it reason and function.
The problem is that we don’t recognize the distinction and differences, muddling them up. Such as taking the connectivity and networking of contextualization as a oneness, or holism and then assuming it can be reduced to one, or monism. Such as pantheism to monotheism. Which then reduces/collapses into absolutism and fundamentalism.
Reality is the tension of opposing elements, but in a culture obsessed with ideals, we can’t see above the polarization. Which only enforces the most ignorant and single minded, of either side.
Civilization is a product of narrative and those most repeated and remembered are the stories with the most compelling narrative and lesson, so we think of reality as time flowing past to some ideal future state. Yet time is change turning future to past. From potential, to actual, to residual. It’s the elements of this state of being, the yin and yang, the positive and negative, liberal social expansion and conservative cultural and civil consolidation, that power this cycle of life. Balance is what allows us to ride the wave.
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December 17, 2018 at 9:59 am |
E-Motion, indeed!
Although what I say is that emotional neurohormones within brain help steer the geometry of the brain (by building dendrites, axons, etc.). Massimo P didn’t understand this, in part because he has a restricted vision of logic. Yet:
Logic is what logic works.
Logic is what logic works.
[This is actually a highly technical position on logic, a new proposed definition; professional logicians have not come to an agreement; hence my proposal: if, and only if, it works, it’s logic. In particular, neurology is logic.]
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December 17, 2018 at 11:07 pm |
Patrice,
We think of the brain in terms of neurons firing, but consider the role, importance and symbolism (heart, emotion) of the blood flowing through and driving it.
Logic is abstraction, whether reductionism and all its analogies, or contextualization, of which analogies are a form. Those who distill (reduce) logic down to its essence end up in a world of static forms. Even time has been reduced to “block time,” which assumes the events as static moments and the passage as an illusion. All motion and energy is assumed to be composed of ever smaller quanta and units, down to the Planck. Definition requires definition, so the inherent fuzziness of motion is to be distilled and quantified away.
The left, logical side of the brain is a clock, as it is the sequence of motion, language, thought, while the right side is a thermostat, the ebb, flow, pressure, heat, cold of emotion, that tickles and stirs the awareness. Plants don’t need a clock, as they don’t intentionally move. The thermodynamics of seasons provide the only sequence necessary. Ebb and flow.
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December 17, 2018 at 7:21 am |
So in humanism and civilization as in all things, a sustainable harmony of extremes is a must
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December 17, 2018 at 10:05 am |
Harmony? All passions steer the neurological pot, potentially creating more productive connections, aka ideas… So not really a question of balance. An individual can be all love, or all hatred. However an all love or all hatred civilization doesn’t work optimally and comes to an end quickly…
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December 17, 2018 at 11:31 pm |
Yet it is the function of logic to sort through the passions and decide what is to be encouraged and which suppressed.
Not all acorns become oak trees, but without acorns, there are no oak trees.
We have reason so that nature doesn’t have to make all the decisions for us.
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December 17, 2018 at 11:09 pm |
True. The alternative to ups and downs is a flat line. We just need to maintain some perspective.
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December 17, 2018 at 8:45 am |
“Yes, hatred can be a very good thing: watch these millions of rabid Trump haters, foaming at the mouth. Five years ago, they couldn’t give a hoot about politics, and talking to them was like talking to fishes in aquariums.”
I agree, the hate is good and needs to increase and spread beyond mere politicians to the broader plutocratic system itself. We need to start seeing yellow vests everywhere around the world. A passionate dismantling of the criminal system that has humanity on a death spiral will stimulate serious thinking and put an end to the murky, dank fish tank world of the plutocrats.
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December 17, 2018 at 9:01 pm |
Indeed. Anger will bring change, we need more of both. Acutely. Now. And so does the planet. BTW, contrarily to representation in NYT, WSJ, etc, the “Yellow Jackets” are not anti-carbon tax. They are anti carbon tax applying only to them (as it is). Prices of non-transportation diesel was supposed to jump 50% (that would have closed all groomed cross country ski trails, for example… An example I am familiar with…)
In the USA, in particular, the Democratic Party could become a real opposition, whereas, in recent decades, it has often been on the right of Trump, or the Republican establishment… People with TDS are so acutely suffering from their disease, they can completely imagine that you humble servant, just because I quoted Trump favorably at some point I am suddenly against MEDICARE FOR ALL (an expression and concept I was first to use to my knowledge; Obama proposed it to Dems in 2009, they rejected it with high screaming, as if it were total madness… Actually that’s how the French system works…)
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December 17, 2018 at 11:11 pm |
Revenge is best eaten cold. Use anger, don’t let it use you.
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January 14, 2019 at 4:24 am |
An implicit assumption of a lot of deterrence rhetoric is that a desirable alternative to the carnage of the Second World War would have been a mutual deterrent relationship with a nuclear-armed Hitler. Do you actually believe that?
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January 14, 2019 at 4:26 am |
Hitler and his Nazis had to be destroyed. The important thing was to attack the Nazis, start destroying them, as the French Republic did (and only the French Republic did!) in September 1939… That was the crucial step: force the Nazis into war WHEN they couldn’t win it
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January 14, 2019 at 4:26 am |
Dwight Gilbert Jones
Replying to @Tyranosopher
It was an inadvertent ‘forcing’. Hitler lost the British war when he could have sunk Scapa Flow from the air, and didn’t. Instead, we have 3 generations of Pentagon fascism, and rampant militarism when the species and planet face extinction.
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January 14, 2019 at 4:28 am |
@humanism
The Nazis didn’t have the range to reach Scapa Flow, which was much further removed from Luftwaffe bases than South East England was, by a factor of at least five… Also they lacked equipment to attack heavy ships, sank none with planes. “Forcing”: once war started Nazis kaput!
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