Optimism on Edge -- Stupid or Cointelpro?

[a.saccus]

http://edge.org/q2007/q07_index.html

10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

EDITOR'S NOTE:

Edge began the last week in December, 1996 as an email to about fifty people. In 2006, Edge, which celebrates "the third culture", had more than five million individual user sessions.

To celebrate our 10th anniversary we are pleased to present the 2007 Edge Annual Question[…]

WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY?

As an activity, as a state of mind, science is fundamentally optimistic. Science figures out how things work and thus can make them work better. Much of the news is either good news or news that can be made good, thanks to ever deepening knowledge and ever more efficient and powerful tools and techniques. Science, on its frontiers, poses more and ever better questions, ever better put.

What are you optimistic about? Why? Surprise us!

Optimism on Edge -- Stupid or Cointelpro?

I confess to being an optimistic kind of guy. I mean, if one is a thinking person these days and NOT fundamentally optimistic, then you’ve probably already jumped off a bridge.

Being optimistic, however, is one thing. Being stupid is another. And none of these 160 people gathered in The Edge 10th Anniversary Edition could ever, even remotely, be suspected of being stupid, not even on a bad day. And yet?…

GOT OPTIMISM?
THE WORLD'S LEADING THINKERS SEE GOOD NEWS AHEAD

While conventional wisdom tells us that things are bad and getting worse, scientists and the science-minded among us see good news in the coming years. That's the bottom line of an outburst of high-powered optimism gathered from the world-class scientists and thinkers who frequent the pages of Edge, in an ongoing conversation among third culture thinkers (i.e., those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.)
[…]
The 160 responses to this year's Edge Question span topics such as string theory, intelligence, population growth, cancer, climate and much much more. Contributing their optimistic visions are a who's who of interesting and important world-class thinkers.

Note the Argument from authority: Big Brother's Modern Priesthood, The Scientists, All Say It's Goint to Get Better! Shades of Candide!

As an optimist, I’m constitutionally inclined to let people be happy these days in spite of all the evidence against the inappropriateness of such behavior. Afater all, it is a free-will universe. It’s like falling in love — if it happens, it happens — even as the burning buildings come crashing down around you in 1940 Blitz-London, and then you rush off to jump into your Spitfire and give one back to the Bosches. (Oops! Sorry, wrong war. I should have said “Nazis"; but what the heck — if you’ve seen one war you’ve seen ‘em all…)

But when stuff like this is called “science", I draw the line.

STEVEN PINKER Psychologist, Harvard; Author, “The Blank Slate"
The Decline of Violence
In 16th century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted on a stage and was slowly lowered into a fire. According to the historian Norman Davies, "the spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized."

Now anyone who can even bring himself to talk about cat-burning is not going to do well in my book, but Pinker gets worse:

As horrific as present-day events are, such sadism would be unthinkable today in most of the world.

Where has he been the last 100 years?

This is just one example of the most important and under appreciated trend in the history of our species: the decline of violence. Cruelty as popular entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, genocide for convenience, torture and mutilation as routine forms of punishment, execution for trivial crimes and misdemeanors, assassination as a means of political succession, pogroms as an outlet for frustration, and homicide as the major means of conflict resolution—all were unexceptionable features of life for most of human history. Yet today they are statistically rare in the West, less common elsewhere than they used to be, and widely condemned when they do occur.

Most people, sickened by the headlines and the bloody history of the twentieth century, find this claim incredible.

Notice the setup: only common, pedestrian people think things are getting worse. Non-psychopaths. But he knows they're actually getting better:

Yet as far as I know, every systematic attempt to document the prevalence of violence over centuries and millennia (and, for that matter, the past fifty years), particularly in the West, has shown that the overall trend is downward (though of course with many zigzags).

That’s one mighty big “cover your a__ zigzag"! But it gets better:

[…]Anyone who doubts this by pointing to residues of force in America (capital punishment in Texas, Abu Ghraib, sex slavery in immigrant groups, and so on) misses two key points. One is that statistically, the prevalence of these practices is almost certainly a tiny fraction of what it was in centuries past.[/b][…]In the past, they were no big deal. Even the mass murders of the twentieth century in Europe, China, and the Soviet Union probably killed a smaller proportion of the population than a typical hunter-gatherer feud or biblical conquest. The world’s population has exploded, and wars and killings are scrutinized and documented, so we are more aware of violence, even when it may be statistically less extensive.

Ah, Statistics and the Numbers Game! Well, two can play at that, bucko!

There are no figures for the number of deaths from violence for the first 50,000 years of human history, so I am just going to make a reasonable guess as to what they might have been. The point is not the value of the figure but the statistical legerdemain involved in using the magic words: “a tiny fraction", a “smaller proportion" to make a bad situation seem like a bed of roses. I’ll be using round numbers for ease of calculation.

“The Good Old Days"
Cumulative population, 50,000 BC to 1000 BC = 100,000,000.
Proportion of deaths due to human-human violence = 10%.
Body Count = 10,000,000.

“Modern Times"
Cumulative population, 1,000 BC to 2000 AD 10,000,000,000.
Proportion of deaths due to human-human violence = 1%.
Body Count = 100,000,000.

Again, the numbers are pure speculation on my part. But a reasonable speculation, I hope, and one made in order to counter what is either the high silliness or the deadly deception of Pinker’s Pollyanna argument: the proportion of violence may have gone down, but this is not something to feel good about. You feel good when you live in a non-psychopathic civilization, and in one of those the total number of dead would also have decreased as well as the proportion, and both decrease in spite of the increase in population.

Is Pinker just plain stupid? A useful idiot? Cointelpro? I don’t know.

Pinker clinches my dismay, and leaves me speechless:

What went right? No one knows, possibly because we have been asking the wrong question —"Why is there war?" instead of “Why is there peace?" There have been some suggestions, all unproven. Perhaps the gradual perfecting of a democratic Leviathan —"a common power to keep [men] in awe"— has removed the incentive to do it to them before they do it to us.

What a “beastly" remark.

Looking at it philosophically, I suppose it’s all a matter of the Cosmic Balance being restored: Harvard wins one for Mearsheimer (even though they don’t want the credit!) and now they lose one with Pinker.

In any case, there are 159 more optimists left on “Edge," many of them famous and some of them just as tasty as Pinker! Bon Appetit, mon freres!

 

[Renaissance]

THE WORLD'S LEADING THINKERS SEE GOOD NEWS AHEAD

While conventional wisdom tells us that things are bad and getting worse, scientists and the science-minded among us see good news in the coming years.

If we consider that the world's 'leading thinkers' are really psychological deviants who have traveled the scientific path of least resistance, then perhaps to them things are looking good.

Stout's messages that psychopaths wish make humanity think it's a failure comes to mind when considering who these 'thinkers' are. Pinkner, Dawkins and other evolutionary biologists have long suggested that it is humans who are genetically selfish and that serving others is a 'cost'. The general way they seem to suggest is that you only give when it is advantageous of furthering your own needs. Sounds a bit pathological.

[…]Anyone who doubts this by pointing to residues of force in America (capital punishment in Texas, Abu Ghraib, sex slavery in immigrant groups, and so on) misses two key points. One is that statistically, the prevalence of these practices is almost certainly a tiny fraction of what it was in centuries past.[…]In the past, they were no big deal. Even the mass murders of the twentieth century in Europe, China, and the Soviet Union probably killed a smaller proportion of the population than a typical hunter-gatherer feud or biblical conquest. The world’s population has exploded, and wars and killings are scrutinized and documented, so we are more aware of violence, even when it may be statistically less extensive.

We don't have to doubt it by pointing to 'residue of forces in America', we can point out the blatant destruction of whole populations through its modern warfare. What an idiot!

 

[Keit]

Hmm, I don't know if those scientists are stupid or COINTELPRO, but they are obviously ignorant, and choose to stay this way. The problem is, lot of "bright" people I know share they same optimism about the future of humanity. They put technological advancement above all, also hold the "reign of logic" (our time) and scientific thinking as a highest human achievement. And as my boyfriend said recently - current wars and conflicts are remnant of the old age" where ruled emotion and beliefs (religion systems). According to him, soon humanity will learn to overcome it and will see religion and other such faulty systems (fundamentalism and racism) as an obstacle - and humanity will take off toward brighter and better world.

 

[ark]

According to him, soon humanity will learn to overcome it and will see religion and other such faulty systems (fundamentalism and racism) as an obstacle - and humanity will take off toward brighter and better world.

Well, suppose we eliminate religion, fundamentalism and rascism. Atoms do not have them. And yet they decay and explode. Sometimes they even annihilate each other.

 

[Keit]

I think it's a very interesting and complicated topic, because if we accept (and this is evident) the idea of cycled reality, this ignorance is part of the process and will result in imminent "maturity period" OR total annihilation. I think we will have to live long enough to see what will transpire. Because today we have idealists from both camps (optimists and pessimists), the only difference between them, are facts they chose to ignore.
The question is: what should happen during this crucial period, in order to help humanity to mature without self annihilation? Not to mention "hyperdimentional" factor that may complicate matters (or help..like crucial mass for example, resulting in nolinear development of events)
Personaly, even if my boyfriend see me as pessimist, I hold somewhat deep optimism about human nature (soul evolution), especialy during harsh times, as Lobaszewski said about it:

From time immemorial, then, man has dreamed of a life in
which the measured effort of mind and muscle would be punctuated
by well-deserved rest. He would like to learn nature’s
laws so as to dominate her and take advantage of her gifts. Man
enlisted the natural power of animals in order to make his
dreams come true, and when this did not meet his needs, he
turned to his own kind for this purpose, in part depriving other
humans of their humanity simply because he was more powerful.
Dreams of a happy and peaceful life thus gave rise to force
over others, a force which depraves the mind of its user. That is
why man’s dreams of happiness have not come true throughout
history. This hedonistic view of “happiness

 

[ark]

The question is: what should happen during this crucial period, in order to help humanity to mature without self annihilation?

And what if a significant part of humanity does not want to "mature" and does not want to do anything in order to avoid self annihilation?
How are you going to "help them" if they will not want your help?

 

[Keit]

In this case, probably it will be something similar to this:
http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=4764.msg31823#msg31823

There is also Russian idiom: "Spasenie utopajushih - delo ruk samih utopajushih"
Free and bad translation: "Rescue of a drowning person is a matter of a drowning person himself"
It doesn’t mean that this person should rescue himself somehow, even if he doesn't know how to swim. Calling for help also can be considered as a self-rescue attempt. But at least he should try.
As for any such assumptions that my thoughts are to "help someone" - for me it's still premature. I still learn how to hold above the water, and especially - how to call for help.
Hey, but if I'll see someone drowning, I am not sure I won't try to jump into the water. (hmm...on a second thought, maybe it's not so wise after all ;) )

 

[ark]

There is also an expanded version:

"Spasenie utopauschih – ih zabota
No kogda tonuschij esche i spit spastis' osobenno trudno"

(Rescuing a drowning person - it is this person's problem.
But when, in addition, the drowning person is asleep, rescueing oneself is particularly difficult.)

So, perhaps the best we can do is to help to awake those who have a chance to awake, and who want to awake?

But to do this, we need to be be awake ourselves, first of all.

And that is not an easy task in its own.

ark

 

[Joe]

on the original topic: a.saccus' thoughts (with a little intro para and some nice pics) have been posted as an editorial today.

From time to time, other forum members may, with just a little effort, also want to try to expand their already excellent opinions into something more complete that we can then post as editorials on the Signs page

Joe

 

[LadyJane]

COINTELPRO, optimistic, ignorant, or wallowing in a big old pool of denial, ultimately it doesn't matter much, since all the latter feed the one with the caps even while they starve themselves. Stalin had his finger on the collective pulse of most of humanity when he said that one man's death is a tragedy while one million deaths are a statistic. Many brains, it seems, lack the capacity to process meaningfully and rightly numbers above several hundred, or perhaps several thousand --- above that, and they simply cannot establish the imagery (presymbolic), so the symbols, cold, emotionless, literally inconceivable, are all they can bring to bear. Amazing how casually most people can speak of massive death and destruction, with obvious emotional disaffect and unattachment, yet will show obvious concern or even distress when talking about isolated instances. For most people, there truly does seem to be an emotional/affective disconnect correlative to their ability to convert higher numbers beyond the verbal (symbolic) level into realistic imagery. Presymbolism reaches deeper into the mind/heart/soul... deeper into the realm wherein our thoughts, emotions and "higher" energies evolve and expand. Those who, no matter how intelligent, rely only on the symbol-dependent "surface" mind can never exceed the terrible limitations of those symbols.

As to the optimism on Edge itself... well, the gaping maw of chaos doesn't look half so frightening when your mind literally cannot envision the teeth coming for your throat.

 

[anart]

Many brains, it seems, lack the capacity to process meaningfully and rightly numbers above several hundred, or perhaps several thousand --- above that, and they simply cannot establish the imagery (presymbolic), so the symbols, cold, emotionless, literally inconceivable, are all they can bring to bear.

It is also that they are sound asleep and this life is a literal dream for them - and some of them are dreaming that they are awake and making a difference, or awake and learning the truth, yet their sleep is as deep as those who can't even fathom that a difference might be made, or that there is any objective truth to understand at all. Then there are those who dream that all is well and 'getting better' every day - the dreams differ, but it seems that the dreamers do not. fwiw.