From: "Phil Roberts, Jr." 




[email protected] wrote:
> 
> In article <[email protected]>,
>   [email protected] wrote:
> >
 
> > Also.  Maybe this will give you a quicker tie in with the relationship
> > between rationality and emotional disorder (catastrophic loss of
> > self-worth, self-significance, etc.).
> >
> > When you walk across the street, and a truck is about to run you
> > over, an illusion exists, one which must be maintained if you
> > are going to keep yourself alive.  The truck is real, you are
> > real, and the truck is really about to run you over.  The
> > illusion is that what is about to occur is a profoundly
> > significant event.
> 
> So... you're counting this as an illusion in the sense that, from an
> 'objective' perspective (or 'rational'?), we're all insignificant in the
> big picture and any individual going under a truck is unlikely to make
> much of a dent in the cosmos, yes? This begs the question of what
> 'significant' means. After all, from the selfish gene's point of view the
> _only_ important thing is its own replication so being hit by a truck is
> as significant as you can get. Wouldn't it be rather hard to argue that
> 'significant' means much to a human being in other-than-human terms?

True.  The only reason you would assume you have a handle on what 
counts as really really significant, beyond any given individual's 
perspective, is if you were obsessed, as I am, with attempting to
"explain" the presence of 'feelings of worthlessness' in the natural
scheme of things, and if (and only if) you assume the particular 
explanation I have suggested (e.g., that we are becoming too rational)
is the most viable one to date.  Given these presuppositions, than
the little anecdote I have presented would be interpreted in the
manner I maintain.  Of course, because this is also an emotional
repulsive way of looking at things, there are a lot of reasons for
wanting to wriggle around this logic.  I know I certainly tried to
for the first few years or so after I began formulating my theory.

You might also have noticed that I have pulled a bit of a 
bait and switch for polemic reasons, in which I have shifted from
talk about worthlessness to talk about insignificance, where the
conclusions don't seem quite so counter-intuitive.

> Anyway, the selfish gene maintains in us the illusion of our own
> significance, yes?
> 

Its trying to.  For example, I am supposing that the lust for 
self-significating experience nature has incorporated in us is 
chiefly responsible for this, in that it keeps us constantly striving
for fresh self-significating data to replenish some of the old stuff 
(needs of love, acceptance, recognition, purpose, moral integrity,
meaning, etc.) which is starting to get a little stale (e.g., Evel 
Knievel jumping across the Snake River Canyon, my posting to this 
newsgroup to impress others with dazzling displays of my brilliance, 
etc.). 

Then too, mamma nature has commandeered a bunch of her more 
ancient mechanisms to also assist in this never ending 
enterprize (e.g, fear of giving a speech, asking a girl for 
a date, anger over an insult, sex as the basis for becoming 
the center of a significant other's valuative universe, etc.) 
which used to serve chiefly physical purposes.  Not surprisingly, 
these mechanisms are not always well suited to this task 
(domestic violence, etc.).  Of course, this sort of post hoc
jury rigging is more the rule than the exception, just as we
might expect with a blind mechanical process (e.g., the Pandas 
short digestive track from its carnivorous ancestors, which 
makes it the most prolific pooper in the animal kingdom now 
that its being used for digesting bamboo).


> > Its keeping one's self thinking it is
> > a profoundly significant event which keeps human hopping
> > about with needs for love, acceptance, recognition, achievement,
> > etc.  In other words, they are increaseinly in need of
> > REASONS for believing in their own importance.
> 
> Okay... so the more 'objective' or 'rational' we get the more we realise
> that we're not significant in how the universe operates which contradicts
> the essential point the selfish gene wants us to believe, leaving us
> rather miserable at the contradiction, and we have to scrabble around to
> justify the selfish gene's dogma? The objectivity or rationality gives us
> the many benefits of analysis and technique but has the downside of
> making blithe naturally-driven high self-esteem extremely questionable so
> we try to find other ways to justify it?
> 

Damn!  More eloguence that I can only sit back and envy.  You should run
for office or something.  

We "know" we are insignificant as an abstract logical matter of fact,
but the trick to being happy is to keep enough self-significanting 
data coming in to prevent you from coming to REALIZE what normal 
(emotionally undisturbed) people merely know.  You want to keep 
this particular engram down in H. R. Halderman's office, rather 
than allowing it to enter the oval office of consciousness.  The
result is humans hopping around like a bunch of mad hatters, rather
than merely resting in the grass, snapping at an occasional fly, 
as lions are able to do once they've filled their bellies and screwed
their mates.


        Special concern for one's own future would be selected by 
        evolution: Animals without such concern would be more likely
        to die before passing on their genes.  Such concern would 
        remain, as a natural fact, even if we decided that it was not
        justified.  By thinking hard about the arguments, we might
        be able briefly to stun this natural concern.  But it would
        soon revive...  The fact that we have this attitude cannot
        therefore be a reason for thinking it justified.  Whether
        it is justified [i.e. rational] is an open question, waiting 
        to be answered (Derek Parfit, 'Reasons and Persons').
 



-- 

                  Phil Roberts, Jr.

       The Psychodynamics of Genetic Indeterminism:
Why We Turned Out Like Captain Kirk Instead of Mr. Spock
     http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/dada/90/