Tom Nichols.
The Atlantic, Tom Nichols, 26 Jul 2024: The Lies Nostalgia Tells Us, subtitled “I was a child in the 1960s, and those days weren’t better—but in one way, they were sweeter.”
Before reading this: Continue reading
Today: Violence. Are humans inherently violent? Is war inevitable? Or is violence learned behavior? This chapter, of course, anticipates Pinker’s later book, THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE, which documents how violence has *declined* throughout human history, though that’s a different topic.
Earlier posts about this book: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5, post 6.
–Ch17, Violence
So is war eternal and inevitable? Churchill quote. The archaeological record supports the idea. Even cannibalism. And so on. Cruelty. Christians and their crosses. Efforts to reduce violence have led to legislation, as if violence has nothing to do with human nature but is taught by culture, or endemic to certain environments. The Seville Statement again. Claims that we ‘know’ what causes violence. Violence is a learned behavior, many claim. Learned from TV shows and video games. Or from childhood abuse. Another theory is about the American conception of maleness. And the frontier culture.
Tribal moralists know: Outsiders are *bad*.
The Guardian, Jeff Yang, 29 Jul 2024: Republicans cheer for ‘mass deportation’ – a dark new chapter in America’s history of othering ‘them’, subtitled “The convention celebrated Trump’s vision of immigration as a disease. The GOP idea of a cure would mean I, and millions of others, would not exist”
The final section of the book is about various “Hot Button” topics: politics, violence, gender, children, and the arts. These chapters show how the doctrines of the blank slate, the noble savage, and the ghost in the machine have been imagined to ‘explain’ or justify such behaviors, why they are wrong, and how the understanding of evolutionarily derived human nature can better account for the reality of our behaviors.
I’ll summarize less than in previous post, and perhaps sprinkle some bolds in to highlight key points. And spread these last few chapters over several posts.
Earlier posts about this book: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5.
Part V: Hot Buttons
Here we have topics where people debate but rarely change their minds when their arguments are refuted. Typically these are the issues that divide liberals and conservatives. Many of these topics hinge on empirical questions in biology or psychology; but instead of changing minds, people are apt to suppress the facts and cling to what they hold sacred. Often there is common ground, and disagreements are matters of emphasis.
–Ch16, Politics
There are two problems with MAGA. First, it’s regressive in that it’s trying to reimpose primitive tribal values onto a complex, global world. Second, more practically, it’s simply not possible to return to conditions of the past. Today’s items:
Washington Post, Megan McArdle, 25 Jul 2024: Opinion | J.D. Vance can’t go back in time — and neither can the rest of us, subtitled “The days of America’s manufacturing boom are gone for good.”
For one of the youngest vice-presidential candidates ever nominated, J.D. Vance sounds a little crotchety. His convention speech last week pined for an America that the 39-year-old himself never knew — a land before drugs and deindustrialization ravaged the Rust Belt, when housing was cheap and families were intact, and proud American craftsmen made the world’s best products with their own hands.
I try to connect daily links with some kind of bigger picture, and at the risk of repeating myself, I’m to say once again that the theme of this blog is about the big picture of life in the United States, perhaps the world, these past couple decades, in the resurgence of tribal human nature, to the detriment of the great achievements of humanity in the era of the Enlightenment, science and democracy, that increasingly are being challenged by the forces of religion and ignorance. Tribal mentality. The mentality and morality that drove the human race for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years, but which is not suitable for the modern, global world, facing global, existential problems. Humanity may never overcome this. There is no escaping tribal human nature except through education, and the tribalists go to great length to shield their children from education.
(Why is this happening? A topic for another post, though I’ve certainly discussed it before.)
Every day provides more examples. Picking up where we left off yesterday; so much is going on.
*
More pieces about what conservatives/Republicans really think about people who are unlike themselves.
Media Matters, Matt Gertz, 28 Jul 2024: JD Vance’s “childless cat ladies” comment points to the GOP’s right-wing media problem, subtitled “Rising in Republican politics requires appealing to the party’s sadistic weirdos”
Conservatives, who have very firm ideas about the Way Things Ought To Be, have a new Person They Disapprove Of. Never mind evidence or competence or policies, about which further down.
Let’s begin with this. This is about the Republican response to Biden stepping down.
Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times, 25 Jul 2024: Just One Question for Trump and Vance: What Is Wrong With You People?
Ever since President Biden’s Sunday announcement that he would not seek re-election, clearly because of age, I keep thinking about Donald Trump’s and JD Vance’s contemptuous reactions to one of the most difficult personal decisions a president has ever made, and what it says about their character.
After being distracted by Texas affairs, politics, Riven, and reading Brian Greene and others, let’s get back to this book and try to finish summarizing it and capturing key points. This and one more post.
Earlier posts about this book: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4.
Part IV: Know Thyself
How does human nature influence our public and private lives? Most of what people know is “based on gut feelings, folk theories, and archaic versions of biology.”
–Ch12, In Touch with Reality
This chapter concerns whether or not reality is socially constructed, or whether we accurately perceive reality. Neither is totally correct. Naive realism is refuted by visual illusions (examples). Again: the brain evolved to prioritize survival and reproduction of the species. Relativists, on the other hand, are concerned with how we categorize things, suggesting that everything is a social construct, even the facts of science and history. But categorization, like stereotypes, can be dangerous: not necessarily false in every respect, but with many ways they can go wrong. Beware identity politics. Some condemn even language as constraining thought. [[ To the extent these are equivalent might lead to some sf speculation. ]] But cognitive scientists and linguists reject such ideas for several reasons. Both images and words are inherently ambiguous; these confusions are reflected in contemporary art.
A few more items about recent events. Then, I promise to switch topics in the next day or two.
Heather Cox Richardson summarizes events of the past few days, in her detailed, historian-looking-back-from-the-future manner.
Letters from an American, 23 Jul 2024: July 22, 2024
Thus it begins: Continue reading
So this is the week that President Joe Biden, under fire by everyone since his lame debate performance last month (which I wrote about here), stepped down from his candidacy for a second term as president. This is virtually unprecedented in American history. It was an historic day. He endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, and remarkably, virtually all Democrats have endorsed her too, with no one emerging to challenge her nomination for, now, president; in fact, Biden’s abdication is regarded as a sacrifice for the greater good, putting principle before personal glory.
In contrast are the Republicans, who are undergoing hissy fits, upset that their plans to run against a doddering incumbent have been thwarted. You’d think a contract had been signed or something; some of them are threatening lawsuits to keep Biden on the ticket. And of course they’re engaging in their usual hyperbole and calumny, misogyny and racism. That’s what conservatives do.
Items today:
Tom Nichols takes the high road.
Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 21 Jul 2024: A Candidate, Not a Cult Leader, subtitled “After Biden’s decision to leave the race, the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans could not be clearer.”
