Sapiens are a species that has lost many of their animal instincts and our “soul” replaces these instincts. I use the word ‘soul’ to signify what many might call consciousness, spirit, conscience, mind, reason, etc. We are thus thrust out of the arms of Mother Nature and onto our own ability to adapt and survive. We are forced into replacing the natural selection process, which has led to our evolution, and we are thrown upon our own abilities to adapt or to be extinguished. It is our “soul” that creates the games we play. These games replace natural selection; and determine our survival as a species.
Socrates was an intuitive genius, who may have been the first to understand that man needs to function in a shared social fiction before he can earn his own social honor, and social approval. But even Socrates could not intuit the degree to which this need was rooted. He could not see how deep ‘social performance’ goes and the degree that it is rooted in the anxiety of all sapiens. Humans cannot recognize their own self-worth without the word from their own social group.
We have successfully struggled against Mother Nature to gain great material wealth only to discover that, as Pogo might say, “we have met the enemy and it is us”. The enemy is our great material play-form itself; it is our own profit-and-loss economy, our money-over-the-counter game that is defeating us. We have lost all relationship with our nature. Our created fiction has crippled our ability to rationally adapt to our world we have created. We run as fast as we can from school to shopping center to the bank and back home in our new SUV only to discover that the gods have already made us mad. Our own fictions are killing us.
War itself is a fiction, it is a game, and it is a play-form. Roman civilization itself was a great “potlatch spirit” (a ceremonial feast of the American Indian of the northwest coast marked by the host’s lavish distribution of gifts or sometimes destruction of property to demonstrate wealth and generosity with the expectation of eventual reciprocation). What begins as simple contests, develop into complex play-forms. “Poetry, art, law, philosophy, war—all are contests or play-forms.”
To call them play-forms is not to say that they are not serious. In our great game of society we create meaning; fictional meaning but nevertheless these fictions are life-meaning fictions. Me and Earnest agree, our problem is that we must create better fictions to live by, because our present fictions are killing us.
What is the difference between playing a fictional role in life versus a non-fictional role?
Ideas and quotes from Beyond Alienation by Ernest Becker
All this guy does is copy/paste snippets of theories or arguments made by other people. He generally cites the reference, so I can't really say it's plagiarism. But at the same time, coberst, you'd probably be better off finding your own ideas about these theories and putting that into words for discussion. Because as it is, you've got 20 threads, 40 total posts, and you don't really participate in discussion...you just copy something that we can get elsewhere then repeat the cycle.
I would say the difference between a virtual world and the real world is that the real world is grounded in literal experience whereas the virtual world is not grounded.
SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) informs me that we have literal experiences that become sources for abstract ideas or part of other literal experiences.
The conceptual structure of a literal experience is mapped into another mental space to become part of another concept. For example: the experience of warmth resulting from being held by the mother is a literal experience that can be later mapped onto a subjective concept of affection. This means that the subjective concept then contains some or all of the conceptual structure of the literal experience of warmth. That is why almost everyone senses a feeling of warmth when feeling affection for someone.
Humans are artifact adoring artisans
Humans are meme (idea) adoring creators.
Humans create symbols (abstract ideas) upon which they place value sufficient for killing and dying.
Americans create a flag (an artifact of cloth) which symbolizes the value they place in a nation (artifact, idea, meme) for which they will really kill and die (nothing artificial here).
Humans require meaningful symbols upon which to give life sufficient purpose for living, dying, and killing.
Because humans can create their own meaningful artifacts why does our species place meaning into such dangerous artifacts (memes, ideologies) as religion, nation, capitalism, communism, etc?
The freedom we have to create that which is meaningful to us is poorly used, why?
Why do we waste such a precious freedom on such dangerous toys?
We do so because we lack the courage (self-reliance) to go against the flow.
Our adaptation to society as infants and children has left us without the courage and confidence required to go against the flow of society. We have the freedom but not the energy and courage to overcome the blind habit of conformity.
We are not determined atoms; we do have the potential to do much better. How can we overcome what we have become and thus become something better?
We can overcome our present predicament by creating a new reality, a new set of meaningful symbols that we choose to give value.
Imagination is the instrument by which we can overcome.
I would say you completely ignored a sincere request to engage us "person-to-person." The topics are interesting, but how they're presented is not engaging.
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Shinier than a speeding bullet.
Well it sounds interesting, though it is best to not just copy and paste.
I think mankind does need and use symbols, but I believe the western world has lost touch with the mythology of existance.
More than anything, possibly the Rites of Passage that use to be such an important part of ascending from childhood to adult hood.
As a result we end up with young adults who long to know where their place in life is.
The end result are tattoos that impart some sort of symbolism, aggresive drinking, etc. All in an attempt to say, "I am a man."
Personaly, I shift the blame on two things.
One, Christianity.
The second, Science.
When you look at them you can combined them, and then I narrow it down to Literalism.
Christianity doesn't really allow any room for myth, and (keep and mind I'm not trying to bash either one) Science, for the most part wants us to accept the idea that through science and science alone we see the true perception of reality.
Both seem to take a hogwash approach to Mythology.
Mythology to me, much like anyone would think after reading Jung, is made up the ego,conscious, and the unconscious.
Are Mythology comes from the unconscious, that springs up and can take hold of our life without us ever realizing.
To get to the point, I don't know if we can " overcome our present predicament by creating a new reality, a new set of meaningful symbols that we choose to give value."
The symbols we have now I believe work, they just need a new interpertation. Much like a reverse of what the Nazi's did with the Swastika, I believe can be applied in reverse motion to any symbol.
The Symbols are a representation of something much greater, and I think you have to remember, what is dangerous to one person might be mere laughter to another.
Now I'm not saying you just put another meaning on communism and change what the defention is, but I only believe we look at these things according to our current predicament.
Within future time and history, we may look at these symbols much differently.
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Mar 19th, 2009 09:04 AM
