There are differences in the brains of men and women. In general men do better in math and women do better at reading and writing. Some studies show that while the IQs average out to the same, there is more variance in men, more geniuses and more morons. When Larry Summers was president of Harvard he suggested that maybe that should be looked into as a reason why almost all the big time mathematicians have been men. But academia is the garden of political correctness and he was soon run out of Harvard as a sexist pig for even thinking it should thought about.
Every now and then you see a well-educated woman in a hijab explain how she thinks the strictures of conservative Islam protect rather than restrict women, but I ain't buying it
Trump was well-behaved in his State of the Union. Maybe once a month he gives a good teleprompter speech, and fools, like Charlie Brown running at Lucy's football, think maybe he is ahem, growing into his office and the next day he is calling dems who didn't applause him treasonous. Then his handlers say, oh no, he didn't mean that, and then Trump says he sure as shirt did. More chairs tossed in the cable news afternoon. I haven't heard those new words Old Dog cites. I will look out for them.
Forbes won't let me read articles because of my ad blocker, but there are a slew of articles about scientific philosophy indicating this and that, and you know, life goes on. In 1931 Kurt Godel proved that some truths are unprovable and people went on about their daily lives as if nothing had happened.
That is true that when people of the same language group are isolated from each other their languages begin to diverge. I wonder what patios Beagles was speaking that people couldn't understand half of what he said. Some kind of army argot I suspect. I am a peacenik but I do love army slang. Well I love slang, it is like a nursery of new words and some of them will grow up to be full-fledged English words and some will whither on the vine but be embedded in the amber of their time.. Like if someone says groovy, we know they are talking about the sixties.
When you are talking about morals, a lot of people think you are talking about sex instead of about good and evil. A person who is loose with their sex habits is considered immoral, but in fact they could be either good or evil. Why is sex so strongly conjoined to morality?
Is a question for another day. Right now I am getting into moral dessert. In cornball movies they will have some guy wrestle with some moral dilemma and in the end do the right thing. And then because he did the right thing he will get the girl or the money or whatever. A lot of movies are not complete until the good are all rewarded and the bad are all punished.
But that's no-risk morality, who wouldn't do the right thing if they knew they would get the girl or the money? Shouldn't virtue be its own reward? Don't those canny Catholics insert a phrase into the confession where the sinner has to state that he is not confessing just because he is afraid of going to hell, but because he feels bad about displeasing god?
If you do the right thing in order to get the banana split, are you actually doing the right thing? I am asking you, dawgs.
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
Monday, February 5, 2018
Rejecting Language and Morals
People do so reject their languages. Well, maybe not the whole language, just parts of it. When a group starts spending a lot of time together, they soon begin to formulate their own dialect, but they quickly revert to their native tongue if they are separated from their group and rejoin their old subculture. I discovered this during basic training in the army. For two months we lived and worked together and our only contact with the outside world was by mail. When I came home on leave, people didn't understand half of what I was saying, but I reverted in a few days because I got tired of having to stop and explain myself. I think that's how different languages evolved in the first place, groups of people living in isolation from other groups. Later, when people started getting around more, they assimilated words from the other cultures they encountered. Probably the only pure language anymore is Latin, and that's because nobody uses it in conversational speech.
It works the same way with morals. While people seldom reject their whole moral codes, they commonly reject certain parts of them. Remember the Sexual Revolution? I think it's for the same reason that they reject parts of their language, they assimilate ideas from other groups. It's almost impossible to raise a kid nowadays in total isolation and, if you did, you'd likely be charged with child abuse. I think that's the reason the women of the Islamic world are kept isolated, more in some countries than others. The men probably think they are protecting the women for their own good, and the women probably buy it, because they don't know any better. In today's world, however, it's only a matter of time before everybody gets their consciousness raised. Once you let Pandora out of her box, you'll have a hard time stuffing her back in again.
Here's how I made those links the other day: First I select the URL, then I copy and paste it to the blog post. Then I select it from there and click on the "Link" icon up on the top of the page. A form comes up and it asks me where I want the link to take us, and I paste a copy of the link in that space. Then I click "OK". It worked this time, but that's no guarantee it will work the next time.
It works the same way with morals. While people seldom reject their whole moral codes, they commonly reject certain parts of them. Remember the Sexual Revolution? I think it's for the same reason that they reject parts of their language, they assimilate ideas from other groups. It's almost impossible to raise a kid nowadays in total isolation and, if you did, you'd likely be charged with child abuse. I think that's the reason the women of the Islamic world are kept isolated, more in some countries than others. The men probably think they are protecting the women for their own good, and the women probably buy it, because they don't know any better. In today's world, however, it's only a matter of time before everybody gets their consciousness raised. Once you let Pandora out of her box, you'll have a hard time stuffing her back in again.
Here's how I made those links the other day: First I select the URL, then I copy and paste it to the blog post. Then I select it from there and click on the "Link" icon up on the top of the page. A form comes up and it asks me where I want the link to take us, and I paste a copy of the link in that space. Then I click "OK". It worked this time, but that's no guarantee it will work the next time.
No dessert tonight
There isn't much I can add to the topic of morality except that we have reached a consensus of sorts, in that humans are positively inclined, if only barely. All things being equal, it's a lot easier to cooperate and tolerate each other than to be in constant conflict. But things are seldom equal and there are threats, real or perceived, that throw folks into a tizzy and they take off the gloves and have at it. Humanity is still working out the bugs in the system.
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But Beagles threw me for a loop when he brought up women. There seems to be a lot of difference in the way the various cultures treat their women.
Amen brother; this is another rabbit hole and where to start? The recent #metoo movement raises some questions for me, such as why have so many women waited so long to relate their stories of sexual harassment? And what causes some men to force themselves upon and victimize the women; is it simply because they can? We may never know.
Then I think about women in the Muslim world, not being allowed to drive, required to wear burqas, and not being allowed in public by themselves unless accompanied by a male family member. They're certainly not being exploited, but are they being oppressed or are they being protected? The women in that culture may have more power than we, in our Western smugness, realize. There must be some reason that they tolerate their role in their society and I'll be damned if I know what it is except for their religious beliefs.
I don't know if it's been scientifically proven that the brains of men and women are wired differently, but I suspect they are. You seldom hear of a woman relying on a "gut feeling," they have intuition instead. But I've gone far enough down this rabbit hole for the time being.
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Last week's State of the Union address was interesting, and like the presidential debates, I had the sound turned off. I like observing the gestures and body language, unencumbered by the drivel spouting out of his mouth. I've read that Stephen Miller was responsible for most of the speech, and it shows from the few transcripts I've read. It didn't look like Trump strayed too far from the teleprompter and his jutting chin during the many ovations lent a certain Mussolini vibe to the proceedings. He was also clapping a lot, for himself probably. Melania did not look like the picture of spousal adoration, still steamed at the Stormy Daniels business no doubt.
I've noticed a couple of new terms since the address: politerati and Banana Republicans, both seem very apt.
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Saw Cheboygan County in the news last week; didn't know you had sturgeon plying the waters up there: http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/02/michigan_fisherman_films_sturg.html
And Uncle Ken's reference to empty space led me to an article which indicates that there may be no such thing as nothing: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/01/31/the-four-scientific-meanings-of-nothing/
I like the way Mr. Beagles had a clickable link, in blue, in his last post. How was this done, is some HTML editing required? Youth wants to know.
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But Beagles threw me for a loop when he brought up women. There seems to be a lot of difference in the way the various cultures treat their women.
Amen brother; this is another rabbit hole and where to start? The recent #metoo movement raises some questions for me, such as why have so many women waited so long to relate their stories of sexual harassment? And what causes some men to force themselves upon and victimize the women; is it simply because they can? We may never know.
Then I think about women in the Muslim world, not being allowed to drive, required to wear burqas, and not being allowed in public by themselves unless accompanied by a male family member. They're certainly not being exploited, but are they being oppressed or are they being protected? The women in that culture may have more power than we, in our Western smugness, realize. There must be some reason that they tolerate their role in their society and I'll be damned if I know what it is except for their religious beliefs.
I don't know if it's been scientifically proven that the brains of men and women are wired differently, but I suspect they are. You seldom hear of a woman relying on a "gut feeling," they have intuition instead. But I've gone far enough down this rabbit hole for the time being.
-----
Last week's State of the Union address was interesting, and like the presidential debates, I had the sound turned off. I like observing the gestures and body language, unencumbered by the drivel spouting out of his mouth. I've read that Stephen Miller was responsible for most of the speech, and it shows from the few transcripts I've read. It didn't look like Trump strayed too far from the teleprompter and his jutting chin during the many ovations lent a certain Mussolini vibe to the proceedings. He was also clapping a lot, for himself probably. Melania did not look like the picture of spousal adoration, still steamed at the Stormy Daniels business no doubt.
I've noticed a couple of new terms since the address: politerati and Banana Republicans, both seem very apt.
-----
Saw Cheboygan County in the news last week; didn't know you had sturgeon plying the waters up there: http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/02/michigan_fisherman_films_sturg.html
And Uncle Ken's reference to empty space led me to an article which indicates that there may be no such thing as nothing: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/01/31/the-four-scientific-meanings-of-nothing/
I like the way Mr. Beagles had a clickable link, in blue, in his last post. How was this done, is some HTML editing required? Youth wants to know.
what about that moral dessert?
True enough about the language Beagles, not quite about the morality in that sometimes people reject the mores around them, but nobody rejects the language around them because then who would they speak to? But the other part of my belief is that since our morality is from our genes all cultures share a similar core morality, you know generosity, loyalty, honesty, that kind of stuff. If you read the stories of the various cultures their big heroes all have those virtues.
But Beagles threw me for a loop when he brought up women. There seems to be a lot of difference in the way the various cultures treat their women. I am putting that into the concept of other. The way people generally behave is they treat their inner circle well, but feel free to dump on the other. The other is generally felt to be inferior and less moral than the inner circle, and I think the women abusing cultures don't think women are as good as men.
There is also a difference in the way cultures view the individual vs the crowd. America, born of immigrants who were individualist enough to leave their country is pretty damn heavy into individual rights, and China, home to an ancient culture, tends to favor the group over the individual. I don't know where to go with that. I'll leave it for now.
I don't remember little Johnny. Generally people learn by hearing people around them talk so that would be an explanation for his poor pronunciation. There is a certain time window for learning this. Kissinger had a brother a few years younger than Hank who spoke English very well, and that was because he came to the country while the pronunciation window was still open. Although, prick that he was, I think Henry liked being hard to be understood.
I read that article. Pretty good. I recently read a book about populism at the turn of the last century (we can't just say turn of the century anymore because that would refer to the 1990s). Back then it was conceived of as kind of leftist because a lot of wobblies were in it, but probably mostly it was because the man that they were sticking it to were those grotesque gilded plutocrats of that age. The current day Trump populists on the other hand are sticking it to the liberal agenda, the heritage of the enlightenment, and is generally seen as pretty rightest.
Back in the old days, the tea partiers, the forerunners of Trumpism had an anti big corporations component, but they soon got taken over by plutocrats so that component has faded away. Trump still trumpets some things that liberals like (when he appointed his new health secretary, a former bigwig in the prescription drug industry he said something like the guy will be getting to work to bring down drug prices, yeah right), but his heart isn't into it like building the wall and insulting foreigners.
I still want to talk about the moral dessert, but the week is yet young. That last show was the season finale, but I guess they will be running reruns. When i wad googling around I kept coming across sentences like what the fork, and a forking good something, and I was thinking what the fuck, and then I remembered. It's that shirt thing.
But Beagles threw me for a loop when he brought up women. There seems to be a lot of difference in the way the various cultures treat their women. I am putting that into the concept of other. The way people generally behave is they treat their inner circle well, but feel free to dump on the other. The other is generally felt to be inferior and less moral than the inner circle, and I think the women abusing cultures don't think women are as good as men.
There is also a difference in the way cultures view the individual vs the crowd. America, born of immigrants who were individualist enough to leave their country is pretty damn heavy into individual rights, and China, home to an ancient culture, tends to favor the group over the individual. I don't know where to go with that. I'll leave it for now.
I don't remember little Johnny. Generally people learn by hearing people around them talk so that would be an explanation for his poor pronunciation. There is a certain time window for learning this. Kissinger had a brother a few years younger than Hank who spoke English very well, and that was because he came to the country while the pronunciation window was still open. Although, prick that he was, I think Henry liked being hard to be understood.
I read that article. Pretty good. I recently read a book about populism at the turn of the last century (we can't just say turn of the century anymore because that would refer to the 1990s). Back then it was conceived of as kind of leftist because a lot of wobblies were in it, but probably mostly it was because the man that they were sticking it to were those grotesque gilded plutocrats of that age. The current day Trump populists on the other hand are sticking it to the liberal agenda, the heritage of the enlightenment, and is generally seen as pretty rightest.
Back in the old days, the tea partiers, the forerunners of Trumpism had an anti big corporations component, but they soon got taken over by plutocrats so that component has faded away. Trump still trumpets some things that liberals like (when he appointed his new health secretary, a former bigwig in the prescription drug industry he said something like the guy will be getting to work to bring down drug prices, yeah right), but his heart isn't into it like building the wall and insulting foreigners.
I still want to talk about the moral dessert, but the week is yet young. That last show was the season finale, but I guess they will be running reruns. When i wad googling around I kept coming across sentences like what the fork, and a forking good something, and I was thinking what the fuck, and then I remembered. It's that shirt thing.
Sunday, February 4, 2018
Maybe I've Got it Now
I think what Uncle Ken is saying is that we are born with an intuitive sense of morality and that all codes of morality evolve from that. Well maybe but, if it's like language, we are born with the ability to learn it, but we first have to learn it before we can use it. If a kid grows up in an English speaking country, he will likely learn to speak English from his family and friends before he learns it in school. If he grows up in a French speaking country, he will learn to speak French instead. He might learn another language later, but French will always be his first language. Similarly, if he grows up in an Islamic culture, he will have an Islamic sense of morality. He might modify that if he is exposed to other cultures later on but, if he isn't exposed to other cultures, he will always be a Muslim. He doesn't really have a choice if he is not aware of the existence of other options.
Remember little Johnny at Elsdon? When I first met him, I couldn't understand a word that he said. My mother told me that was because both of his parents were deaf so he never got any meaningful feedback when he was learning to talk. After years of speech therapy, he became more understandable, and he eventually learned how to speak as well as anybody.
I read a thing on the internet news last night, and I thought it might be of interest to my esteemed colleagues at the Institute. Here's the link: https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBIBfIp?m=en-us
Remember little Johnny at Elsdon? When I first met him, I couldn't understand a word that he said. My mother told me that was because both of his parents were deaf so he never got any meaningful feedback when he was learning to talk. After years of speech therapy, he became more understandable, and he eventually learned how to speak as well as anybody.
I read a thing on the internet news last night, and I thought it might be of interest to my esteemed colleagues at the Institute. Here's the link: https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBIBfIp?m=en-us
Friday, February 2, 2018
moral dessert
What I think is that pretty much all societies consider the same values, generosity, loyalty, honesty, to be virtues. I'm not saying they act that way. And I think this is so because it is in our genes just like our language ability. And it's in our genes because we are social animals and these are the sort of things that make a society hum.
But they weren't rules at the point of hunter gatherers, or laws like the law of gravity, you don't have Do unto others as they do unto you stamped across your genes, it is just kind of an inclination, a feeling, you can feel when you steal from your little sister that it's wrong.
I'm just kind of winging it here, going by what I remember of what I have read, but paganism, the worship of rocks and whatnot, is closer to science than religion. It's a way to understand the world. The number of deer in the valley is dependent on the rock god's mood. And it's also a technology (I always try to separate science and technology), if you appease the rock gods by leaving rabbit droppings in front of them they will increase the deer in the valley.
There's no morality in it at first, it is just a way to get things done, like how to chip the flints to make a nice arrowhead But eventually there got to be a hierarchy of gods with some ruling over others and you got some pretty powerful gods at the top. You know powerful like the chief, and in a well-functioning tribe the members obey the chief. It is a good thing. So maybe it is not only a smart thing to obey the sun god it is also a good thing.
Morality began to enter into religion, not only did the sun god want you to sacrifice a few goats to Him, He also wanted you to be good to your neighbor, to not tell lies, etc. I an a little weak here, I wish I knew more about ancient religions, but I'm pretty sure you will find something like the golden rule in them. At any rate ancient Judaism had done this because you can see it in the Old Testament.
And the Greeks took it up. Fresh from their victory over the right triangle they applied the same strategy to the right way to live. They took those feelings of good and evil and codified them into a whole set of logical rules, many of which were later reinterpreted and adapted to Christianity.
These are more or less the rules we follow, excuse me, the rules we are supposed to follow, but even as we follow, or don't follow, the rules we are judging them by how we feel in the heart. My favorite example is Emmanuel Kant. He held honesty to be a higher law, so that if a guy comes to kill your buddy and asks if he is hiding in the closet, you have to tell him the truth. Sure it is a bad thing if your friend is killed, but it's in a higher cause so it is all worth it. Maybe it's all sound by impeccable logic but it feels wrong doesn't it? Certainly feels wrong to me.
My point was that we may think that we have learned morality from our mother's knee, or from the good book, or from dusty philosophical tomes, but it all really comes from the heart.
I think this all began with, I can't even remember the name now, situational ethics? No wait, moral particularism. I'm not sure how I got from there to here. But I tuned into The Good Place last night and the subject was, moral dessert. That cute blonde woman with the evil side had done a good thing and the two immortals were thinking of promoting her to the real good place but the one who is not Ted Danson was like she was only being good to get a reward, the moral dessert, but in order to be truly good, you have to good without any thought of a reward, just for its own sake, just because you yourself are good.
Maybe something to think about over the weekend.
But they weren't rules at the point of hunter gatherers, or laws like the law of gravity, you don't have Do unto others as they do unto you stamped across your genes, it is just kind of an inclination, a feeling, you can feel when you steal from your little sister that it's wrong.
I'm just kind of winging it here, going by what I remember of what I have read, but paganism, the worship of rocks and whatnot, is closer to science than religion. It's a way to understand the world. The number of deer in the valley is dependent on the rock god's mood. And it's also a technology (I always try to separate science and technology), if you appease the rock gods by leaving rabbit droppings in front of them they will increase the deer in the valley.
There's no morality in it at first, it is just a way to get things done, like how to chip the flints to make a nice arrowhead But eventually there got to be a hierarchy of gods with some ruling over others and you got some pretty powerful gods at the top. You know powerful like the chief, and in a well-functioning tribe the members obey the chief. It is a good thing. So maybe it is not only a smart thing to obey the sun god it is also a good thing.
Morality began to enter into religion, not only did the sun god want you to sacrifice a few goats to Him, He also wanted you to be good to your neighbor, to not tell lies, etc. I an a little weak here, I wish I knew more about ancient religions, but I'm pretty sure you will find something like the golden rule in them. At any rate ancient Judaism had done this because you can see it in the Old Testament.
And the Greeks took it up. Fresh from their victory over the right triangle they applied the same strategy to the right way to live. They took those feelings of good and evil and codified them into a whole set of logical rules, many of which were later reinterpreted and adapted to Christianity.
These are more or less the rules we follow, excuse me, the rules we are supposed to follow, but even as we follow, or don't follow, the rules we are judging them by how we feel in the heart. My favorite example is Emmanuel Kant. He held honesty to be a higher law, so that if a guy comes to kill your buddy and asks if he is hiding in the closet, you have to tell him the truth. Sure it is a bad thing if your friend is killed, but it's in a higher cause so it is all worth it. Maybe it's all sound by impeccable logic but it feels wrong doesn't it? Certainly feels wrong to me.
My point was that we may think that we have learned morality from our mother's knee, or from the good book, or from dusty philosophical tomes, but it all really comes from the heart.
I think this all began with, I can't even remember the name now, situational ethics? No wait, moral particularism. I'm not sure how I got from there to here. But I tuned into The Good Place last night and the subject was, moral dessert. That cute blonde woman with the evil side had done a good thing and the two immortals were thinking of promoting her to the real good place but the one who is not Ted Danson was like she was only being good to get a reward, the moral dessert, but in order to be truly good, you have to good without any thought of a reward, just for its own sake, just because you yourself are good.
Maybe something to think about over the weekend.
Thursday, February 1, 2018
I Think I Get it Now
Now I think that what Uncle Ken has been trying to say is that all cultures have some kind of morality, not necessarily the same morality, but some kind of morality. I agree that many cultures have come to share certain moral principles, probably because they borrowed ideas from each other.
The reason those cannibals had such a unique sense of morality was because they had been isolated from other cultures for so long, maybe since forever. That missionary guy and his wife and kid were probably the first outsiders that any of them had ever met and, as soon as that outside influence was introduced, the cannibals' morality began to change. Although some cannibal cultures have been known to eat their missionaries, it never occurred to these guys to do so. They liked the newcomers, even better than they liked each other. Indeed, it was the missionaries' threat to leave that prompted the cannibals to make peace with their neighbors.
Are you guys familiar with the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914? It tends to confirm Uncle Ken's assertion that people will generally get along once they get to know each other.
Here's a link if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce
The reason those cannibals had such a unique sense of morality was because they had been isolated from other cultures for so long, maybe since forever. That missionary guy and his wife and kid were probably the first outsiders that any of them had ever met and, as soon as that outside influence was introduced, the cannibals' morality began to change. Although some cannibal cultures have been known to eat their missionaries, it never occurred to these guys to do so. They liked the newcomers, even better than they liked each other. Indeed, it was the missionaries' threat to leave that prompted the cannibals to make peace with their neighbors.
Are you guys familiar with the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914? It tends to confirm Uncle Ken's assertion that people will generally get along once they get to know each other.
Here's a link if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce
I tried to post this last night but I lost my internet connection. The Blogger Machine saved it as a draft, but it didn't get the last paragraph, so I put that in tonight.
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