Hear, hear! I've seen that too and couldn't help but think how right we were here about identifying "absolute materialism" as the dark religion par excellence and all that this connects to.
Darwin's Black Box - Michael J. Behe and Intelligent Design
- Thread starter Laura
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Hear, hear! I've seen that too and couldn't help but think how right we were here about identifying "absolute materialism" as the dark religion par excellence and all that this connects to.
Yeah, that Harari guy is so annoying. And on top of representing a brand of extreme darkness and what's wrong with this world, he sells books, people read them and he's trendy and a 'visionary'! No wonder he is Schwabb's side-kick - or should that be 'mini-me'? Schwabb is not shy about his twisted worldview either.
I have a techie friend and he recommended his books to me. He is a bit worried about the future Harari is portraying, but I think not worried enough. He is just like 'that's the future we'll be leaving to our children so we better prepare them and this guy is a genius for pointing the way'. I suspect most people who know about Harari feel the same way. Not enough alarms ringing, or not loud enough, I'm afraid. But then if you haven't cured yourself from materialism you may be unable to see it.
I have a techie friend and he recommended his books to me. He is a bit worried about the future Harari is portraying, but I think not worried enough. He is just like 'that's the future we'll be leaving to our children so we better prepare them and this guy is a genius for pointing the way'. I suspect most people who know about Harari feel the same way. Not enough alarms ringing, or not loud enough, I'm afraid. But then if you haven't cured yourself from materialism you may be unable to see it.
Can this creature show any more contempt for humanity than he does in the following quote??
Textbook schizoid!
omara
The Force is Strong With This One
I got his Homo Sapiens book, as a prize, and was happy about it, at first. Then I started to read it but quickly lost interest. I don't remember why, exactly, maybe his generalisations and assumptions about early homo sapiens and other hominids. Maybe I picked something up of his anti-humanism, without realising it. Now I'm tempted to start again, to better ascertain his agenda in it. We'll see.
I found this recent podcast featuring former US National Security Advisor under Trump, Gen. Mike Flynn, with a large number of Herari audio clips, such that it serves almost as a compendium of his agenda as stated over the past few years, as well as revealing his immense arrogance and contempt for the bulk of humanity. Let's hope that extreme arrogance and overconfidence are indeed the Achilles' Heels of psychopaths.
Note: was also surprised to hear that another of the guests on this podcast sent Harari clips to several "influencers" (his word) only to find that not one had even heard of him. Amazing.
rumble.com
Note: was also surprised to hear that another of the guests on this podcast sent Harari clips to several "influencers" (his word) only to find that not one had even heard of him. Amazing.
Flynn/Clark - Arrogance & Selfishness Will Be The Downfall Of The [DS], Patriots Are Winning
Prepare Today Save $50 & Get Free Shipping On 4 Week Emergency Food Kit http://preparewithx22.com Today’s Guest: General Flynn & Clay Clark Website: General Flynn https://generalflynn.com https://link
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I wrote down some thoughts about Darwinism and morality on Substack for those interested - some of them had been discussed on this thread, but I tried to tidy them up a bit:
luctalks.substack.com
It's a thorny issue to be sure, but the bottom line is that treating moral acts as "Darwinian payoffs" is a deeply corrupting and poor way of looking at things.
Darwinism, Morality, and Evolutionary Thinking
The problem with Darwinist conceptions of morality and altruism
luctalks.substack.com
It's a thorny issue to be sure, but the bottom line is that treating moral acts as "Darwinian payoffs" is a deeply corrupting and poor way of looking at things.
siftingmaterials
Jedi
Interesting thoughts. I think Darwinists who centre 'self,' or see biological survival strictly in the organism's terms, are not seeing evolution's patterns clearly. Not that it's easy to see evolution's patterns.I wrote down some thoughts about Darwinism and morality on Substack for those interested - some of them had been discussed on this thread, but I tried to tidy them up a bit:
Darwinism, Morality, and Evolutionary Thinking
The problem with Darwinist conceptions of morality and altruism
It's a thorny issue to be sure, but the bottom line is that treating moral acts as "Darwinian payoffs" is a deeply corrupting and poor way of looking at things.
There is this concept of mutualism, which I think is a handy idea to bring in here. Mutualism is a robust secondary characteristic of object relations. You don't get giant cedar trees without blueberries and black bears. You don't get salmon without the shade provided by cedars. You don't get orcas without salmon. For longer than humans have been around, whales, and whale-like creatures, and trees have contributed to the regulation of the global biosphere by acting as carbon sinks.
Bears don't eat blueberries blueberries to help build the right environment for cedars to grow, nor do salmon spawn to help orca populations thrive. Cedars don't provide shade for salmon spawning because they're part of a vast, complex ecosystem. There's no cause. That mutualism is the result of functional object relations that locks in a pattern.
The explaination of that pattern - Mutualism, a robust, secondary characteristic of object relations - is achieved through an analysis of the nature of object relations. The bear, the salmon, so on. How do these things help each other? How do they regulate this phenomenon? What are the behaviours, their own, individual patterns, that make this super-system possible?
The bear might not understand the profound effects of its behaviour, but we have some fractional understanding that our values, intentions, and behaviours have a broad impact. So maybe through a self-awareness of our emergent mutualistic pattern locking (and pattern breaking, of course) we devise systems of philosophy and civility that attempt to guide the proliferation of individual rights and free enterprise or whatever else. Maybe one of these theories is a radical concept called altruism: a totally selfless act. And we ask: is it possible? Can it be explained as a natural process? Is it part of our evolution?
It's a moral principle, a philosophical concept. Do we see it in nature? Yes, but there's no will of self behind it. It's obvious that the cedar, the orca, and the bear are all absolute beneficiaries of the lifecycle of the salmon. Altruistically speaking, the salmon's existence feeds a greater good by sustaining an interconnected, biodiverse, life-supporting system. But not through any act of conscious will...
I think I'd really just like to end with this idea that the organism, the self, the individual, while whole in themselves, are often unwittingly absolute contributors to higher systems. Humans are not excluded from this factor of the evolutionary process.
I would say that it's misguided for a Darwinist to point to the "selfishness" of genes, for example, because genes are literally selfless. That is an error in focus. They're just part of the congress of objects. It's equally wrong to identify a bear's will to survive or outcompete other bears as the crucial component of mutualistic pattern locking. It's simply that the bear was doing something that helped lock in that pattern. And everything else around the bear happened to do other stuff that kept it coming back. And black bears thrived for untold thousands of years this way, the full beneficiaries of the "sacrifice" of life around them. In turn, their sacrifice was made to each organism in relation.
Altruism as a philosophy or moral concept, or, applied altruism, seems to be an attempt to manufacture something that nature produces as a matter of course. Altruism, as far as I can tell, is a byproduct of mutualistic organism/object relations beginning at the microscopic level and probably extending out into the galactic scale.
Humans complicate the altruistic process by trying to create it. I would say, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes we realize we're engaged in altruistic relations with others without being aware.
Sometimes we're intentionally altruistic as FREE AGENTS, with no agreements made between individuals. Sometimes we just decide to do something totally unselfish for strangers. That's actually quite a complex act, but yes, I don't think anyone would argue it's possible. It's not, however, appropriate for a Darwinist to look at that act and critique it on the level of survival. When we talk about adaptation and evolution, that aught not be the level of relations that's relevant.
I wrote down some thoughts about Darwinism and morality on Substack for those interested - some of them had been discussed on this thread, but I tried to tidy them up a bit:
Darwinism, Morality, and Evolutionary Thinking
The problem with Darwinist conceptions of morality and altruism
It's a thorny issue to be sure, but the bottom line is that treating moral acts as "Darwinian payoffs" is a deeply corrupting and poor way of looking at things.
A very good read. Maybe you will have enough essays soon for a book?
One thing: 'far-fledged' should be 'far-fetched'.
Glad it made you think - well your reply here inspired me in turn to finally write something about language. It's such a huge and thorny topic, but I thought I'd give it a shot:
The Confusion Around Language
How language might really work and what that means.
luctalks.substack.com
I would have a question/comment or two, but I'll post them on my language thread so as not to be off-topic here. Thank you!
