[FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme
Steven A Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Wed Aug 16 19:30:52 EDT 2017
Merle -
Thanks for offering this up. My own maunderings about "what is in
human nature" having me trust that we are still *mostly* the animals who
gathered in groups of order Dunbar number (150?) who *mostly* loved one
another and treated one another with respect and generosity (up to a
myriad quirks of personality and a shared fate).
On the other hand, while members of said community/group/tribe/pack/herd
might extend some of that goodwill toward others they recognized as
same/thePeople, they had good reason to be less generous/trusting toward
others who were not so familiar, who spoke unrecognizeable languages,
whose skin/hair/eye color or features were significantly different. I
think these are very real evolutionarily adaptive roots of what we see
as Xenophobia today.
I don't describe this as a way of trying to normalize racist/ethnic
bigotry, but rather to acknowledge that it has some instinctual roots
that focus the "hateful/fearful teachings" that become institutionalized
in subcultures and perhaps entire cultures. And it is this wholesale
adoption by a group which ends up not only teaching, but maintaining the
fear (and therefore hate?).
I know your work is IN "peacebuilding". Does your model include an
acceptance of these somewhat instinctual responses to "the Other" ?
I was very pleased to see the speech by Heather's mother today which I
thought held a very positive message in what must be a very tragic
moment for her.
- Steve
On 8/16/17 4:16 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
> Obama's tweet about the events in Charlottesville got the most "likes"
> of any tweet in twitter history. It is a quote from Nelson Mandela:
> "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his
> skin or his background or his religion … People must learn to hate,
> and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love … For love
> comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite,”
>
> On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 12:50 PM, Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com
> <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:
>
> Marcus/Eric -
>
>
> Great observations, both. I think this cuts to (part of) the
> heart of the matter.
>
>
> I just recently watched "Glass Castle" (current run at Violet
> Crown) with Woody Harrelson playing the role of a fairly
> intelligent (his daughter, the memoirist characterizes him as
> brilliant) but highly dysfunctional father of 4 who himself has
> (mostly/almost) escaped the small Appalachian coal-mining town he
> was raised in by an acutely abusive mother and an
> apathetic/dysfunctional father and greater community. The family
> lives a vagabond life with Harrelson's character (Rex) leading
> them on an alternatingly merry and curiosity-driven chase through
> skipping out on bill collectors and trying to find the "next big
> opportunity" and "escape the forces out to repress us!". It is
> (IMO) a great story of a nearly effective attempt (by the parents)
> to escape/transcend their own dysfunctional roots and the mostly
> effective experience of the children escaping their own (passed
> down a generation) from that half-functional platform.
>
>
> I also picked up (at a "tiny library" in a neighborhood) a copy JD
> Vance's "Hillbilly Legacy", a memoir written by a 31 year old
> Harvard educated lawyer, now living happily (and presumably
> functionally) in San Francisco with his wife and child(ren?), but
> still quite attached emotionally/romantically to his own roots in
> Appalachia (a small KY coal mining town) and the Rustbelt
> (Middletown OH, aka MiddleTucky) where all of his family and most
> of his childhood friends still live and vote for and continue to
> support Trump.
>
>
> The common thread is the abject hopelessness that surrounded the
> people locked into those environments by circumstance, including
> lack of perspective to "just leave". Vance credits his
> Grandparents who raised him most of his life for having had enough
> perspective to shield him from the worst of that and to
> encourage/help him "just leave". His chronicle (I also listened
> to an NPR book interview when it came out maybe a year ago)
> includes feeling that he had "done everything in his power to
> waste his life up until about 18 years old" and looking at his
> cohort and family, might use the term "but for the grace of God,
> there go I".
>
>
> My Pollyanna (a fairly significant player in my personal Pantheon
> of Personalities which helps me cope with the kinds of Cosmic
> Ennui and Existential Angst that comes with trying to be a
> thinking/caring person in these hyper-connected, seemingly chaotic
> times) has me looking for a "bright side" of all of this.
>
>
> I particularly want to call out the following quote from Marcus:
>
> /A healthy society is one where individuals can mature to the
> point they can begin to doubt the meaning in their own
> anxiety (whether by themselves, with their shrink or their
> spiritual authority) and make it to the next day. /
>
> and offer a rewording (my words are _underlined_) or expansion:
>
> "/whether with themselves, their shrink, their spiritual
> authority,/ _or their community of emergently self-enlightened
> people_"
>
> and
>
> "/and make it /_beyond_/the next day/ _and into a new era of
> contagious enlightened self-interest_"
>
> I hope that if we can ever get through this acutely dark/inverted
> time that we can follow some of the example of Nelson Mandela in
> his perspective and leadership out of the centuries long
> oppression of his people that was most recently exhibited as
> Apartheid. Obviously that moment was only a partial antidote, as
> too many of the original problems linger or arise again. But I
> *think* it was a better solution than to the similarly
> genocidal/punative response many of his people were calling for
> when the descendents of their Colonial Overlords finally fell.
>
> I heard recently a quote from Barbara Boxer as she left the
> political stage after many decades:
> "No victory is final"
>
> This underscores why we are dealing with the rise of
> white-supremacy/nazi/confederate/kkk, gender oppression, and many
> other battles presumed to have been won. This moment (in most
> places) is nothing like the conditions of the antebellum South,
> nor the era of Nazi/Fascist power in Europe, but there are clearly
> strong echoes. Such things *might* be suppressed temporarily by
> force, but ultimately those kinds of behaviours/activities
> dissipate through healing and enlightenment much more than
> regulation/punishment/suppression.
>
> my $.02,
> - Steve
>
> On 8/16/17 9:10 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>
>> Eric writes:
>>
>>
>> < It is not so far from Nietzche’s notion that “God is dead”
>> creates a problem for people, and they will face a fork in the
>> road in how they try to deal with it. >
>>
>>
>> Yeah, it is probably nothing new that is happening nor a new
>> interpretation. Institutions of various kinds can give
>> individuals a role to play and guidelines for conduct, but a
>> highly interconnected population with a complex economy will
>> stress these institutions and reveal their limitations.
>> Meanwhile, only exceptional and delusional individuals can really
>> make a convincing case (esp. to themselves) about their unique
>> value either coupled-to or uncoupled-from from institutions.
>> However, I fear the stakes are pretty high now -- the contagion
>> of people going bonkers could be fast with social media. A
>> healthy society is one where individuals can mature to the point
>> they can begin to doubt the meaning in their own anxiety (whether
>> by themselves, with their shrink or their spiritual authority)
>> and make it to the next day.
>>
>>
>> Marcus
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com>
>> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Eric Smith
>> <desmith at santafe.edu> <mailto:desmith at santafe.edu>
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 16, 2017 6:56:23 AM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the Skeptical Meme
>>
>> > Their desperation and rage just comes from a feeling that they
>> can't confront, that they just don't have much to offer.
>> >
>> > Marcus
>>
>> Reading this, I feel like you could found a new generation of
>> something that is like existentialist philosophy but equally-well
>> political theory.
>>
>> It is not so far from Nietzche’s notion that “God is dead”
>> creates a problem for people, and they will face a fork in the
>> road in how they try to deal with it. Maybe even, considering
>> the currents running through European and particularly German
>> society at the time he was writing (and that he specifically
>> wrote about), driven by concerns based on similar observations.
>>
>> It strikes me that this is an available point of view for almost
>> any person. Granted, the distribution of rewards and
>> frustrations differs from person to person and also from region
>> to region, and that matters. But the black box (black hole?) of
>> how minds form characters and orientations in response to streams
>> of these things draws from an immense and to me-obscure range of
>> inputs.
>>
>> Makes me wonder,
>>
>> Eric
>>
>>
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> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org <http://emergentdiplomacy.org>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
> Visiting Professor in Integrative Peacebuilding
> Saint Paul University
> Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
> merlelefkoff at gmail.com <mailto:merlelefoff at gmail.com> mobile: (303)
> 859-5609 skype: merle.lelfkoff2
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
>
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> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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