Pre-Covid? I don't actually miss this, because I've spent my life improving every now and then my meager ability to update my take on reality, but if I were to miss something, it might be my idea that enough people in a representative democracy could be shocked by something into taking an interest in what's going on. i.e. propaganda had not yet been scientifically refined beyond that point.
But I only miss that, if at all, in the sense of 'Water under the bridge. What to do next.'
Maybe my real 'missing' after the past year goes something like this, as an example of it: When I referred to 'my meager ability', doubtless some people took that as some kind of modesty, false or true. To me, that was realism, based on all that I've learned on both the nuts and bolts levels, and the map or theory and model level of what is universal human nature.
There is not currently any reasons left in the neurosciences that stand in the way of the overwhelming evidence for the emerging model of human brains as DNA-fated, intrinsically self-delusional, tools for navigating any kind of empirical reality on the more less basis of 'pick between the delusions you have stored in you for your choices how to see reality at this particular moment'.
The model makes so much sense to me of what's going on in America today -- and the world.
If I miss anything now, I miss something like an expectation that where I to dig into why so many of us don't see anyone saying something like,'my meager ability' in a way that they might find it a realistic statement of fact, that I would find something encouraging about human nature. Today, I can't honestly doubt that behavior easily ties into the model of our brains as essentially delusion.
I find a few things about us every now and then that are genuinely encouraging still, but nothing worth hoping on.
I'm certainly not saying we are any better or worse animals than we've always been. Far and from that!
I'm saying we have somehow landed in the middle or beginning of some kind of 'perfect storm' that hits us in so many ways that exploit how we are made vulnerable by out own universal human nature.
It's actually been fascinating to me how that notion of 'self-defeat by your own nature' is the core idea in the ancient Athenian's 'tragic worldview'.
For one thing, that worldview evolved out of the insights their poets had about human nature. Obviously no scientific method, no brain scan technologies, nothing like what we have used to, in a way, arrive at the 'same' view.
Only the poets did it with naked, constantly self-deluding brains. That's realism, projected here through the lens of optimism. At least, that's 'optimism' how I do it.
But I only miss that, if at all, in the sense of 'Water under the bridge. What to do next.'
Maybe my real 'missing' after the past year goes something like this, as an example of it: When I referred to 'my meager ability', doubtless some people took that as some kind of modesty, false or true. To me, that was realism, based on all that I've learned on both the nuts and bolts levels, and the map or theory and model level of what is universal human nature.
There is not currently any reasons left in the neurosciences that stand in the way of the overwhelming evidence for the emerging model of human brains as DNA-fated, intrinsically self-delusional, tools for navigating any kind of empirical reality on the more less basis of 'pick between the delusions you have stored in you for your choices how to see reality at this particular moment'.
The model makes so much sense to me of what's going on in America today -- and the world.
If I miss anything now, I miss something like an expectation that where I to dig into why so many of us don't see anyone saying something like,'my meager ability' in a way that they might find it a realistic statement of fact, that I would find something encouraging about human nature. Today, I can't honestly doubt that behavior easily ties into the model of our brains as essentially delusion.
I find a few things about us every now and then that are genuinely encouraging still, but nothing worth hoping on.
I'm certainly not saying we are any better or worse animals than we've always been. Far and from that!
I'm saying we have somehow landed in the middle or beginning of some kind of 'perfect storm' that hits us in so many ways that exploit how we are made vulnerable by out own universal human nature.
It's actually been fascinating to me how that notion of 'self-defeat by your own nature' is the core idea in the ancient Athenian's 'tragic worldview'.
For one thing, that worldview evolved out of the insights their poets had about human nature. Obviously no scientific method, no brain scan technologies, nothing like what we have used to, in a way, arrive at the 'same' view.
Only the poets did it with naked, constantly self-deluding brains. That's realism, projected here through the lens of optimism. At least, that's 'optimism' how I do it.
