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Looking at our population, and so-called dominion over the Earth, it’s easy to think of ourselves as a successful species. We can easily see why evolution selected bigger brains, selected for intelligence, manual skill, ability to speak and so on. However, along with these advantages came problems of the SELF, of EGO, worry about the future, about our inevitable death and so on.
Can this be compared to a species of bighorn sheep in which evolution selects for bigger and bigger horns, thicker and thicker skulls, until the so-called superior animal can hardly hold up its head and can’t compete in the mating contests? Then the trend toward bigger horns stops or reverses.
Would it be possible to make a clear list of human foibles caused by our brainy advantages over other animals? A list that highlights disadvantages of our big brains/intelligence etc.?
For example:
1. fear of death (the end of ME as an obsession)
2. worry (one worry leading to the next worry)
3. hoarding run amok (greed working against community survival). Inherited wealth, usury etc.
4. protracted grief
5. protracted rage (vengeance run amok) vendetta
6. master race, chosen people - racism, slavery, genocide
What you’re looking for is a model of the structure and processes of the ego-self, and their social projections which includes the ways these get us in trouble.
I recently saw a PBS show (NOVA, I believe) called “Clever Monkeys”. Evidently, some species of social monkeys are subject to stress diseases (including depression) in ways that are symptomatically very similar to humans. Some of what we consider “human” problems may, therefore, be common among species that have similar social lifestyles.
What you’re looking for is a model of the structure and processes of the ego-self, and their social projections which includes the ways these get us in trouble.
Right. On this forum we’re often discussing processes of the ego-self that lead to disaster. Climate scientists tell us what is likely to happen if we continue to add more carbon to the atmosphere. Can we here psychologists and students of the human mind tell the world what is likely to happen if technology follows the trajectory it is on, and the ego-self follows the trajectory it is on?
The subtitle of Jared Diamond’s book, ‘COLLAPSE’ , is ‘How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.’ Presently, if what the climate scientists tell us is true, we’re choosing to fail. Given our intellectual brilliance, with the resulting powerful new technologies, how is this drift toward failure possible? If we agree that we’re not in the grip of a death wish like the fundamentalists, can we pinpoint the attributes of the human mind that allow us to drive our civilization over a cliff?
The horseshoe crab has been around for over 500 million years. They found a reliable design. Can humans tweak their ego-selves in a benign way that will allow us at least the tenure of the Neanderthals? (300,000 years - still a flash in the pan compared to the horseshoes).
11. Sarah Palin
12. Wingnuts
13. bad hair
14. Faux Nuze
15. razor burn
16. clowns
NIce angle, let’s go with it.
17. Hangovers
18. Stalking ex-girlfriends
19. Kids who won’t leave after graduation
20. Insurance premiums going up
21. Parking tickets
22. Picking up after your dog
23. Doctors who say, “Turn your head and cough.”
24. Country music
25. Putting up with Bro Mario, Celal, and the growing senility of Dennis
26. Daytime television
I dunno. There is some evidence that other primates have similar social ills. I’m hesitant to dismiss the possibility that the animal kingdom contains oddities that we fail to comprehend. Who knows what’s really going on under the sea?
Indeed. Octopuses have brains in their legs. Clever little buggers those cephalopods. Who knows what they may be getting up to down there. Might erven be enjoying themselves. Immoral little critters!
“I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied-not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth.”
walt whitman
