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September 27 In Our Time. BBC Radio 4. Melvyn Bragg.
September 23 Watch "Admiration!"Admiration! Want to see more cool videos? Think you have an even cooler video? If you're having trouble watching the video, try copying the following URL into your browser: http://www.999today.com/peopleandsociety/news/story/3456.html September 17 Admiration. Celebrity Worship. Gods. Religion. Leaders...What Are You Going To Use Your Brain For?
1) The facts :
a) Your brain is part of your body - just like your hands or your heart. b) Look at your hands : look now! Suppose you had never seen a hand before. Pretend you were a visitor from outer space with lots of sucker things instead of hands, like an octopus. What would you think a hand was for? The answer is that just by looking at it you could make some guesses, but you would not really know what a hand was for until you had seen it working. Now for a few minutes do something with your hands or better still, watch other people doing things with their hands. c) What did they do with their hands?
Answer : they waved them about and pointed at things, they held on to things, they picked things up with their hands, they pushed things with them, they grasped things. But almost always they used their fingers and if their hands were not fitted with fingers there are still some things they could do, like pushing or punching, but most other things would be difficult and often impossible to do with their hands if they were not fitted with fingers. So it seems to you, a visitor from outer space with no hands, but just lots of sucker things, that fingers are the most useful and important part of hands.
2) Now the next thing I want you to do is, very, very : difficult !
You will need two things to do it with, an animal and another person. 1) Any animal will do, but the best is to use is a pet, like a cat or dog, even, a pet rabbit.
2) Any other person will do, but the best to use is a Mummy, Daddy, Uncle or Auntie or Granny, or even, a friend. They must be a human though, not an animal friend like your dog or pony.
I have already warned you that what you have to do is, very , very, difficult. This is because it will seem strange to you as you have never done it before or even seen anyone else do it. We, or rather you, are going to watch them and discover, just like we did with hands and fingers, what brains are for and what part of brains are most important and useful. Now, when you are ready, start watching an animal. But first of all before you start watching grab a note book and a pencil. Make Some Wishes
1. Working out how to make them come true by imagining different solutions (simulating).
2. Choosing one of the solutions.
3. Using effort to try out the chosen solution.
4. Rejecting it if it did not work and imagining another solution and using effort to try it out.
Where did the wishes come from?
Think of a wish, say, "I wish I could fly like a bird, or I wish I could have a fast motorcycle, or I wish I was a famous actor (or actress) and everyone thought I was a wonderful person, or I wish I was a king or a queen and I could order everyone about". These wishes are all a wish to become something that you are not or to have something that you have not got. They are the most usual wishes. The next question is obviously. a) Why do you want to be different than you are now? b) And, why you want to have something you have not got? Animals don't think like a but often like b. Nearly all humans think like a and b. For example, your dog or cat or pet rabbit wishes suddenly it had something lovely to eat or could go for a lovely gambol and play, but the wish does not last long and if it does not come true it just does something else or goes to sleep and forgets about it. Your pet never wishes it is different from what it is, more beautiful, stronger etc. It simply does not imagine (simulate) such things. Simulate is a fancy word, which merely means pretend in the brain. Animals, particularly domestic animals, simulate a little; your dog simulates (pretends in its brain) imagine if you like - an awful lot. So where have we got to now after all this work and hard thinking !
Let's make a list that we can agree is right or about right, sticking to the essentials only.
1) Your brain is part of your body. 2) Both animal and human brains contain - Wishes. 3) The wishes in a human brain are 'often' wishes that they as persons, wish that they were different from what they are.
Animals never wish they were different from what they are. Both humans and animals often wish for something they have not got. Both humans and animals simulate, but humans do it more than animals. If you go carefully through this list it is obvious the important items are : a) Wishes are terribly important to humans and both human and animals imagine things. b) Only humans wish they were different from what they are : older, prettier, younger, richer, stronger, healthier, etc.
Question : Where did the wish to be different come from ?
Answers : Older - seeing older people and admiring them. Younger - seeing younger people and admiring them.
Prettier - seeing other people and admiring them. Cleverer - hearing about or talking to other people and admiring them. Richer - Meeting or reading about richer people and admiring them. Stronger.......Healthier........ Common Factor = Admiration
Answer : The power in brain to simulate BEING THEM. Animals never simulate THEM - only events - happenings Solution : Admiration causes you to wish that you were different from what you are. Question 2 a : Where does ADMIRATION come from? Answer : Seeing, meeting or reading about other people (or birds flying).
Some other people cause admiration, which causes the wish to be different and maybe to copy them. So our visitor from 'outer space' would say, "That's a funny lot, the most important parts of their brains are the effect other people have on them, they don't think for themselves really". "Other people, in a way, seem to do the thinking for them or at any rate; determine their thoughts." Ref, Dr Vilaynur Ramachandran. The Emerging Mind. BBC Reith Lectures The Human Brain and its amazing quantity of 'mirror neurons' (found by examining and experiments with brain damaged and/or car accident victims). 'Children need freedom and chaos, not tests, ticks, and smiley faces' review | Children's Books - Times OnlineMichael Rosen
Faith Schools. Church Schools. Government UK. Educationalists take note - no one is impressed! September 11 Church Schools. Faith Schools. SACRE. NASACRE. Government: Schools and Religious Partnerships (Education).BBC - Action Network - Religion in Schools. UK. REBT & Disconnection.
Religion in Schools. (Discrimination - self-downing, ego reduction ['prayer', 'praying' or 'bowing' to a God, for good/evil God or ideology ] and self-harm. Esp., 'young' children and the 'vulnerable'.
"I am bringing up my 8 year old twins a girl and boy. I find it very alarming
that religion has found itself getting into areas other than those of RE and Assembly that have a statutory requirement. It has adjusted itself in our Schools by adopting a Pantheistic God, the worship or tolerance of many gods, and a politically correct non-discriminatory approach, which seems against most of (past) ancient scriptures dogma : in the hope, no doubt, to find greater favour amongst the non-believing majority by doing this amazing feat and then by obeying to a greater extent the new anti discrimination laws. Ofsted have become publicly paid upholders of 'public ecumenically (unity among churches and religions) canon law' that does take us back somewhat to the dark pre-enlightenment days of the ecclesiastical courts! See, the SACRE Link. 67% of the country do not want Faith or Church Schools and
82% think that religion does more harm than good. "They preferred the ancient light of divinely blessed authority to the distant glimmer of democracy. "God saith, 'Touch not mine anointed' ", wrote a Cavalier knight as he reluctantly girded on his sword for the battle". Sir Winston Churchill. Ref, Guardian/ICM Poll Dec 2006. Of course, to have adults subjected to (questionable) moralistically or
(questionable) truths i.e. for most of the adults in our country and in our modern world, varying quantities of multiple faiths and beliefs is one thing, but to have our little children subjected to cultism outside the statutory core subjects of RE and the Assembly situation is quite another matter. It has been made by our authorities quite unpractical and very unjust to remove a child from Assembly or RE for obvious reasons. Even, if it were easily possible, it would be a very questionable thing to have happening at any school! It is not recommended by the British Humanist Association - as yet. Most parents seem to be quite happy to go along with the 'good bits' in religion, but are becoming more intolerant to the unnecessary exposure of their children to the greater 'spiritual' amounts of indoctrination by way of the current expanded learning about all the major (and minor) religions in class. There is another matter which is quite beyond that of any particular belief or
faith, and well beyond the realm of a 'strength of conviction' (unreliable measurement) concerning some of the latest theoretical research into the deeper psychological make up of children, which is, so very obviously and very different from an adults perceptions. Irrational beliefs are at the core of emotional disturbance, so that : sowing the seeds of any singular seriously held 'truth' at a young age by 'great strength' (despicable and in its own right to children or the vulnerable, with the obvious negative reactionary consequences in some at a later date) of an overbearing, and overwhelmingly powerful Authority, in an intellectually claustrophobic atmosphere that is in an Assembly, or a 'singular' religion RE class; will magnify and catalyse a distinct process in the 'vulnerable' or developing young mind. The persuasiveness (doctrine and dogma : combining of spiritual development and moral development together) in the latest SACRE for all schools advice, I feel, could put some (vulnerable) children at risk and leading on to society as a whole later on. Maybe, it has already done this (unwittingly) by promoting, and thus, going beyond most of our 'normal boundaries' in the post-enlightenment age, with dualism, totemism, animism, celebrity worship, unnecessary restrictive environmentalism, unnatural hesitation, hysteria and 'seizure' of thought patterns that are fear related or the result of scaring children or the vulnerable i.e., the above Authority. (The Great Global Warming Swindle, Channel 4 TV). If the Government, being really serious; they would remove VAT on renovating properties, insulating products, and give everyone many other incentives. The above leads children and young adults open wide to charlatanism (cults) of one form or another. Parents have to deal with this particular and very insidiously difficult problem; trying to unscramble what (nonsense) the children have learnt at school. I think that under the latest current trends in the law - Equality Act - I would
be very hesitant to enforce the particular requirements of SACRE that I have so far seen. Imposing tradition on the greater mass of population by force of law, and separately, in the most admirable attempt to make men virtuous by muddled, complicated, if not unfathomable propositions, is at its best a waste of time, at its worst, a usurpation; and so very especially, when any of our children and the 'vulnerable' are concerned. Educational bureaucratic behaviourism and our children not knowing the real and specific facts of the pointless evolution of our species; so long as they feel good about themselves and develop "toleration for cultural diversity" is causing havoc with every student's level of achievement. Desensitization and inducing acceptance of alternative values by psychological means rather than the rational means of most parents by an institution is not (easily) acceptable. A simple solution : if there is to be religious education, secularists consider
pupils should be told that "some people believe this and others believe that and yet others believe none of these things". It seems today 10/9/2007 that the Government is set on creating more
Faith/Church Schools against all practical advice, excepting that advice coming from the Faith/Church sector, obviously. Can the Religions be fully trusted to be inclusive? I would advise parents of children who attend Faith/Church Schools to be fully aware of "what" really can go on (secretly behind closed doors). A form year teacher (I was not going to mention this, but a couple of years has passed and the teacher has left the School) said to all the children of their class, "That anyone who does not believe in God (Christian God) is not a member of my class". The 6 year old children were scared out of their wits! My thinking is that : becoming human is a process and not some event. The above
impositions will only add to confusion and the problems around us; if this all has not already done so. Ref, self-harming. How to handle freedom and not conformity, including - discernment, should be the priority taught in our Schools and fully contained within our School Ethos-es. Without any discernment we have more than MAD-ness = Mutually Assured Destruction, ineffective (personal martyrdom or mass ideological suicide) the Trident Missile capability and the end of all our human civilization as we know it ! Ref, F.A. Hayek 'The Road to Serfdom' - Totalitarianism; the road fraught with terrifying dangers, which some of us will so very blindly and willingly support, also, and especially, if the going gets tough and herding occurs. Mass public disconnection from government, (hysterical) irrational behaviour - REBT, and Totalitarianism; an interesting combination, warranting some further study. www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/02/18/the-economist-or-the-statist/ The Economist or The Statist? It would be a shame to have our schools becoming the hotbeds of ethical power
struggles, sometimes, and unfortunately, connected to business interests by a noisy minority (see, above poll). Private Schools being particularly susceptible to some fringe funding interests and very easily manipulated or infiltrated by the 'strength of conviction' of (a singular/particular or minority/extreme) faith or belief. With great sadness (I am 55 years old) I find that my 7 year old daughter at her School (nameless) has a 'repetitive recital' of The Lords Prayer at every Assembly, she believes, on questioning that "God may or may not of made the world" and at lunchtime she has two Graces presumably with the same type of repetition. In practice, she has no idea who are Allah or Mohamed and only has heard about the 'Jesus God'. She has also not been told that she may, or may not, (freely) believe in some God i.e. as she wishes. Ref, Arthur Koestler 'Bricks To Babel' Chapter 4 Jerusalem Sadness. This would greatly delay the modern positive progress that we are making to a better future for our children and our society by the way of gaining exciting input from all of us, with the kind, caring, and very advanced philosophy of multiculturalism, and an inclusion of all of us as multiple intelligences. Ref, Howard Gardner www.infed.org/thinkers/gardener.htm and 'Thinking in Education' 'Socrates for
six year olds' "Freedom is a word rather like time, everyone thinks that they know what it
means, but cannot define it. The foundation of freedom is knowledge and without knowledge no man can be free. That is why religious and secular dictators throughout history have burned and censored books, closed universities, and imprisoned professors, and do so in some parts of the world today. Freedom is the ability to choose courses of action and to make decisions that are based on an objective knowledge of the world. Without such knowledge primitive subjective feelings, values, and goals, remain the primary determinants of human action. Knowing this the unscrupulous manipulate the credulous." Ref, The Proper Structuralised View of the World. "In the fourth century (BC) ! Highly educated men had ceased to believe in the existence of supernatural persons called Zeus, Athena, Apollo, etc., with their mythical attributes and adventures. Myths were not dogma, and no one was required to profess a belief in them". Cornford - The Republic Of Plato. I suspect my children, are expected, in 2007, to express verbally (out loud and to others) their belief in 'them' and to partake in some form of transcendentalism, transcendental-analytic or (supposedly) therapeutic (piecemeal) analytic philosophy at the expense of 'logical empiricism' and 'deductivism'. One child told me today, "That they cannot get a certain 'major' prayer out of their head, it keeps on repeating itself", due to its persistent and constant repetition at Assembly. Thereby, overriding or forfeiting a large part of our children's inherent, 'general' and 'natural' discernment. Ref, JSTOR: International Review of Educational Philosophy Western World. All religion in our schools, unless : strictly comparative and just as fully
inclusive of the 'Great British Tradition' of Humanism is against the real interpretation of 'The Charter For Human Rights' and the 'Charter For Children's Rights'. "The UK is rated in the bottom third of the table for educational well-being"
and at the bottom (or near) of the table for (most) children who engage in 'self-harming' in the western industrialised nations. On the humorous side, a Humanist psychologist said, "Whilst the Government,
Church, and worrying parents, wanting to improve children are around; we are kept in business, they both have the ability to create guilt". George Bernard Shaw said, "That to pass exams you had to write as if it was twenty years ago; most professors were at least twenty years behind the times". I have the feeling that our children's brains and our society to survive will have to adjust to the modern world in having a good knowledge of Neuro-Liguistic Programming (NLP) and Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) in coping with a booming Virtual World. Memes, Memetics, and our human evolution, as put forward by the famous biologist Professor Richard Dawkins FRS, combined with the profoundly heart satisfying subjects of History, Evolution, and Cosmology (HEC). To survive as a species we will need other 'guiding lights', who are now, mostly, in the modern world, beyond any elements of 'superstition'. The links I will put here and in Links.
Equality Act (as regards) Schools. Now Enforceable By Law!
www.teachernet.gov.uk/wholeschool/equality/religion/ SACRE, Dorset, www.dorsetforyou.com/index.jsp?articleid=328106
And www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,1978045,00.html And www.selfharm.org.uk/Article.aspa?PageId=255&NodeId=259 Friday 9th February 2007 research article. September 10 Nihilism. Progressive Evolution vs Human Social EvolutionThings to think about.
Altruism.
A Global Humanity. NATO and The United Nations forces realignment after the Cold War. Forces used in various 'theatres' for social progress, to prevent mass cruelty and mass genocide with 'rebuild programmes' centered on the furtherance of democracy. Young men and young women of the (comfortable) West paying the ultimate price (death) for a global humanity, without any ideal of conquest, bounty or mercenary rewards!
Do you or I have any, "Tenable moral position"?
"Dawkinsian"
"Evolution" not progressive as such i.e., not 'going' anywhere! Species/animal survival - ours/is - the only 'principal' aim of "Evolution" + occasional/accidental "random mutation".
Retreating or Static World of our Social Evolution? Evidence of? 1/2 all Asian children cannot read or write! Worse in Africa? 40,000 'street children' in one town of Delhi, India. And, the many other appalling, quite atrocious (horrifyingly wicked), statistics!
What is holding up our 'social evolution'? Answer : The horrifyingly wicked - you and I, but especially our secular or religious leaders who have this knowledge!
They must be brought to account by all of 'us'!
Science and Technologies very rapid 'evolution'! September 07 BBC NEWS | Health | Depression leads to worst healthRational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) Cognitive Therapy.
September 05 Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT). Spirituality and Psychotherapy - Conundrum.An Example of "Savage Science"? NB "Empirically-based" - nonsense?
Article
An empirically-based rationale for a spiritually-integrated psychotherapy
Mental Health, Religion & Culture
Click here (look it up) for access to the latest key research articles An empirically-based rationale for a spiritually-integrated psychotherapy Authors: Kenneth I. Pargament a; Nichole A. Murray-Swank b; Nalini Tarakeshwar Affiliations: a Bowling Green State University, USA B Loyola College in Maryland, USA c Yale University, USA DOI: 10.1080/13694670500138940 Published in: Mental Health, Religion & Culture, Volume 8, Issue 3 September 2005 , pages 155 - 165 Abstract In this paper, we offer an empirically-based rationale, for a particular kind of psychotherapy, spiritually-integrated psychotherapy. Drawing on several lines of research we note that:
1) spirituality can be a part of the solution to psychological problems; 2) spirituality can be a source of problems in and of itself; 3) people want spiritually sensitive help; and 4) spirituality cannot be separated from psychotherapy. We then discuss the defining characteristics of spiritually-integrated psychotherapy. It is based on a theory of spirituality, empirically-oriented, ecumenical, and capable of integration into virtually any form of psychotherapy. The paper concludes by considering potential problems associated with spiritually-integrated psychotherapy, including the risks of trivializing spirituality as simply a tool for mental health, reducing spirituality to presumably more basic motivations and drives, imposing spiritual values on clients, and overstating the importance of spirituality. Perhaps the greatest danger, however, is to neglect the spiritual dimension in psychotherapy. This paper sets the stage for the articles in this special issue of MHRC which describe the development and evaluation of several innovative approaches to spiritually-integrated psychotherapy. My Note:
Culture Shift. School Ethos Shift.
(REBT) Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy.
"Irrational beliefs are at the core of emotional disturbance". Hospital reports (UK) on young people who 'down' themselves. Then some (sensitive and/or vulnerable) do self-harming. "MOSTLY AS A RESULT OF IRRATIONAL BELIEFS". Where (I wonder) do those (particular) beliefs come from (indoctrination/brainwashing)!
Do I want my children even to consider them?
Do parents have any choice in the UK (see photo - application form for a Church or Faith School)?
Do my children have a choice in the UK?
Does any one care, except when (they) children or young adults misbehave?
What are the (later) social results of "superstition" in education and the rejection of the "modern synthesis" and the "modern enlightenment"?
What are the consequences when the "superstition" believed in and the "peers" that are trusted, are then found out to be time wasters and the authority of the (past respected) "peers" realised as complete charlatans?
Where does this leave the more sensitive or normal individual?
We know that the Church and Religions have a fight on their hands for memberships and followers. There is no excuse for a blatant discrimination against secularism or the secularist (non-religious) families and their children - sponsored financially by the State - contained within the dreadful 'application form' for a child's entry to a (local) School. It does any belief/faith system a large disfavour by showing up the underlying discrimination of the Church and State/Local Government in its avoidance or exploitation (spirit of) the Law of the recently passed Equality Act. It also shows up the problem of discrimination that exists not in the outside secular world, but deep within the Churches and Religions, it as, as if, they cannot help themselves: however good may be their own rhetoric and dogma. They will have to attend lengthy and difficult (for them) 'seminars' to realise their own past errors in not recognising the full acceptance of toleration by most people in our society and for all its people.
Is evil a useful term?There is a school of thought that holds that no person is evil, that only acts may be properly considered evil. Psychologist and mediator Marshall Rosenberg claims that the root of violence is the very concept of "evil" or "badness." When we label someone as bad or evil, Rosenberg claims, it invokes the desire to punish or inflict pain. It also makes it easy for us to turn off our feelings towards the person we are harming. He cites the use of language in Nazi Germany as being a key to how the German people were able to do things to other human beings that they normally wouldn't do. He links the concept of evil to our judicial system, which seeks to create justice via punishment — "punitive justice" — punishing acts that are seen as bad or wrong. He contrasts this approach with what he found in cultures where the idea of evil was non-existent. In such cultures, when someone harms another person, they are believed to be out of harmony with themselves and their community, they are seen as sick or ill and measures are taken to restore them to a sense of harmonious relations with themselves and others, as opposed to punishing them. Psychologist Albert Ellis makes a similar claim, in his school of psychology called Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy or REBT. He says the root of anger, and the desire to harm someone, is almost always one of these beliefs:
He claims that without one of the preceding thoughts, violence is next to impossible. September 04 The Tryranny Of The SpecialistsFor Those Who Smoke !
What other 'usurpations' do we have to endure from the 'specialists' ?
Article :
Though most lung cancer is caused by smoking, fewer than two percent of smokers contract cancer (Professor Sir Richard Doll - 170 per 100,000).
It would be illegal to publicise the effect of a medicine that works in fewer than 2% of patients.
Similarly the warning that "Smoking seriously harms ... others around you" is fraudulent, not borne out by the clinical database of passive smoke, and totally contradicted by medical experts without vested interests.
For obvious reasons, the smoking ban in Ireland has now pushed up youth (15-18s) smoking by a massive 16.8% three years post-ban (Office of Tobacco Control data), and destroyed much of normal social life.
It seems Alan Johnson is taken in by the likes of 'Professor' Kenneth Warner who pockets $2m from Big Pharma to demonise smokers in the absence of a medical degree.
Harry Davies, Galway, Ireland The Prehistoric Mind. How did Prehistoric Man Think? The Primitive Mind.The Prehistoric Mind. How did Prehistoric Man Think ?
The Primitive Mind
Problem of discerning cultural and religious phenomena. Religion is a mental or spiritual phenomenon in which the sacred or supernatural world plays an important part. Obviously, this essential expression of religion cannot be investigated archaeologically - the remains are "word-less". Religious meanings can only be inferred indirectly and in exceptional circumstances from the material finds. The investigation of prehistoric religion faces the problem of determining which objects and finds are to be taken as signs of religious intention, experience, and activity. Not all unusual and puzzling finds necessarily reflect something religious; moreover, there are some remains that may have had a profane as well as a religious or magical function. Conjectural nature of scholarly statements. In all probability, only a small number of the material remains of prehistoric religious practices have been preserved and still fewer of them discovered and adequately documented. This intensifies the necessarily fragmentary nature of all statements about prehistoric religion. Uncertainties about methodology further aggravate disputes among scholars as to the reliability or probability of their interpretations. As with historians in general, there is a positivistic position, the proponents of which desire little more than to classify, describe, and define their specific finds and findings. That stance is opposed by another position that, in addition, considers it important to relate these findings to common human experiences and to seek out analogies with situations in more recent times; that is, to attempt a reconstruction of prehistoric spiritual life. Methods. Material remains. Although religion is largely a mental phenomenon, it involves numerous material accessories: artefacts and places of cultic and ceremonial significance, pictures and symbols, sacrifices, and votive offerings. In many cases religion makes use of art and, to some degree, certain inferences about religious conceptions can be drawn from burial sites. The interpretation of such sources from analogies with present-day religious practices means, in effect, that a more or less complete congruence or similarity is being inferred from a partial congruence that is observed. Not infrequently, particular findings can be explained in various ways. It is often unclear, for example, to which religions category a find belongs, since a sacrifice and a burial, cannibalism and human sacrifice, or animal sacrifice an animal cult are frequently not distinguishable archaeologically. Thus, it is not enough to select some particular present day 'primitive' religious phenomenon and apply it automatically to archaeological material; rather, it is first necessary to carry out extensive comparative studies in order to ascertain connections of sufficient scope and to establish a basic congruence of meanings. Usually only general trends, rather than concrete particulars, can be comprehended in this fashion. Nevertheless, the find may be interpreted in various ways and, hence, it becomes necessary to select the most workable, or the most probable, interpretation. A fundamental prerequisite for the use of historical-cultural analogies is the assumption of the psychic unity of human nature (i.e., that human beings in all times and places are essentially the same mentally); hence, the basic question arises as to whether or not early prehistoric humans can be included in that unity. The particular answer one gives to this question corresponds to a great extent to his particular approach, whether from the point of biology or the humanities. The biological sciences tend to view early man even physically as half animal, while human studies emphasize more strongly the fundamental similarities that connect even the earliest humans and cause them to stand apart from the animals.
"T h e M i n d B l o w i n g C o n n e c t i o n" !
Whatever the case, it can no longer be doubted that earliest man stands closer to present-day man from the evolutionary and biological aspects animals known today (including the 'highest apes'), and that the quality of early man's mental accomplishments separates him from other animals and binds him fundamentally to present day humans.
For that reason it is generally sound at least as a guiding principle in empirical research - to view prehistoric man as essentially human, to understand him in terms of human nature, and to proceed from the assumption of the psychic unity of mankind, without thereby excluding further evolution and development.
The application of 'Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy' (REBT) on the 'Prehistoric Mind of Man'. 'The Primitive Mind'. Behaviourism or Behaviorism. Question: Mummy, asks Daddy, "How did Primitive Man think"? More to do - to this bit! Start: the corrections from 16/03/09 *correction marks
Question: Mummy, asks Daddy, “How did Primitive Man think”?*If we know how he/she (PM) thought, we may be able to learn how to think about overcoming the self-evident appalling-ness of primitive barbarity, ignorance, and the inherent superstitions; existing within the modern social world of man. Western modern man, and modern woman; so sheltered by their social system, having a much more complicated input to their mind or mindsets. Mostly, this mindset belongs in a framework of an urban social network, with the mind indoctrinated and brainwashed in a closed system of thought or a stage set by the popular media. We have been so embroiled in it, with our senses dulled by the consumerist urbanisation, unable to fully understand the importance of our deep roots within the primitive mind. A study of prehistoric man and the primitive mind, gives us some answers, far beyond those of philosophy and religion. Everything we think and every thought we ever have had does stem from our relatively greater time existing, as we are now, within thousands of years of our prehistory.* Ref, Beyond the comfort zone and, no - Wiki or Google for 1st year Uni students. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00j17xt/Analysis_Clever.com/ 'Fairy Fancy' Richard Dawkins. Chat rooms - networking, 'change our brains' - for the better? Something, may be, an awful lot better than nothing! http://luckyme0.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!A18BF3FCC5E126A2!2959.entry Note: Sedentism - its route to - Housing and cosmological thought and structured thinking - language, rituals (not so possible without sedentism). Half Nomadic - half unstructured thinking humans feed partially from the 'fully' human sedentists. Psuedo-sedentists or psuedo-sedentism of the reasonably 'secure' coastal dwellers in west Africa living 100 of thousands of years before - to the, 'extreme (modern) thinkers of 'ancient' Greece'!
Peter Wilson and Colin Renfrew - The 'Great Leap Forward' and a 'Structuralised World View'. "The adoption of the house as the permanent context of social and economic life also marks a major development in cosmological thinking - The adoption of the house and the village also ushers in a development of the structure of social life, the elaboration of thinking about the structure of the world and the strengthening of the links between the two". Peter Wilson and Richard Dawkins 'The Great Leap Forward 'The Ancestor's Tale' - a book for every family! Note: a great progression of Writing/Art/Language so on...
Stephen Hawking "From the confines of my wheelchair I can freely roam around the Universe"!
"T h e P r e h i s t o r i c M i n d" ! Primitive man probably thought very much as a young child thinks that is to say "in a series of imaginative pictures". He conjured up images or images presented themselves to his mind, he acted in accordance with the emotions they aroused. So, a young child or an uneducated person does today. Systematic thinking, is apparently, a comparative late development in human experience. It has not played any great part in human life until within the last 3000 years, and even today, those who really control and order their thoughts are but a small minority of humankind. Most of the world still lives by imagination and passion. 'A Short History of the World' H.G.Wells. Ref, "pre-logical" or "bricoleurs" "Bricolage" (improvisation) 'The Domestication Of The Human Species' Peter Wilson. "S a v a g e S c i e n c e" !
There is no sort of savage so low as not to have a kind of science, of cause and effect. But, primitive man was not very critical in his associations of cause, with effect. He very easily connected an effect, with something quite alien to its cause. "You do so and so", he said, "And so and so happens". "You give a child a certain berry and it dies. You eat the heart of a valiant enemy and you become strong". There we have two bits of cause and effect association, one true, one false. We call the system of cause and effect in the mind of a Savage 'Fetish', but fetish is simply 'Savage Science'. It differs from modern science, in that it is 'totally unsystematic and uncritical and is more frequently wrong'. H.G.Wells. When we see man 20,000 years ago, having completed the colonization of the six continents, which had begun a million years earlier, it is time to look back and survey his position. How did these people think? Almost universally they must have had a Primitive Mind. The pre-logical or semi-rational mind that fails to separate the individual from the group, and which, pursuing causes with misguided zeal argues "post hoc ergo propter hoc" (after this, therefore on account of this, the after-so-because: fallacy). Our civilised societies have never excluded the Primitive Mind. There are a proportion of people in all societies, who see no sense in the definition connections, and inferences, which their teachers hold to be self-evident. Indeed, in all societies there is more pre-logical thinking than we like to admit. Civilization, we may say, has advanced only at the cost of a struggle between science and superstition, working on the intelligence of the participants. A struggle of whose progress the legal status of torture and the social status of astrology; might serve as indicators. Advanced societies, therefore, are so stratified as to keep the Primitive Mind in a subordinate position. In this way individual responsibility and the rules of evidence, allow with fluctuating success, the development of law and the organisation of knowledge and all that follows from these practises. 'The Little Universe of Man', Professor CD Darlington. Western civilization is a thin and precarious crust, erected by the personality and the will of a very few and only maintained by rules and conventions skilfully put across, and guilefully preserved'. Lord Keynes, Economist. It is probably true that in general, the higher the education of individuals becomes the more their views are differentiated. If we wish to find a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards, where the more primitive, and common, instincts and taste prevail. This does not mean that the majority of people have low moral standards; it merely means that the largest group of people, whose values are very similar are the people with low standards. It is, as it were, the lowest common denomitor, which unites the largest number of people. 'The Road to Serfdom' Professor, F.A.Hayek, Nobel Prize Economics. Ref, UK: "PC is low, low church, like the Church of England; it is the lowest common denomination" 'The Second Plane' Martin Amis. "A N O M Y" ! (anthropological anomie/anomy - anomic, bricoleurs or Bricolage and pre-logical)
'The Savage Mind' Claude Levi Strauss
Anomy signifies the state of mind of one who has no standards, but only disconnected urges. He derides knowledge, education, and values. His only faith is the philosophy of denial and derision. He lives on the thin line of sensation, between no future and no past, responsive only to trivia. 'Life Chances', Professor Darendorf. With regard to all the basic questions of existence, a great section of our culture has just one function to befog the issues. One kind of smokescreen is the assertion that the problems are too complicated for the average individual to grasp. On the contrary, it would seem that many of the basic issues are very simple, so simple in fact that everyone should be expected to understand them!
To let them appear to be so enormously complicated that only a specialist can understand them, which tends to discourage people from trusting their own capacity to think. The result of this is twofold - a scepticism and cynicism towards everything, which is said or printed; and a childish belief in anything which is told with autority. This combination of cynicism and naivete is typical of some modern individuals. Its essential result is to discourage him from doing his own thinking and deciding. George Orwell.
"B e w i l d e r e d and A f r a i d" !
Another way of paralysing the ability to think critically is the destruction of any kind of 'Proper Structuralised Picture/View of the World'. Facts lose the specific quality, which they can have only as parts of a structuralised whole and stay abstract, and inert, quantitively unmeaning, each fact is just another fact, and all that matters is whether we know more or less. The media does have a devastating effect on this score, with the sometimes disregard of any scale of importance between life and death struggles between people and the importance given to trivia. This can hamper our judgement. Eventually, our attitude to what is going on in the world assumes a quality of flatness and indifference, life loses all structure. It is composed of many little pieces, each separate from the other and lacking any sense as a whole. The individual is left alone with these pieces - like a child with a puzzle. The difference, however, is that the child knows what a house is and therefore can recognise the parts of the house in the little pieces he is playing with, whereas, the adult does not see the meaning of the whole, the pieces of which come into his hands. He is 'Bewildered and Afraid' and just goes on gazing at his meaningless little pieces. 'The Fear of Freedom'. Dr Erich Fromm.
In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is! George Orwell. Of course, everyone has the 'right' to hold 'backward' (primitive) beliefs as long as they fully realise (through education) what their own faith and in the belief's system that they may belong to; in regard to 'responsibilities' for other people (less educated) and cultures (less advanced), advancement in the world. Their is no such thing as a glorious past with its lack of science: just ignorance, privation and deprivation for all people everywhere. CW.
In Every Primitive Tribe
"In every primitive (anthropological anomie/anomy - anomic, bricoleurs or Bricolage and pre-logical) tribe we find the medicine man in the centre of society and it is easy to show that the medicine man (sometimes: a leader, politician, doctor, celebrity or royal - one who knows what is best for all others) is either a neurotic or a psychotic or at least that his art is based on the same mechanisms as a neurosis or a psychosis. Human groups are actuated by their group ideals, and these are always based on the infantile situation. The infancy situation is modified or inverted by the process of maturation, again modified by the necessary adjustment to reality, yet it is there and supplies those unseen libidinal ties without which no human groups could exist. The medicine men are the leaders in this infantile game and the lightning conductors of common anxiety. They fight the demons so that others can hunt the pray and in general fight reality." Dr Geza Roheim, 'The Origin and Function of Culture'.
The Truths Contained In Religious Doctrines
"The truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised," writes Sigmund Freud, "that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth. The case is similar to what happens when we tell a child that new born babies are brought by the stork. Here, too, we are telling truth in symbolic clothing, for we know what a large bird signifies. But the child does not know it. He hears only the distorted part of what we say, and feels that he has been deceived; and we know how often his distrust of the grown-ups and his refractoriness actually take their start from this impression. We have become convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth in what we tell children and not to withhold from them a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level".
Not So Primitive - More Like Today
"Through time... there emerges a power, held and manipulated perhaps by a priest, a warrior, a manager, or a charismatic madman who just happens to be the genealogical leader of the largest kin group in the now heterogenous social fabric. The power itself represents a quantum leap over anything previosly weilded, but it is a long time before the weilders of the new power realize its full extent and possibilities. Far from being a conscious creation of naturally power hungry psychological types, it is at least as probable that the power developes more rapidly than the abilities of its handlers". 'The Evolution of Political Society' Morton Fried - Ref, 'The Domestication Of The Human Species' Peter Wilson.
'Useless Knowledge' Bertrand Russell. "Additional to the animal urges of survival and copulation, there is curiosity and fear of the new, both inherited from our primate ancestors. In humans, they are called neophilia (love of the new) and neophobia (fear of the new). The evidence is that neophobia is the stronger urge in humans and their cousins the apes. A few historical examples will illustrate our strong neophobic urge..." Ref, Blog - to be corrected, at the start of blog http://luckyme0.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!A18BF3FCC5E126A2!210.entry
Primitive Man had sex for fun! http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1720068.ece And, today, Channel4 TV http://www.channel4.com/video/sex-in-the-noughties-dear-deidre/series-1/episode-1/three-is-the-magic-number_p_1.html
"Evolution has been a matter of days well-lived, chameleon strength, energy, zappy sex, sunshine stored up, inventiveness, competitiveness, and the whole fun of busy brain cells". Edward Hoagland 1932 - http://encarta.msn.com/refedlist_210028267_5/Evolution_Evolution_has_been_a_matter_of_days_.html#tcsel The Taliban (tribal culture) :-
'Shag em out' and 'peace and love' Drugs of the psyops! Viagra for Warlords - the 'recreational drug of choice' in forming the 'new utopia' http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7800549.stm A Note
1) Episodic Stage - Primate cognition 2) Mimetic Stage - 4 million to 400,000years (peaking with Homo erectus) 3) Mythic Stage - first use of complex language - 500,000 years to the present (peaking with Homo sapiens) 4) Material Symbolic Stage. Leslie White recognised this as defining the 'importance in human culture' (icons of religious faith, amongst the many other symbols) 5) Theoretic Stage. Donald calls this 'institutionalised paradigmatic thought' (writing - 'massive external memory storage'). A better and more detailed explanation can be found in Colin Renfrew's fascinating book 'Prehistory'. Writing this to try and clarify it in my own mind, as it must be (and in my great ignorance), the ground breaking formation of a basis (and) origin for (all our own) leaning! - stunning!
"We do most of our "thinking" without ever being conscious of it". Neuroscientist Chris Frith. Partner choice - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7558499.stm Spandrel
Volume 45, Number 9 · May 28, 1998
'The Prehistory of the Mind': An Exchange By Merlin Donald, Steven Mithen, Reply by Howard Gardner In response to Evolutionary Psychology: An Exchange (October 9, 1997) To the Editors: The exchange between Stephen Jay Gould and Steven Pinker [NYR, October 9, 1997] regarding the nature of evolutionary psychology and more specifically the notion of cognitive spandrels was entertaining and informative. Which aspects, if any, of our mental functioning are spandrels, as opposed to adaptive mechanisms "designed" by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems faced by our ancestors in their struggle to survive and reproduce (quoting Pinker), is an extremely important question that requires serious discussion and debate. But it also involves a study of precisely what those "kinds of problems" may have been, and quite how our ancestors solved them. In this regard a serious weakness in the current literature of evolutionary psychology is the almost blasé disregard for the archaeological, fossil, and palaeoenvironmental records that provide evidence to address these questions. Reading much of the evolutionary psychology literature as an archaeologist, I find it astonishing that gross generalizations are made about our Pleistocene hunter-gatherer past, with such little reference to the research of archaeologists who endeavor to reconstruct past lifestyles. Pinker did at least acknowledge the existence and value of the archaeological record, when commenting about whether reading may be a spandrel. But whatever its theoretical strengths or shortcomings as debated by Pinker and Gould, evolutionary psychology will not prosper until it takes the hunter-gatherer past as seriously as it claims to do so. The archaeological, fossil, and palaeoenvironmental records provide evidence about past behavior and cognition. First farmers made 'lucky beads'. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7457755.stm
Prehistoric teenage female and male. Immaturity of youth: see, Farb p30-31. Prehistoric man 'was never a teenager'. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1694591.stm Also: children, prehistoric boy or girl, were totally absorbed in the activities of their parents (hypnotically so? Ref, ease of human indoctrination and wishing to believe - almost anything, esp - when young) Therefore society could not advance - parent to child, child becomes parent, and in exactly the same exacting mould: seen in some tribal cultures today - the ‘closed system’ of no cultural, and no social advance or of little or any scientific advances! Dr J.Bronowski. ‘A broad menu’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7630042.stm Jacob Bronowski ‘The Ascent Of Man’ ‘The Long Childhood’ http://www.bbcshop.com/History/Ascent-Of-Man-DVD/invt/bbcdvd1608 Sexual segregation in some tribes (natural state of homosexuality of puberty recognised as normal, even encouraged - a practise for the adult role - 'perverted' by any adult involvement) Re-segregation after the 'myriad of types of initiation rites' - homosexuality after an initiation rite is given up, for the young male or female, to play the full part in the adults or tribal forms of the societies accepted forms and its structures of heterosexuality. "Even if homosexuality were, as a matter of fact, 'unnatural' (which it probably isn't), that would not, by itself, justify us in morally condemning it." 'The War For Children's Mind's' Stephen Law. Child murder and/or murder of loved one's and/or respected one's - so that their; the murdered one's: great strength could be gained from them after death! Ref, 'Primitive Science' and in the slaying of a 'brave or courageous enemy'. Ref, 'Savage Science', "You give a child a certain berry and it dies. You eat the heart of a valiant enemy and you become strong". Anthropological, the play - 'The Killing of Sister George' at its ending, and for its general concept as a film category http://www.reverseshot.com/article/killing_sister_george Latest Discoveries. Iron Age Britain. Time Team Channel4 TV. Nomad (egalitarians - hunter-gatherers) vs Villager's (vicious - sedentists) http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/2008/swords/index.html Big Brains - 1.4 million years ago http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7721999.stm 14/11/08 Murder http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7733372.stm 4,600 years ago! 18/11/2008 Warfare: How warfare shaped human evolution - life - 12 November 2008 - New Scientist
Link http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026823.800-how-warfare-shaped-human-evolution.html
Gangs getting 'more violent' http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/article.aspx?cp-documentid=12077260
Footprints 1.5 million years - Homo Erectus http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7913375.stm
BBC - BBC Two Programmes - The Incredible Human Journey, Asia http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00klf6j There are seven billion humans on earth, spread across the whole planet. Scientific evidence suggests that most of us can trace our origins to one tiny group of people who left Africa around 70,000 years ago. In this five-part series, Dr Alice Roberts follows the archaeological and genetic footprints of our ancient ancestors to find out how their journeys transformed our species into the humans we are today, and how Homo sapiens came to dominate the planet. In this programme, the journey continues into Asia, the world's greatest land mass, in a quest to discover how early hunter-gatherers managed to survive in one of the most inhospitable places on earth - the Arctic region of Northern Siberia. Alice meets the nomadic Evenki people, whose lives are dictated by reindeer, both wild and domesticated, and discovers that the survival techniques of this very ancient people have been passed down through generations. Alice also explores what may have occurred during human migration to produce Chinese physical characteristics, and considers a controversial claim about Chinese evolution: that the Chinese do not share the same African ancestry as other peoples. (DNA evidence suggests (proves) it was sexual attraction (over a long period of time) for people to mate with the men or woman who had a distinctive physical characteristic i.e., those with slightly flatter faces and narrower eyes than their ancestors who came from Africa)
"The fossil, nicknamed Ida, is claimed to be a "missing link" between today's higher primates - monkeys, apes and humans - and more distant relatives." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8057465.stm?lsm Evolution, Fish to Man. Man's Debt to the Past. http://luckyme0.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!A18BF3FCC5E126A2!960.entry 'The vast majority (>99%) of all species that have ever lived on the Earth have become extinct, with only a privileged minority leaving fossils to attest to their former existence.' 'The Tree of Life' OU. Ref, 'our or Man's debt to the past' and 'attesting too': consciousness and the reflection of/in a past history; only man happens, by pure chance, and capable of this extraordinary ability with the human brain having it's quite amazing quantity of reflective - 'Mirror Neurons': from - 'The Emerging Mind' Vilayanur Ramachandran. (Neuron = Nerve cell. It is specialised for the transmission of information and characterised by long fibrous projections called axons, and shorter, branch-like projections called dendrites. Synesthesia = A condition in which a person quite literally tastes a shape or sees a colour in a sound or number. This is not just a way of describing experiences as a poet might use metaphors. Synesthetes actually experience the sensations. Ref, empathy, religiosity, tribal instinct, shamanism: the domination of Homo sapien over Neanderthal (isolated in pockets and numbers fall leading to extinction) so on... "We are all synesthetes - to some degree" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8070210.stm A binding to the 'group mind', or 'sowing the seeds of our own extinction', by conforming to the group mind, and "a lack of reason - brings forth monsters"? Alice looks at our ancestors' seemingly impossible journey to Australia. Miraculously preserved footprints and very old human fossils buried in the outback suggest a mystery: that humans reached Australia almost before anywhere else. How could they have travelled so far from Africa, crossing the open sea on the way, and do it thousands of years before they made it to Europe? (In search or want, maybe, of a 'Holy Sun Grail'; the quest for 'sun' knowledge; like moths to a candle and so go east and find the rising sun - lush hunting grasslands, away from the dark forests, and dank waters and salty seas and the beaches of Indonesia? 'The Secrets of Stonehenge' revealed - rising Sun Soltices http://www.channel4.com/programmes/time-team-specials/episode-guide/series-1/episode-2 The results surpass their wildest dreams and this pivotal excavation finally enables the team to reveal not only when Stonehenge was built and how it was built but, perhaps most importantly, why it was built. Fun and Theories of Archaeology) http://luckyme0.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!A18BF3FCC5E126A2!4175.entry
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8195664.stm Shells - 80,000 years ago! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/sci_nat_enl_1251307747/html/1.stm Bad Smells http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8232000/8232607.stm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/990810064914.htm ScienceDaily (1999-08-10) -- Fire provided the spark for modern human evolution, but not because it allowed our ancestors to eat meat. Rather, it was the ability to cook tuberous roots akin to carrots, potatoes and beets that caused hominids to turn a major evolutionary corner about 1.9 million years ago, according to anthropologists Richard Wrangham of Harvard University, Gregory Laden of the University of Minnesota and Harvard colleagues David Pilbeam, Jamie Jones and NancyLou Conklin-Brittain. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8270000/8270396.stm 'A Protection Racket' And - Much Worse! What goes on in your 'modern day' culture! The facts of evolution are getting more exciting, with the passing of every day! Ref, 'Creationism is an impertinent insolence that flies in the face of the Divine (nature - naturism or naturalism - naturists) Becoming human is a process and not some event. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8285180.stm War and 'killing', can be fun (at least, 'the training'). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/8325588.stm "Dr" John ReidYou voted for this ridiculous war, Reid. So go fight it. (not a single shot will be fired in anger - man)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/martin_samuel/article2295753.ece It’s catching on. Martin Samuels in The Times today - “You voted for this ridiculous war, Reid. So go fight it.” And as Martin says, not just a quick in-and-out photo-op visit for a Minister in desert camouflage and body armour with our boys. No, go there, stay for a bit, and find out what it is really like to be in Helmand Province. |
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