today we learn that the president's ratings follow the economy. This is not really news but warranted a diary here so the appearance of that diary helps me try one more time to explain what a system is and what our sytem is like in that context. This won't go away so I'll keep plugging at it. New ideas come to acceptance slowly and need lots of repetition and alternative explanations. I also am reading a book that adds fuel to the fire: Incomplete Nature HOW MIND EMERGED FROM MATTER. Terrence W. Deacon's book tells us:
Incomplete Nature begins by accepting what other theories try to deny: that, although mental contents do indeed lack these material-energetic properties, they are still entirely products of physical processes and have an unprecedented kind of causal power that is unlike anything that physics and chemistry alone have so far explained. Paradoxically, it is the intrinsic incompleteness of these semiotic and teleological phenomena that is the source of their unique form of physical influence in the world.
If you find that hard to follow do not dispair. My colleagues and I have been developing a similar line of thought since the 1950s and it is tough going. read on below and I'll provide another small part of the big picture.
Why do I keep saying that our system of government doesn't work? In fact it works all too well to achieve almost the direct opposite of its intended purpose. It is not a government that involves the people in any other way but to use them and keep them in check. The Occupy movements have been exposing this still one more time yet things seem to grind on as normal. We just finished the annual materialistic orgy dressed up in very thin religious clothing. The people are suddenly happier about the economy for reasons you need to explain to me. I see no change in the overall picture. As a result of this latest fix on whatever they are taking, they now like the president better. Well the President has not been changing all that much.
The premise behind our political system, if I understand it at all, is that an informed public will vote for those who will govern them as they wish to be governed. It will listen to them and reflect their desires. These Occupy people must not believe it is doing that. I certainly don't think it is. I was very naive in the last Presidential election. I went all out for Obama and was filled with hope and anticipation. I can't but place myself with the others who are now totally disillusioned. Writing this her will bring the usual outbursts by loyalists reminding me of all the good things that the President has done. I will wonder what has caused them to miss the point so drastically. We have been through this again and again. I'm sorry, but I do not have a pair of your rose colored glasses and from where I sit things are dismal!
Since I am the bearer of other than glad tidings about the past holiday let me just recapitulate what went on from that perspective. I'm sure it will not be unfamiliar to you.
Tons of waste were created. Wrapping, food, toys and gifts that will not be really used. Gas was burned and the economy got a jolt. The unsustainable economy got a jolt especially. Yes, the kids were thrilled for a few hours until sensory overload took over. Resources were used for the orgy and people feel so good because they covered it all with that religious film.
Now we are back to a country that has postponed its facing the impasse in Congress for a few months.We sit and let the environment die as we let religious myths stand in front of scientific knowledge. We watch the country crumble and we sit.
The book I mentioned at the top and our own research has been probing this behavior for some time. There are a number of things that you need to acknowledge about us humans and integrate these ideas into why a system of government based on enlightened input is not what we have. We have science and technology that is very potent at making toys for the capitalists to sell for increasing their wealth and at creating chemical solutions and big machines to "solve" medical problems and this makes other capitalists rich. Most of us sit here after the orgy and are strapped even worse than before the seasonal extraction of our limited resources because the capitalists had already used us and took more of the fruits of our labor.
Why? How do minds that produce all this also buy into the system so totally? Those minds have been very carefully shaped to accept myths. The potency of science and technology is used to fuel those myths. Our cognitive abilities are very limited and the way we govern (or fail to) ourselves is all the evidence you need.
What Deacon has learned in his studies mimics closely our own findings. Particularly in the Western World, the human cognitive system has been programmed with a curious religion/science duality in its world view and the myths that did this go very deep. The mind is free to probe and create and to sell and to control but all within the confines of the mythology. The religious character of our belief in science, technology, and capitalism mimics our belief in religion itself. That is why we can compartmentalize the findings of science and use them for limited purposes and still reject any evidence that we may be doing ourselves great harm.
The system has an uncanny organizing power so that as any attempt to change or redirect it comes on the scene it either eats it or destroys it. No conspiracy, no evil geniuses behind it. It can afford to let free inquiry go on with no threat that folks like us will ever convince the others to any degree. It selects the science and technology that fuels its greedy consumption and unchecked growth. The people are there to make it work and little else. They finance and provide their young for its wars. They keep control of resources so they can be gobbled up and squandered at holiday time. No folks, the reason there is an Occupy movement is that a few more than usual see some of this picture and want it to change.