[ExI] More EP was Clark abstract

hkhenson hkhenson at rogers.com
Thu Jan 10 16:18:22 UTC 2008


At 03:35 AM 1/10/2008, BillK wrote:
>On Jan 10, 2008 8:12 AM, hkhenson wrote:
> > The behavior related to "political correctness" with respect to
> > different cultures is a widespread behavior in western culture.  (In
> > this case I think we have to leave out Japan which I normally count
> > in the western culture block.)  Therefore there must be an evolved
> > underlying psychological mechanism involved.
> >
> > Maybe this behavior is entirely due to the psychological mechanisms
> > we use to pick up rock chipping or washing dishes, but I doubt
> > it.  People hold PC views much more emotionally than they hold ways
> > to knit.  When strong emotions are involved it's telling you
> > *something.*  This meme is tapping some evolved psychological
> > mechanism that was significant at some time in our past.  I don't
> > know the original function but this is the way the logical
> > progression goes in using EP.
> >
> > As a guess it's tapping the same psychological mechanisms as other
> > political matters.  Or it may be tapping the closely related
> > religious mechanisms.  Dr. Weston did work that's close enough he
> > might be able to shed some light on this if asked.
>
>The problem I see with "political correctness" is that it is mostly a
>public fashion.

There are a large number of people who give every indication that 
they hold various parts of "political correctness" very seriously, 
especially the bit about cultural relativism.  A lot of them are seen 
as cultural leaders.  It would take brain scans to be sure they were 
not lying about it, but I don't think they are.

>You have to be seen to be behaving in a PC fashion, otherwise the dogs
>start hounding you to apologise for your despicable statements. Many
>people (myself included) hold opinions that disagree strongly with the
>current PC fashion. But we have learned to keep our mouths shut in
>public.

<grin> Wait till you are 80 and some reporter catches you in an 
unguarded moment!

>This is rather like males adopting the 'New Man' image and displaying
>behaviour like pretending to be caring, considerate, liking poetry,
>supporting female rights, etc. because that is the current fashion for
>success with women. It doesn't change the underlying belief set of
>males, which comes out in male havens such as the locker room,
>drinking dens, the army, etc.
>
>I.e. It is only a current etiquette for behaving in public, not an EP
>driven instinct.

*All* behavior is ultimately the result of evolved psychological 
traits, even current etiquette and behaving appropriately in 
public.  How the current "current etiquette" evolved was due to 
environmental effects and widely held psychological traits plus some 
admixture of random effects.  Pascal Boyer showed this in _Religion 
Explained_.  He really didn't fully explain religion but in one 
chapter he provided a list of real and made up "religions" and you 
could sort out the real ones without any trouble--which means what we 
call religion is highly constrained by our evolved psychological traits.

A puzzling fact is that two or possibly three recent religions are 
obviously the outcome of injury induced temporal lobe epilepsy.

As for behaving in public, if you didn't, your status would be 
adversely affected and for EP reasons people are very sensitive to 
status.  What is appropriate behavior in public is no doubt just as 
limited by evolved psychological traits as what meme or sets of memes 
can make up a religion.

Let's take another example.  There was a time when "current etiquette 
for behaving in public" included regular religious attendance.  It 
still is in parts of the world we are now in cultural and/or physical 
conflict with.

Assuming human groups have similar enough underlying psychological 
traits (a point we need to treat cautiously because of Clark's work) 
then what environmental conditions moved the meme sets of western 
societies in a direction where "regular religious attendance" was no 
longer essential "current etiquette for behaving in public"?

There are enough places where this happened to one degree or another 
that the information should be out there to test candidate theories.

And the information (a model perhaps) could be extremely useful.

Keith 




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