Re: [xmca] Fwd: The Privilege of Absurdity

[Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>]

Jay,
I, for one, am deeply skeptical of how intentional are the "creations of
elites." The elites certainly benefit from these creations, but I think
that they are dupes just like the rest of us. The elites just happen to be
the "lucky" dupes (depending, of course, on what you mean by "lucky").

My sense is that it's dupes all the way down! (or "up," as the case may be).

-greg

p.s.  Seems better to look at the structure of the system for the key to
the problem.


On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 11:15 AM, Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:

> And not just cultural mediation, but cultural politics. If we strip away
> the rhetoric of sacred and moral values, we find, I think, that all such
> grand causes for which people fight and die, or just slave away, are the
> creations of elites who benefit from the naive trust in these ideas,
> symbols, and rituals by large numbers of other people. I think the usual
> term for such people is, unfortunately but accurately, dupes.
>
> I do not believe that evolution has endowed our species with any special
> propensity for being duped by false gods. Our herd comfort in grand causes
> and ideals may be real enough, but it is simply the political manipulation
> of the underlying human capacity for mediation by symbols (discourses,
> images, ideologies, etc.) that gives cover to the pursuit of their own
> interests by elites.
>
> The problem is not even so much that all such gods are false. It is that
> they are gods made by other people to serve themselves. And I would
> emphatically include in this analysis the traditional churches and their
> religions as well as historical and modern ideologies of more secular
> kinds. It is customary in polite society to simply tolerate these forms of
> mass deception for the comfort they give to those who have little else, but
> I think we know that this is not the path to a better world for all.
>
> JAY.
>
> On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 5:25 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I have a suspicion that cultural mediation may play a role here. What do
> > you think?
> > mike
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Scott Atran <satran@umich.edu>
> > Date: Tue, May 22, 2012 at 12:36 PM
> > Subject: The Privilege of Absurdity
> > To: COG-SCI-REL-L@jiscmail.ac.uk
> >
> >
> > Science and Religion Today
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/2012/05/22/how-can-a-better-understanding-of-sacred-values-help-us-resolve-intergroup-conflicts/
> >
> > Humans define the groups to which they belong in abstract terms. Often
> they
> > strive for lasting intellectual and emotional bonding with anonymous
> > others, and make their greatest exertions in killing and dying not to
> > preserve their own lives or to defend their families and friends, but for
> > the sake of an idea—the transcendent moral conception they form of
> > themselves, of “who we are.” This is the “the privilege of absurdity; to
> > which no living creature is subject, but man only’” of which Hobbes wrote
> > in *Leviathan*. In*The Descent of Man*, Darwin cast it as the virtue of
> > “morality … the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and
> > sympathy” with which winning groups are better endowed in history’s
> > spiraling competition for survival and dominance. Across cultures,
> primary
> > group identity is bounded by sacred values, often in the form of
> religious
> > beliefs or transcendental ideologies, which lead some groups to triumph
> > over others because of non-rational commitment from at least some of its
> > members to actions that drive success independent, or all out of
> > proportion, from expected rational outcomes.
> >
> > For Darwin himself, moral virtue was most clearly associated not with
> > intuitions, beliefs, and behaviors about fairness and reciprocity,
> > emotionally supported by empathy and consolation—which constitute nearly
> > the entire subject matter of recent work in the philosophy, psychology,
> and
> > neuroscience of morality—but with a propensity to what we nowadays call
> > “parochial altruism”: especially extreme self-sacrifice in war and other
> > intense forms of human conflict, where likely prospects for individual
> and
> > even group survival had very low initial probability. Heroism, martyrdom,
> > and other forms of self-sacrifice for the group appear to go beyond the
> > mutualistic principles of fairness and reciprocity....
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/2012/05/22/how-can-a-better-understanding-of-sacred-values-help-us-resolve-intergroup-conflicts/
> > __________________________________________
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> Jay Lemke
> Senior Research Scientist
> Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
> Adjunct Full Professor, Department of Communication
> University of California - San Diego
> 9500 Gilman Drive
> La Jolla, California 92093-0506
>
> New Website: www.jaylemke.com
>
> Professor (Adjunct status 2011-2012)
> School of Education
> University of Michigan
> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>
> Professor Emeritus
> City University of New York
> __________________________________________
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-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego
http://ucsd.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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