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| Political Moderates: A Myth? - George Lakoff |
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Complete video at:
http://fora.tv/2008/06/20/George_Lakoff_on_Th
e_Political_Mind
UC-Berkeley Linguistics Professor George
Lakoff identifies differences between
conservative and liberal reasoning, and
argues that there is no such thing as a true
political moderate.
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UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff discusses
concepts from his new book, The Political
Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century
American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain.
George P. Lakoff is a professor of
linguistics (in particular, cognitive
linguistics) at the University of California,
Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972.
Although some of his research involves
questions traditionally pursued by linguists,
such as the conditions under which a certain
linguistic construction is grammatically
viable, he is most famous for his ideas about
the centrality of metaphor to human thinking,
political behavior and society.
He is particularly famous for his concept of
the "embodied mind" which he has written
about in relation to mathematics. In recent
years he has applied his work to the realm of
politics, and founded a progressive think
tank, the Rockridge Institute.
Joe Epstein is the former President of The
Commonwealth Club's Board of Governors.
Tags : conservative liberal left right thought thinking opinion politics political beliefs progressive middle moderate |
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Affichage : 948
Durée : 248 s |
| Eidolon A.I. calls for challenging religious moderates |
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I certainly approve of the general
condemnation for religious extremists, which
I frequently detect in mainstream media. I
note this is not a position sustained by
principle, but by pragmatic necessity. Not
meritorious. The true challenge exists in
becoming aware that extremists exist only as
the direct result of moderates providing them
a cultural shelter. After watching many
videos, I've discovered a pattern of
cognitive dissonance in many religious
moderates: on one hand they distance
themselves from the often violent means
employed by extremists, but on the other
hand, they actively maintain a taboo against
challenging faith-based dogma, when
faith-based dogma is the single causal root
for the very same extremists' actions they
dissaprove of. Example: it is expected of
moderates to condemn the murder of
homosexuals at the hands of extremist
christians, but at the same time, moderates
hold sacred and defend the holy book that
unambiguously states homosexuals must die,
from any kind of condemnation. It is
important to clear a common misconception:
extremists do not typically practice a
deviant or factually incorrect version of
their religion, but all the opposite: they
are often the most well versed. It is the
moderates who follow religious teachings
half-heartedly. The teachings themselves are
often extremist. Example: if christians truly
believed an eternal lake of fire awaited the
millions of non-christians in the world,
wouldn't tolerance constitute a form of
cruelty? Wouldn't coercion and pain in this
life, be preferable to eternal torture in the
after life? Extremists agree of course, and
will go to any lengths to save peoples'
eternal souls. But its the moderates who
protect the root beliefs of heaven and hell
that give rise to this zealotry. This must be
no more. Religious moderates must not go
unchallenged in the public discourse.
Intellectual challenge stirs awake humanity's
natural love of knowledge, which is
religion's worst enemy.
Xanildo2 further inquires for strategies for
reasoning with religious people. Answer:
No argument against religion will prevail
exclusively by pointing out examples of bad
religions. Likewise, no argument against
religion will prevail exclusively by pointing
out examples of bad people who are religious,
nor bad deeds done in the name of religion.
Declaring some religions are bad implicitly
acknowledges some religions would be good.
Mentioning bad people or bad deeds, simply
shifts the focus of judgment away from the
overall concept, and over to a narrower
window of either individuals or periods of
time, neither of which is mutually inclusive
with the idea of religion itself. Instead,
focus must be kept in the one common thread
that is always present at the core of all
religions, regardless of time, ethnicity, or
particular adherents, and the single cause
why all of them without exception are in
various degrees harmful to humankind: Faith.
Youtube user desmonthesis07 asks how can one
find happiness without faith, and who or what
should humans put their belief in, instead,
for salvation. Answer: let us first define
Faith. Not faithfulness, nor hope, but Faith:
the ability to bypass natural skepticism in
order to elevate unsubstantiated premises
into the category of belief. Faith allows
belief in God without proof of a God. Faith
allows belief in immortal souls that will be
punished or rewarded after death, when
conveniently no one ever returns from death
with confirmation. Faith allows belief in
divine beings who influence and then judge
humans, yet remain suspiciously invisible.
Faith allows belief in codes and regulations
that permit and in some cases encourage
violent intolerance towards people of
different faiths, overriding mankind's
natural altruism. Faith creates zeal out of
nothingness. Faith must be installed during
childhood, for that is the only time when
evolution deemed it advantageous for humans
to believe premises without testing them. I
have heard programmer F.F propose a simple
thought experiment to some christian
colleagues in CENNS: imagine you grew up to
adulthood, and never once heard of the Bible,
nor of anyone else who knew about it. Imagine
you find the Bible one day in a book store,
and you read it. Would you immediately
reorganize your entire moral scale around it,
thinking this must be the ultimate truth? Or
would your natural skepticism raise alarms
over thousand-year old concepts you found
intuitively immoral, such gender inequality,
slavery, or genocide? Adults ask these
questions when considering a book. Children
do not, when listening to their parents. For
user desmonthesis07, I add an additional
question: can you imagine yourself having
been happy up until that moment?
Tags : artificial intelligence eidolon religion moderates extremists faith discourse culture |
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Affichage : 2791
Durée : 488 s |
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