Recent thoughts.
Inchoate conclusions. Provisional ideas. Things that have occurred to me. Promoting further explorations. Taking a day off from the news. No pics.
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About human nature and the arc of history.
First, broadly, the conservative project is to maintain the status quo; each generation should produce another as much like its as possible. And to expand. Have lots of babies, and thus prohibit abortion and homosexuality and any “lifestyle” that would inhibit having children and expanding the population. So that the next generation will be just like the current one, and the previous one, forever.
The progressive project is to improve the lives of the next generation… to make each generation’s lives better than the ones before. To expand options, not restrict them. To allow people to make decisions about their own lives, without religious or government coercion. To learn, to correct the policies of previous generations, to acknowledge reality and learn from it.
Once again: each of these drives is inherent in human nature, a human nature that resides within all of us, but expressed to varying degrees based on upbringing and society.
The books I’ve been reading recently reinforce the impressions I’ve had about the evolution of the universe, of life, and of society. I’ll expand on those books soon.
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Related: what is human perception exactly and how can we depend on it? In particular, what is autism? I’m beginning to think that the idea of autism is a category error. The books I’ve been reading, by Hoffman, Tong, and Azarian, stress the idea that humans don’t perceive “reality”, not only because our senses are limited, but because as creatures optimized for survival, we only need to create models in our heads of what reality is about to the extent that we need to understand protocols for survival.
Where does autism fit into this? Well, because some autistic folks are literal-minded and not prone to superstitions or religious beliefs. This is significant. It indicates a range of human perception that is different from the one primed for survival. Diversity. A few of us, perhaps, are able to detect reality without giving in to superstition or religious beliefs. Yet again: it’s not binary. It’s a range, exhibited differently in every one of us.
The popular notions about autism are simplistic, at best. I will explore this further.
