We teach: good stewardship, mindfulness, healthy boundary setting. critical thinking, kindness, compassion, secularism, the importance of sustainable populations, the interconnectedness of all life, contemplative practices, transcendence of personal patterns/cultural patterns/gender patterns/generational patterns, humane practices, humane living, wellness, nutrition, self-care.
I believe with great conviction that our education systems should have a required, ongoing subject (alongside math and language and all the others) just for learning how to effectively think. Topics would include understanding the biases, logical fallacies, frameworks of thought, modes of thinking such as rhizomatically, dialectically, nomadically, and on and on. One only need browse Twitter/X for 2 minutes and it becomes painfully clear how poorly society has been trained in this manner. BTW, plugging all these terms and more into ChatGPT and copy/pasting the results into a Google Doc produces a very powerful manual for learning how to better think in this crazy, changing world. We're doomed if we don't get better at this.
A lot of excellent ideas here! It seems like it shouldn’t be too hard to add this kind of critical reasoning practice into our education system. I believe there’s already a move to apply critical thinking skills to what students find on the Internet.
I like video games and I’ve also written a satire on conspiracy theories (Ship of Fools, which I’ll start seriaizing here next month). So I had to check out that critical thinking video game. Commissioned by IARPA! “Deep-state psy-op!” will be the response of many on both left and right.
If these solutions need to be implemented at scale by institutions, but those institutions have lost public trust, how can they be moved forward? (I guess I’m just echoing what others are saying here.)
I'm going to make an argument that Star Trek isn't about a Utopia. It was about the human condition in a post-scarcity world. In Kirk's time, they had money in the form of credits, but Star Fleet didn't use money. In Picard's time, it was all about reputation and a search for truth. But even in the Federation Utopia, there was trouble, and it was in the upper tiers of the leadership. It got so bad that the colonies didn't want to be part of the utopia and wanted independence.
But take a pampered Federation crew and strand them in the wilderness, and that utopian facade crumbles, and the real people start to show through.
Wisdom comes with age, and in the modern world, some people never grow up. Enlightenment comes with understanding, and most citizens want to be left alone with their small group of friends and family. We will never make a person in a small American town understand what a citizen in the furthest village in China thinks. But what that American understands, if he's not an NPC, is that the Chinese citizen isn't his enemy. At present, our enemy is the socialist group that has infiltrated our government.
It's not as important to have better humans as it is to have better systems. Good systems (like school, family, etc) lead to good humans. The corruption of our systems leads to more people choosing to be corrupt than normally would under a trustworthy system.
As Naval Ravikant says: "The test of any good system is to turn it over to your enemies. If they can't break it then it is a good system."
Our systems are fully corrupted and that is the root problem. In most psychological tests, over 95% of humans want to do good.
I am all for this! We need more philosophers who can guide us through the digital realm, what to ignore and what to pay attention these days is an invaluable skill.
Universal education, with time spent on real science, which everyone is perfectly capable of understanding, you just have to have sciences classes taught by scientists, rather than football coaches, critical thinking, real coverage of historical systems, and unbiased comparative religion studies. Nothing is so unsettling as having a high performing student in a psychology class tell you the Buddhism is a made up religion. I mean, where do you start?
I have been making the argument that utopianism requires, at some point, figuring out how to help people be better. I think your summary of the problem is good, but I would suggest that it's worth thinking about it as a collective action problem, not an individual problem.
But the crucial point is that we can be better or worse decision-makers, closer or farther away from the ideal described above, and we have a pretty good idea what it takes to help people get closer. (More on that below.)
One thing that doesn’t seem to help is a well-developed set of ethical principles. A 2014 research paper surveyed the empirical evidence collected by studies of various moral behaviors and found “no statistically detectable difference between the behavior of ethicists and non-ethicists.”
In any real-world situation, good decision-making is enabled less by abstract principles than by temperament and discernment, i.e., self-possession and wisdom. The person who takes in the most information, can see the situation through the appropriate lens, and can act on priorities amidst pressure and uncertainty will likely make the best decision.
Whether we’re seeking better real-world outcomes (as I am) or seeking better answers to longstanding moral questions (as the Trolley Problem is), the right strategy is the same: get help. Try to make society fertile for the development of better moral agents. They will have better answers than we do.
I appreciated the work that went into this. Reading your piece was valuable to me.
But I wonder about the direction of your suggestions, pointing inward, requiring of the populace to fix themselves. I like to think of it another way: What if we simply ... encouraged and helped others?
"The only way to escape is self-work.", I agree with you on this.
Can we create this? Yes, consciously.
We teach: good stewardship, mindfulness, healthy boundary setting. critical thinking, kindness, compassion, secularism, the importance of sustainable populations, the interconnectedness of all life, contemplative practices, transcendence of personal patterns/cultural patterns/gender patterns/generational patterns, humane practices, humane living, wellness, nutrition, self-care.
I believe with great conviction that our education systems should have a required, ongoing subject (alongside math and language and all the others) just for learning how to effectively think. Topics would include understanding the biases, logical fallacies, frameworks of thought, modes of thinking such as rhizomatically, dialectically, nomadically, and on and on. One only need browse Twitter/X for 2 minutes and it becomes painfully clear how poorly society has been trained in this manner. BTW, plugging all these terms and more into ChatGPT and copy/pasting the results into a Google Doc produces a very powerful manual for learning how to better think in this crazy, changing world. We're doomed if we don't get better at this.
A lot of excellent ideas here! It seems like it shouldn’t be too hard to add this kind of critical reasoning practice into our education system. I believe there’s already a move to apply critical thinking skills to what students find on the Internet.
I like video games and I’ve also written a satire on conspiracy theories (Ship of Fools, which I’ll start seriaizing here next month). So I had to check out that critical thinking video game. Commissioned by IARPA! “Deep-state psy-op!” will be the response of many on both left and right.
If these solutions need to be implemented at scale by institutions, but those institutions have lost public trust, how can they be moved forward? (I guess I’m just echoing what others are saying here.)
This reference described the state of o our collective dreadful sanity
http://beezone.com/whats-new
Two essays which describe the individual and collective state of the people altogether.
http://beezone.com/2main_shelf/frustrationuniversdisease.html
http://beezone.com/2main_shelf/stresschemistry.html
The cure!
http://www.nottwoispeace/excerpt-everybody-all-at-once
I'm going to make an argument that Star Trek isn't about a Utopia. It was about the human condition in a post-scarcity world. In Kirk's time, they had money in the form of credits, but Star Fleet didn't use money. In Picard's time, it was all about reputation and a search for truth. But even in the Federation Utopia, there was trouble, and it was in the upper tiers of the leadership. It got so bad that the colonies didn't want to be part of the utopia and wanted independence.
But take a pampered Federation crew and strand them in the wilderness, and that utopian facade crumbles, and the real people start to show through.
Wisdom comes with age, and in the modern world, some people never grow up. Enlightenment comes with understanding, and most citizens want to be left alone with their small group of friends and family. We will never make a person in a small American town understand what a citizen in the furthest village in China thinks. But what that American understands, if he's not an NPC, is that the Chinese citizen isn't his enemy. At present, our enemy is the socialist group that has infiltrated our government.
It's not as important to have better humans as it is to have better systems. Good systems (like school, family, etc) lead to good humans. The corruption of our systems leads to more people choosing to be corrupt than normally would under a trustworthy system.
As Naval Ravikant says: "The test of any good system is to turn it over to your enemies. If they can't break it then it is a good system."
Our systems are fully corrupted and that is the root problem. In most psychological tests, over 95% of humans want to do good.
100% we can. The way is through:
1) trustworthy and transparent systems that get results
2) repairing trust between people
3) A culture change to one of criticism, results, and collaboration.
4) using collective intelligence to come up with solutions, to run systems, and to govern. This type of system: https://joshketry.substack.com/p/how-to-fix-corrupt-government-in
I am all for this! We need more philosophers who can guide us through the digital realm, what to ignore and what to pay attention these days is an invaluable skill.
Universal education, with time spent on real science, which everyone is perfectly capable of understanding, you just have to have sciences classes taught by scientists, rather than football coaches, critical thinking, real coverage of historical systems, and unbiased comparative religion studies. Nothing is so unsettling as having a high performing student in a psychology class tell you the Buddhism is a made up religion. I mean, where do you start?
I have been making the argument that utopianism requires, at some point, figuring out how to help people be better. I think your summary of the problem is good, but I would suggest that it's worth thinking about it as a collective action problem, not an individual problem.
See, for example, David Roberts argument here: https://www.volts.wtf/p/why-i-am-a-progressive
---------quote---------
But the crucial point is that we can be better or worse decision-makers, closer or farther away from the ideal described above, and we have a pretty good idea what it takes to help people get closer. (More on that below.)
One thing that doesn’t seem to help is a well-developed set of ethical principles. A 2014 research paper surveyed the empirical evidence collected by studies of various moral behaviors and found “no statistically detectable difference between the behavior of ethicists and non-ethicists.”
In any real-world situation, good decision-making is enabled less by abstract principles than by temperament and discernment, i.e., self-possession and wisdom. The person who takes in the most information, can see the situation through the appropriate lens, and can act on priorities amidst pressure and uncertainty will likely make the best decision.
Whether we’re seeking better real-world outcomes (as I am) or seeking better answers to longstanding moral questions (as the Trolley Problem is), the right strategy is the same: get help. Try to make society fertile for the development of better moral agents. They will have better answers than we do.
-----------end quote---------
I appreciated the work that went into this. Reading your piece was valuable to me.
But I wonder about the direction of your suggestions, pointing inward, requiring of the populace to fix themselves. I like to think of it another way: What if we simply ... encouraged and helped others?