[lit-ideas] Re: Socialist Beliefs
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2013 10:41:35 +0100 (BST)
Eric's post touches on a very large topic (which btw may be one of the reasons
I have failed to engage with some of Paul Stone's interesting posts over the
years). I agree that issues of "self" lie at the heart of at least part of the
explanation for the apparent discrepancy between "beliefs" and lives led. The
evolutionary theorist Robert Trivers has an interesting recent book trying to
sketch an explanation for human self-deception in Darwinian terms (because
self-deception, like altruism, might seem to conflict with Darwinian principles
- for how does it help us in 'selfish' terms?) - drawing on principles used to
explain deception and counter-deception strategies in nature, where they are
rife (from the virus that 'tricks' its way into the body, to the cuckoo, to
insects that gather in the shape of bee so that another bee will attempt
copulation and they then attach themselves and use the bee to convey them
relatively huge distances). So our capacity
for self-deception is linked to our need to protect our sense of "self", as
well as to deceive others - though, in Trivers view, we have evolved to deceive
ourselves mostly the better to deceive others (albeit some kind of
counter-deception strategy must also be there to counteract the damaging
excesses of self-deception: so his account uses a version of the 'divided
self').
It might be added that there is a profound epistemic problem here - truth is
not so manifest, and this makes fooling ourselves easy enough. Trivers makes
the point that science can be understood as a set of counter-deception
strategies (I agree). But in the case of certain kinds of metaphysical belief
(and most beliefs are 'metaphysical' rather than 'scientific') there is that
strange way a mind can hold to these 'intellectually' while living seemingly
otherwise - we might think of the Idealist philosopher who goes home to his
wife and children and pays his mortgage etc. and behaves for all the world as
if this is all real and not simply a figment of his imagination. If we take the
religious fundamentalist who acts otherwise like a "naive materialist", there
are various explanations that might account for this apparent discrepancy -
including that it is only apparent: for the tendency to animism is strong in
religious metaphysics but it is quite easy to
combine an animistic metaphysics of the material world with the view the
animating force [perhaps God] lies behind the surface of the material world and
so the surface of the material world can be treated as would a "naive
materialist" without this contradicting any deeper religious sensibility. Of
course, this does not so easily explain that kind of fundamentalism that seems
to be combined with worldly pursuit of wealth - though this combination is
certainly much older than the pay-pal Christianity of the modern Bible-belt.
Donal
________________________________
From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, 16 July 2013, 23:27
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Socialist Beliefs
>> The chef was French and decidedly unAmerican. He would sing the
Internationale as he worked as a kind of in-your-face snub at the
owners.
I value the inspection of motives rather than beliefs. Why did Marx, who
never worked a day in his life, write Das Kapital? Why are so many
evangelical Christians, with their insistence on miracles in theology,
in other aspects of their lives, naive materialists? Why are people
often, in daily life, exemplifying the opposites of their proclaimed
beliefs? The people who "love mankind" are often quite nasty to
individual people.
Beliefs are a type of symbolic self that people defend. Meanwhile they
often run roughshod over their beliefs, their shadows showing.
Eric
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