[Up: home] [Map] [Robot Wisdom weblog]
"Schade dass alles von der gegenseitigen Zerstörung abhängt." --James Joyce on God's Creation, c1932 (What a pity that the whole thing depends on reciprocal destruction.)
This page is intended to collect ideas about human psychology, emphasising the psychological weaknesses that have produced this hellhole that is Planet Earth 2000.
I expect that it will converge with Joyce's portrait of his Everyman in Finnegans Wake, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker [more] but my goal is to start from my own experience rather than the little I yet understand of Joyce's analysis.
negative intelligence
The human weakness that I see most vividly every day in the Usenet newsgroups is something I call "negative intelligence" (although 'sadism' is a similar term).
In any encounter between an intelligent caring person and a stupid cruel one, the stupid and cruel one will tend to dominate. Rec.arts.books is my Usenet prototype here, but almost any subject-area that's opinion-based more than fact-based will find its newsgroup dominated by stupid, cruel people, with intelligent discussion being squelched as it arises.
In Finnegans Wake this is actually embodied in the warring twins, Shem (intelligent) [more] and Shaun (sadistic) [more] and Shaun does clearly dominate within Shem's 'local' community.
wise anon comment (31Oct00): "In such encounters it is not so much that the dumbkopf dominates as it is that the intellectual abdicates. The dumbkopf dominates because the intellectual flees. Chomsky always wins. Because he stays and fights. He will not abdicate." [Chomsky stays out of the newsgroups though]
ego
Another obvious weakness is people's tendency to see themselves as more deserving (smarter, better looking, more honest, etc) than their peers. In FW, this is probably embodied in HCE's pride that goes before his fall, but the world seems to me very, very slow at punishing the proud.
There's a very common pattern with young artists where they create beautiful works while they're unknown, but as soon as they get popular 'their heads are turned' and they slip into self-parody.
Also, humans are perversely attracted by ego in the opposite sex, it seems to me. (Pynchon's Vineland ends dismally, the heroine running off with a sexy fascist.) In FW, there are some hints that ALP had an affair with HCE's nemesis, McGrath, or possibly was even married to him first. eg [qv]
sentimentality
A related weakness is people's tendency to ignore facts and act as if the world conformed to their prejudices. The mass media very cynically prey on this weakness, encouraging people to succumb to the most idiotically shallow worldview, of good guys and bad guys and problems with one cause and one solution.
To get beyond this, an individual has to learn to confront reality directly, experimentally, which means standing alone against the consensus-reality of the community, and this sort of courageous originality is almost entirely absent from the human species. (Shaun is a well-respected conformist, Shem a reviled experimenter).
meditation (as remedy)
The spiritual technique of meditation seems to me intended (at its best) to counteract this sentimentality and ego-- untruths within the mind are inherently unbalanced and restless, and meditation is a process of noticing this restlessness and under-standing it. J Krishnamurti was the all-time ace at talking about this challenge. [samples] more [bio&links]
[to be continued]
Related rants: Phil Agre
You can submit a new URL or any other suggestion for this page by typing it into the box below. It will instantly become visible to anyone at this comments page. I should get around to checking it out and updating it above within a week or three, at which point I'll delete it from the comments page.
If you want credit, include your name and email (otherwise it's anonymous). You can use HTML but you don't have to.
[Up: home] [Robot Wisdom home page] (Feedback)