[split from Gathering the good forum posts, here]
Well, some books do take a few years for authors to put together. I guess we just found out why 
@gotlucky: And Iâm not even a published author⌠As soon as I get a chance to breathe (work has been just insane!), Iâm planning to make another installment on astro-liberalism. Most of the ideas about liberalism and social order that I will present in the video come from the book I was putting together (which, in turn, comes in large part from the posts Iâve made to the forums).
I still sense challenges in selling the idea to the kind of libertarians who might frequent mises.org, who tend to have a distinctly rationalistic bent. After you and others raised objections in the Church of Mises thread, I sat down and re-thought it and I think my point still stands that the mystical is, indeed, the âroot foundationâ of any epistemology. I think Heidegger held this view, though Iâm pretty nervous about agreeing with him. I canât say exactly why.
âAstrologyâ per se might be a sub-optimal association due in part to its lackluster reputation nowadays and in part to the fact that it is not a be-all-end-all as far as mystical grounding goes. I will touch on this and explain that what I have in mind is religious originalism or any kind of âreturn to mystical rootsâ and why I think it is so important to have some kind of mystical foundation/starting-point.
Basically, almost all religion is corrupted by its incestuous relationship with the State, yet religion-qua-religion* is an indispensable aspect of the social order. A society without religion is no less dysfunctional than a society without division-of-labor. So-called rationalists who refuse to participate in religion are as handicapped by that as the âself-reliantâ hermit who refuses to participate in the division-of-labor. I think there is a middle ground on the issue of religious participation that is not unlike that which libertarians propose for participating in the division-of-labor (the economy).
In the case of economic activity, it is not that participation âspread the guiltâ to all who particpate in âthe Systemâ - else all 7 billion people on the planet would be equally guilty which defeats the whole purpose of specifying a person as morally guilty or innocent. Rather, it is oneâs root enthusiasm or zeal in participation that is the problem. The Patriot is the problem. The corporate ladder-climber is the problem. The answer is not to withdraw all participation in the economic order, itâs to renounce oneâs zealous allegiance to the dysfunction within the system, that is, the State and to view it frankly for what it is even if you take no particular action to oppose it.
In the case of religion, it is the Believer that is the problem. And the solution is the same. Rather than withdrawing all participation in religion (in particular, religious practice but religious belief as it concerns the ineradicable mystical foundations of oneâs organized knowledge of the world), the correct answer is to withdraw oneâs zealous belief in things instructed over things known. The same goes for obedience to religious moral dogmas over oneâs conscience.
The importance of the mystical is what the secularists overlook; this is why the State has monopolized religion before any other line of production. It is the root foundation of mind-control. If you want to control what people think, it wonât do to settle for appealing to their reason with arguments which must necessarily be fallacious. Rather, you must get underneath their rationality and get right to the mystical core that precedes their ability to even think rationally. And this is what religion does. But the fact is that this element in human thought is ineradicable, even for the practiced rationalist, so there is no possibility of âdoing away with religion.â The only possible answer is to substitute better religion for worse.
Clayton -
*By âreligionâ I donât mean going to church. The word is much too broad for that. I mean the entire complex of activities and ideas that surround the creation, organization and maintenance of oneâs mystical stance.
Alright Clayton, Iâll bite
Why is it that society or individuals need a âmystical stanceâ or any sort of religion? Indeed what do you consider to be a âmystical stanceâ?
I know you didnât really like the word intuition for what you mean, but for me, itâs the closest I can get to supporting an idea of mysticism, at least so far as Iâm understanding you. Consider how many religions and moral philosophers have taught the golden rule. I can see how this could be a foundation for a âmysticalâ approach to liberalism. People get that concept. And whatâs more, the healthier societies in the world are the ones that respect the golden rule more than not. And the reverse is true for the societies that donât respect it. And again, thatâs the only version of karma that I can get behind.
But I cannot for the life of me understand the benefit of looking to the stars. I can see how it may be a starting point in some way, but I think that astrology (in terms of stars and planets) does not really have a place in the modern world. I can understand why Rothbard was attracted to natural law (and Ayn Rand too), but I think they are grossly mistaken, mainly because of the is-ought problem. But there is a huge problem with religion in general, even if there are some people that use it for good, there are many that have just corrupted any good that can be had from religion. And for people who do not believe in the supernatural, where do we get our morality? This brings me back to Rothbard and Rand, and they felt they had to reason their way to the golden rule (NAP, and Rand did state a version of it even if she rejected libertarianism).
This is where I think some general philosophy (if you prefer to call it religion that is fine) of libertarianism/liberalism is helpful. Not only is natural law bunk, but not everyone wants to sit down and reason out all the implications of the golden rule/NAP. If you can connect astrology/mysticism to the golden rule, I would be very impressed.
Vive made a good point in another thread:
I can see astro-liberalism being useful in that sense - itâs not like every libertarian who values Austrian Economics has to have an expert understanding of the subject. Just being familiar with some of the basic ideas goes a long way, and look at how people like Bastiat and Hazlitt can explain concepts so simply. But they explain social cooperation and itâs consequences in an economic sphere. Explaining social cooperation in terms of morality is necessary, and it is lacking in the libertarian world. Rothbard did a great job with For a New Liberty and The Ethics of Liberty, but it is just not the right track for most people. I know that you do not like some of Blockâs work regarding Defending the Undefendable, and while he may have gone about it the wrong way (which is debatable), I think heâs on the right track (I enjoy his work on the subject). Many people and activities that are considered socially ill behavior do have their place in society. Many people prefer to break the golden rule regarding prostitution/drugs/rich not giving enough to charity. But what these people miss is that their response of aggression to these behaviors is also socially ill behavior.
To bring it back to what vive said, what is needed for the classical liberal/libertarian cause is for there to be an easy way to cut through the socially ill bullshit. It does not have to be some sort of in depth rationalist philosophy, and it really should not be. We already have plenty of rationalist libertarian work. But I donât know if mysticism is the way to do it.
I think that you are going to find the words âreligionâ and âastrologyâ and âmysticismâ to probably have too much baggage associated with them. I think you will find that words such as âcreedâ and âphilosophyâ and âintuitionâ will be much easier. Perhaps they are not what you are trying to explain, but I think they fit the goal quite well. And it is honorable that you are trying to wrest astrology from the hacks out there, but you are facing a similar problem that Rothbard faced when he wrote about calling himself anti-statist instead of anarchist. In the end he was able to take back the word and call himself an anarchist, but he didnât have libertarians fighting him on it. Your task is far more difficult as most libertarians will probably cringe at the words religion, astrology, and mysticism, regardless of what you mean.
Iâm using this by analogy to Dennettâs âintentional stanceâ - the tendency of animals (including human beings) to interpret phenomena as the result of the action of a purposive agent. This is an evolutionary response; itâs safest to presume that the snapped twig in the forest was broken by someone rather than something; if it turns out it was a thing, there is no loss except a little sweat but if it turns out that your paranoia/superstition was justified, you may end up saving your life. Assuming that there is an acting, purposive being with wants lurking behind any phenomena is a safe strategy because it might turn out to be the case and you might be the thing that it wants. This is the intensional stance.
Iâm using the term âmystical stanceâ to refer to oneâs orientation to the ineradicable component of human ignorance. When I say âineradicableâ I do not merely mean that part which might be the result of economic limitations or ignorance that results from its lack of utility. This ignorance can be eradicated at least in principle even if it will never be practical to do so.
However, because human beings do not have omniscience and do not possess and exhaustive knowledge of all knowable truths, our knowledge is necessarily contingent and less than certain. Hence, it is always possible that - no matter how advanced our knowledge of mathematics, physics or even human physiology - our systematized knowledge can harbor undetected errors or even contradictions.
This fact is, I believe, something that most people intuitively grasp even while most scientists and philosophers train themselves to ignore it or pretend it is not true. The mystical stance is a response to this fact that is related with the intentional stance in that superstition is the safest response to phenomena that is not understood. Religious superstition concerning gods and demons is an intensional stance regarding ineradicable ignorance; it is a mystical stance.
Religious superstitions do no solely concern gods and demons. In the case of Buddhism it concerns no gods, though there are multiple conscious lifetimes. In certain occult traditions, it concerns demons but not gods or - in the case of Scientology and perhaps others - extraterrestrial beings (mystical beings with physical bodies and who act exclusively by means of physical causality). In Deism and atheistic Unitarianism, it concerns no conscious being at all, a kind of disembodied mysticism towards Nature itself.
For individuals, we have it because of ineradicable ignorance. This ineradicable ignorance is not just the âcorner casesâ like ironing out the last details of the Higgs boson. In fact, the corner cases of science arise primarily from the increasing economic hurdles and decreasing utility of answering a certain line of scientific inquiry. These questions are all answerable in principle, anyway.
But the questions weâd most like to answer - does my theory of the world contain hidden contradictions? what will happen in the future? how did the Universe begin or has it a necessary existence? how does conscious experience arise and why does it feel like something to be aware? and so on - are the very questions which reside in the âineradicable ignoranceâ category. We simply cannot know the answers to these questions.
How you feel about these questions matters and affects the way you think about everything else. We recognize this in the case of geocentrism versus heliocentrism. In the geocentric Universe, man is naturally the center of everything - heâs the crowning achievement of Godâs creative act. But in the heliocentric Universe, man is not the center of anything. Heâs on a random planet orbiting a random star in a random arm of a random galaxy. He is small and insignificant. Iâve written about this at length here.
At all times, in all we do, we are always human. Science is not the work of a bunch of emotionless robots like Data from Star Trek. This matters because the character of the lessons that precipitate from scientific knowledge into the wider culture very much depend on the character of that knowledge itself. But the character of scientific knowledge can as easily be hostile to the human condition as it can be conducive to it. Hence, we require a âmystical stanceâ or pre-rational context in which to situation the facts of science.
You might say âah, thatâs metaphysicsâ but itâs not. Metaphysics is still limited to the rational. It does not encompass the whole being. For that, you require an all-encompassing structure of living, acting, thinking, emoting. We might as well call such a thing âreligionâ irrespective of whether it involves deities and superstitions or not.
Clayton -
I canât respond to everything right now but thought Iâd make a quick reply to this.
First - Iâm not trying to âuse religion for goodâ; religion as it is has been thoroughly corrupted by its relationship with the State. It is a system of coercion by other means. Itâs the velvet glove covering the Stateâs iron fist.
Second, what I mean by âreligionâ âmysticalâ etc. has nothing to do with supernatural - if itâs causal, itâs natural, and if itâs having an effect, itâs causal. In other words, anything we can become sensible of must be, by definition, natural. (Hume)
Also, I keep forgetting to make my point; the reason we need a mystical stance is because ideas are not neutral. Many people spread ideas in order to render the holders of those ideas exploitable. In fact, the vast majority of people engaged in this process are not even aware that this is what they are doing (memes). The mystical stance is partly motivated by the need to secure oneself against systems of exploitation, systems which are far older and far more sophisticated than the individual who is born into this moving historical context of evolving, exploitative ideas. This is the negative side. And it is partly motivated by the advantages of inter-generational knowledge sharing of unsystematic knowledge, that is, knowledge which canât be simply compressed into a scientific theory but which is still useful in the attainment of happiness all the same. This is the positive side.
Clayton -
Clayton, let me see if I understand your stance here.
Could your post be summed up into this statement:
Humans are inevitably partially ignorant of their world, while at the same time they crave a greater understanding of their world. Therefore they have to find something to âfill in the gapsâ and they therefore arrive at something, anything, which cannot actually be known factually, therefore making this belief âbeyond reasonâ and instead a matter of intuition?
Please correct me if I have misinterpreted your post, or state any major points that I might have missed.
Not quite - what we fill the gaps with (think, historically) is non-random; there is a reason why these rather than those myths survived. Even if we cannot trace how they have been useful to us, the fact is, they have been. This doesnât convert them into eternal, unalterable dogma but it does mean you donât just throw it aside without a second thought. There have been around 100 billion human beings that have lived out their lives before you. Based in part on their own life experiences, they felt that certain stories and certain ideas were worth repeating and others were not. Thatâs an immense corpus of knowledge regarding human nature which cannot be duplicated by any scientific experiment or easily compressed into any metaphysical theory. I canât see how I can think up something better to fill the gaps with on my own.
Clayton -
But people do reject traditional âtheoriesâ, if you will, and replace them with things of their own? Just as with all ideas isnât it dependent upon the individual in question? For although the overwhelming majority are incapable of original thought, and many who are reject it or underutilize it, there will always be that âspecial fewâ. Would you agree with this?
I also donât see how many conceptions of the universe are relevant when we know them to be outright false or which can be traced directly to psychological emotions. The idea of divine justice might help and useful to any number of people, but this doesnât make it true.
Do you consider it relevant that our base conception of the universe in this age of science is radically different than those alive even two centuries ago?
There are people who still believe that shadows are real, so to speak.
From a memetic point-of-view, I would consider this ârandomizationâ. People try things. Many - perhaps most - of these trials result in failure (as measured with respect to the individualâs achievement of his own ends). Others result in new discoveries that are then transmitted to others and down through generations. Note that the process is not âcleanâ⌠many bad ideas manage to get massively propagated and some good ideas have to be independently discovered multiple times before they âcatch onâ.
Absolutely. But even this is part of the world of ideas; the whole idea of âpersonality typesâ is itself a âmysticalâ aspect of knowledge. There is very little we can say about personality types in a structured, scientific way.
Absolutely. But I donât think the special few are necessarily any more gifted than the others. They just happen to be the ones that stumbled on the right idea, perhaps more as a result of the work of others than any original contribution of their own.
Anything that is provably false is actually part of our structured knowledge (we can show it is false through proofs or evidence), not our unstructured knowledge, which is always true but unaccounted for.
Ah, I see where youâre going. No, I explicitly reject the âgreater goodâ conception that falsehoods can or should be used because they can âscare people straightâ, e.g. hell. However, I do think there are âuseful fictionsâ, metaphors and mystical beliefs that are neutral with respect to the facts of structured knowledge. Adoption of these beliefs is a matter of individual judgment and not collective judgment. However, nobody is original enough to invent his own belief system from scratch, and the ideas that float around society and fill these âgapsâ as you called them are maintained collectively. So there is a give-and-take between individuals and the collective in the use and maintenance of these ideas.
Yes and no. I think that my understanding of the Universe is less primary than my understanding of the self. All science is a form of self-understanding. The Universe only exists as an extension or part of the self. Hence, changes in our understanding of the Universe are less momentous to human knowledge than changes in our understanding of the self. One way to get the idea across: new developments in brain science are more important than new developments in astrophysics. But itâs more than just that. Studying the landscape of your own consciousness through meditation, for example, is more central to the process of self-development than the study of remote, esoteric things like black holes or topological set theory.
You can see this is the case once you place scientific knowledge in a means-ends framework. What purpose does this serve? So we smashed some bosons together at near-light-speed and discovered a âshadowâ at 125MeV or whatever. So what? What the hell use is that information? It doesnât have any use at all. But learning to meditate and master your own emotional balance and maintain a âsmooth calmâ throughout your day that keeps you happy and alive and âplugged inâ to life and the Universe is useful. So, in a sane world, which science would be accorded the higher place in social discourse, particle physics or the study of meditation and emotional self-mastery?
Clayton -
- In the framework from which we are discussing I donât understand how you can suggest that a good idea will necessarily take place over a bad idea. Ideas are pieces of information which give us our understanding of the world, they can either serve some purpose which the individual deems necessary and important, be an end in and of themselves (insofar as anything which is not contentment can be an end) or it can merely be neutral. Therefore thereâs a lot of room here for what constitutes a âgoodâ idea. An idea to spread and stick must have the abilty to spread and stick, it must be a powerful idea and even then it depends both on the âcarrierâ and the way which he is attempting to spread the idea and the intended/possible host of the idea.
Therefore when you say âgoodâ and âbadâ idea, this depends entirely upon what end it is implicitly or subconciously meant to serve as well as the self-examining nature of the individual in question. If he is not interested in himself and his belief then there can be no change in the individualâs beliefs whether or not this is a âgoodâ idea, for in order for something to become the subject of action it must be something which is subject to consideration and to which there are percieved alternatives. Most people donât understand that they more or less have a choice over what they believe, what they believe is what they believe. They do not realize that it is subject to their choices.
With this in mind exactly what âgoodâ the wisdom and myths of the ages give us, as well as exactly how the âgoodnessâ of an idea is at all likely to cause an idea to be propagated when what matters much more is the propagation or âmemeabilityâ of the idea? Like any good reader of Nietzsche I believe that the value and belief systems of the old Greeks was better than that of the Christians, but we know which one won out.
- Can you define âselfâ here? Because we seem to have different understandings of the term. I would consider that a direct understanding of the self is very limited, but that an understanding of oneâs universe inevitably relates back to the self, but at the same time you could make the argument that the individualâs conception of the self relates backwards to all things.
I think that most peopleâs understanding of âthe selfâ is also actually extremely limited, partly because the self is such an ambiguous concept. Yes, we know that there is a body carrying around a brain which has done X Y and Z, but is that really what âyouâ are?
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I disagree that an understanding of oneself is essential to happiness, but rather that acceptance of oneself, however accurate this image of the self might be. While an understanding of the self may well be essential to properly managing oneâs actions and wants, I do not see it as inherently being a means unto itself.
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If this is a different matter then do not address it, but is the above part of your view on âAstro-libertarianismâ? I watched most of your 4 videos and I ultimately failed to really grasp the connection youâre attempting to make between the two. What is the connection exactly?
Clayton, Iâm going to suggest giving The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion by Mircea Eliade a look. A lot of what you have been posting lately around this area seems to sort of be in sync with a lot of the âtraditionalist/pereniallistâ authors and to an extent people like Jung and Campbell. I think religion is a natural framework produced by the unconscious or psyche, and itâs a humanâs way of understanding. Personifications of things in nature and projecting is how we work, weâre able to understand things through culture, which is beyond that of a mere machine which can only read systematically, something limited to âreason,â but cannot grasp concepts beyond that. Even if someone does not like or completely detests religion they cannot deny it has a natural occurence, and even to the non-religious there are some signs of ritual and idolatry in their life and thinking.
Metaphysics is still limited to the rational. It does not encompass the whole being. For that, you require an all-encompassing structure of living, acting, thinking, emoting. We might as well call such a thing âreligionâ irrespective of whether it involves deities and superstitions or not.
A piece of what I posted from Guenon the other day, âAs we have said before, we are dealing with the supra-individual and consequently with the supra-rational order, which does not in any way mean the irrational: metaphysics cannot contradict reason, but it stands above reason, which has no bearing here except as a secondary means for the formulation and external expression of truths that lie beyond itâs province and outside itâs scope.â I donât think religion has to encompass deities and superstitions, but you have a general framework or thought that you are actively engaged in.
Thank you to whoever re-named this thread.
Just had a thought about what my precise difficulty is with libertarianism per se. Imagine a race of human beings that had evolved over many, many generations to adapt to conditions of ruling/servitude. In this society, certain people are born predisposed to servility (the servile class) and others with a predisposition to rulership (ruling class). Letâs say this is not a random function but it is, in fact, strongly hereditary.
The servile humans will feel uncomfortable with âtoo muchâ freedom and the rulers feel uncomfortable without a sufficient amount of âstatusâ as measured by the number of people they rule over. There is nothing, in principle, impossible about this sci-fi scenario, we observe similar behavior in other animals.
The trouble arises with the potential for a disconnect between individual satisfaction and liberty - libertarianism simply assumes that both are directly positively correlated. This may be the case but it is not obvious that it is, in fact, the case. Hence, libertarianism needs to either make this case or acknowledge that there could be a disconnect between liberty and individual satisfaction.
I want to note that I am not trying to say âthe burden of proof is on the person who wants more libertyâ - far from it! By very virtue of arguing for greater freedom, the libertarian has already demonstrated that his satisfaction is positively correlated with liberty. What Iâm trying to point out is the logical dependency: liberty is important only insofar as it brings about individual satisfaction. It is satisfaction that is primary. Liberty is merely a logical condition for bringing about satisfaction.
Clayton -
Allow me to make an analogy. One way of thinking of science is as a âcompression utilityâ⌠it permits a wide spectrum of phenomena to be âcompressedâ down to simpler principles or math equations from which can be âdeducedâ real behavior under specific conditions.
So, think of a file you want to compress with WinZip or some other utility. There are three pieces in the analogy: The uncompressed file, the compression utility and the compressed file. The uncompressed file is âunfiltered knowledgeâ, it is just raw phenomena; conscious experience or awareness. The compression utility represents âscientific/structured knowledgeâ, it is that body of knowledge that is universally (*universal over human experience) true. The compressed file represents explained real phenomena, kind of like revisionist history. It is the application of scientific principles (compression utility) to specific phenomena (uncompressed file) to derive a more compact and concise account of the specific phenomena (a historical âtheoryâ).
What Iâm trying to say is that the foundation of both the compression utility and the compressed file is the uncompressed file itself! Without some kind of âplain textâ to begin from, you can never build a compression utility (scientific theory) because thereâs nothing to build the utility to compress (or theorize about)! But the uncompressed file - in this analogy - represents raw phenomena, that is, facts not âcomprehendedâ or âunderstoodâ through any systematic study. Unless we can build a Theory of Everything (perfect compression utility), we will never be able to completely eliminate the uncompressed file, that is, there will always be unexplained things within our conscious experience. Since they are unexplained, they are mysteries, yet they are true (since they are part of our experience)⌠this makes that portion of our knowledge mystical knowledge.
Think of it in terms of signing a legal contract. Would you rather sign a contract with 1000 pages or a contract with one page of clear, readable language? Unless youâre a lawyer or can afford to hire an army of lawyers to understand a 1,000 page contract, I bet youâd prefer the one-page contract. Why? Because 1,000 pages is a lot fine print; it leaves a lot of room for someone to say âAh, but look at page 369, there you will see that YOU agreed that in these circumstances blah blah blahâ.
The Bible has anywhere from 1000-2000 pages depending on the print layout. Itâs dense and it contains a lot of verbiage. Science is even worse. To understand science, you really have to include not just all the books but even more importantly all the journals. Every science journal (and there are hundreds) prints dozens or hundreds of dense articles barely penetrable by experts in the particular field the journal covers. When you say âscience explains the world as it really isâ you actually have no idea what in the world you are saying. You are the clueless guy signing his name on the dotted line to a 1,000 page contract. âBlack holes exist. Or, at least, I think they do. Stephen Hawking says they do, anyway.â Yeah, thatâs the true meaning of rationalism and knowing why the hell you believe what you believe.
The fact is that none of us are experts except in a tiny drop in the ocean of human knowledge. So you have two choices. Either what you know is at the mercy of anyone else who comes along with an aura of self-confidence and armed with reams of âfactsâ and âequationsâ or there is some way to structure your own mystical knowledge in such a way as to be generally valid no matter what facts or equations others may come up with.
The stars (and other basic natural phenomena) are facts of conscious experience that are the opposite of a 1,000 page contract. They are facts that are sufficiently enmeshed with the fabric of reality that they are in some sense âdeepâ or non-trivial, yet not so deep and non-trivial (e.g. a Higgs boson) as to defy the moderately competent individual from grasping their essential motions and properties at a fundamental level.
I think this is based on the shallow understanding of astrology that prevails today, in large part due to the long neglect of astrological ideas.
Thatâs the plan, Stan!
Clayton -
This is a really good analogy. I think my problem (and maybe others) has been with the word mystical. I always have associated mystical with magic and the supernatural, and I know you have been clear thatâs not what you were getting at with it, but I was still reading what you wrote with that concept in mind. But this analogy makes it really clear. I think you are using mystical with a sense similar to mysterious, not magical.
So Iâm going to try to take a stab at it and see if I am clear with what you are saying. These unexplained, raw phenomena are mystical in the sense that we donât understand them. For example, I can watch an apple fall from a tree, and Newtonâs theory of gravity explains what I am experiencing. But without that theory (or even another theory), I donât have a structured understanding of what Iâm seeing. I might be able to predict some things about what Iâm seeing, but it would be unstructured knowledge.
This is where I get a little confused about intuition versus unstructured knowledge. I might be able to reach conclusions about the apple falling from induction, but at what point do you consider it structured and not unstructured?
Also, out of curiosity, remember the Asimov essay about the Relativity of Wrong? Would you consider the flat earth theory to be structured or unstructured knowledge? I imagine you would consider the spherical and subsequent theories to be structured. Iâm just trying to get a better feel here, but I think Iâm getting more of what you are saying.
Well, I liked what you were saying in the preceding paragraphs, but I just donât see what you are getting at with the stars. I just donât see what conclusions can be drawn from them. I understand that we cannot be experts in all fields, but I donât see what the stars have to do with this. What do the alignments of the stars tell us about anything? At best, I can only see what they might represent metaphorically, but I donât see what knowledge about the physical world can be gained through astrology. I think at this point it would be best if you could use some examples, because Iâm not getting it from your general explanations.
Iâm in agreement with gotluckyâs above post. What does the stars have to do with it?
Well, I think we are born with/naturally acquire (from the environment) a certain body of knowledge about a lot of things - society, physics, biology and so on. This body of knowledge - to the extent it is actually true - can be thought of as pre-packaged structure⌠it is already-structured knowledge that you donât have to work (exert significant, extended mental effort) to structure. You âjust knowâ a lot of facts about the nature of the physical world⌠two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time, mass is additive (two piles of things together weigh as much as the sum of each taken individually) and so on.
However, how we came about this pre-structured knowledge is itself not something that we get for free. That is, the result of evolution (the human brain) does not contain within it any history/record/memory of the evolutionary process itself (a theory of evolution). Hence, it is not obvious how we came to have this pre-structured knowledge and I think that this makes the distinction between structured and unstructured knowledge more difficult to draw because the pre-structured knowledge we have seems to be in some kind of limbo between being structured (meaningful, non-trivial facts) and un-structured (acquired with no exertion of mental effort).
I donât think flat-earth was ever a theory. As an intuitive model of the world, it is pre-structured knowledge⌠itâs a âsenseâ about the world that your brain comes pre-packaged with and is only unlearned once someone teaches you that the Earth is a sphere, not just a flat landmass of indefinite extent.
Well, I think the astrological concept of day and night, male and female, good and evil is the simplest example. The assignment of day to a higher rank than night is an expression of a far-reaching aspect of human nature, illustrated by the simple fact of the day/night cycle. Humans divide every aspect of experience into more and less preferable. This is the yin and yang, day and night, male and female. Give two siblings close in age the exact same toy - one of the toys will become the preferred toy! My children do it all the time (drives me insane).
But when you think about it, there is nothing objectively better about day than night, that is, there is nothing about human valuation that is intrinsic to the structure of the Universe. Hence, it is man that creates the division of day and night in the sense of a ranking or preference and this is a fact of the Universe.
In itself, this insight is relatively unremarkable and quite obvious on even cursory reflection. However, understanding human nature in its widest possible sense is, I think, the most difficult problem that human beings face. The problem is so difficult that there is no known method to solve it and we can be sure there never will be. The sum of human culture is a body of knowledge that, however indirectly, contains the lessons learned by the 100 billion anatomically modern humans that have lived before us. You and I have only one life to live and every choice we make is irreversible. How lucky we are to be able to cheat off the complete, fully-lived lives of not millions but billions of human beings.
The modernist bias is that the most difficult problems facing man concern the external environment and abstract ideas (physics & math). But we must realize that these problems are only a part of the larger problem of human happiness (all science is a means to human ends). The lessons which have been associated with myth, the stars, and the natural environment (e.g. morality fables based on attributes of animals, rivers, mountains, etc.) all contain scattered bits and pieces of this corpus of knowledge derived from human experience. Not all of it is true and not all of human experience is present within this corpus but what is there is of immense value to the individual because it is his only real chance to avoid making irreversible mistakes regarding non-trivial choices in his own life.
Steven Pinker notes in one of his many online lectures (sorry, canât remember which one) that one of the reasons human beings are so fascinated by fictional stories is that they are a powerful means of reasoning out the social consequences of decisions that one might make. Look at soap operas, for example. Once you look past the cheesy acting and low-budget production, the plots are mostly constructed from well-known archetypes and long-recycled gossip stories that had their origin in whole or in part in real scandals at some time in the past, distant or recent. By watching these stories, your brain is âworking outâ the social consequences of non-trivial decisions made in complex social circumstances. Little, if any, of this can be meaningfully reduced to a âtheoryâ. In social relationships, it all depends.
Myths are just one kind of story genre within the wider scope of human story-telling. What makes myth particularly interesting is that - I think - it appeals to some kind of âsocial abstractionâ module within the brain that is capable of compressing large amounts of social knowledge into smaller nuggets. Some stories convey a lot more information about human nature than other stories, not even in the sense of âteaching lessonsâ so much as stimulating useful contemplation of social problems and providing widely useful âmnemonicsâ for quick reference during high-pressure, time-critical social situations (e.g conflict, emergency) that can arise without notice. Emotionally traumatic situations can put the individual in shock; stories about traumatic situations may play some role in âpreppingâ the individual by helping him rehearse how to handle the overwhelmingly powerful thoughts and feelings he will encounter in such situations.
Astrology, paganism, myth, etc. ⌠these act as âmetaphorical mnemonicsâ or âswitching stations of human knowledgeâ that allow us to tie together wide swathes of the corpus of knowledge regarding human nature that resides in human culture in a way that filters and extracts the most useful and general aspects of this knowledge while providing a razor to apply in cutting out the useless, deceptive and manipulative ideas that seek to take hold of us. I think itâs difficult to overstate how important that is to individual happiness.
Clayton -
That post clears up most of my questions. Just so Iâm on the same page, do you consider astrology, or at least astro-liberalism, as an umbrella term for astrology, paganism, myth, or your âmetaphorical mnemonicsâ?