Reply #47: "I suspect that you see people by and large as rational actors"

[kristopher]

Not at all.

I see people as being more inclined to post hoc rationalizations of their actions. The actions themselves are largely emotive, and you've described a few (far too few) of the triggers that are in our daily environment.

I can agree to an extent with your first three observations as generalized tendencies in behavior, however from there we start to encounter some poorly defined concepts that have a strong bearing on the conclusions.

First is the obvious way you are defining diverse groups with a single profile. For example, you've described the right wing propaganda effort accurately but applied the associated values that it is targeting to everyone. If that were accurate, DU wouldn't exist.

Some people fear are motivated by fear of loss. Pay attention to any salesperson (particularly insurance) and you'll see the way this fear is exploited; people will spend significant sums to ensure the security they've worked to provide their family is maintained.

When one disciplines a child, it is often through fear of loss; eat your peas, or no desert.

A Western child's prayer: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake I pray the lord my soul to take. That is religious indoctrination based on fear of loss of life.

That was just to display that the motives that push us are very basic emotional responses that can work to motivate pursuit of any number of goals. What I see you doing is describing everyone as having the same goals. I might look to my neighbor for cues as to appropriate social behavior, but when the neighbor on the left is giving me different cues than the neighbor on the right, then what happens?


You've done the same with corporations; companies who make batteries and solar panels are pursuing different goals than ExxonMobile and Phelps Dodge. It simply can't be argued that there are not strong dynamics at work where conflicting interests pursue power through various avenues, including the ones you describe.

I certainly agree with the lack of ethics portion of your thoughts, but again, it isn't universal nor is it necessarily the defining input into the way events unfold.

What I see is a complex system that is extremely flexible. This system is oriented around two physical realities - reproduction to ensure the species and production of goods and services to provide for human needs. These are fundamental drivers for our lives and our cultural constructs reflect the physical realities associated with performing these tasks. This cultural "infrastructure" is adaptable in the same way that a multicelled organism is adaptable through evolutionary forces. However where evolution on the physiological level is a rather slow process by standards of human lifetimes, the cultural evolutionary process can be extremely rapid.

The evolutionary forces that have the most pronounced impact on the shape of the culture are those that affect the way we produce our food and other necessities of life. When a segment of the cultural infrastructure is successful it is usually because it is a positive force in production with implications for reproductive success (note that limiting overpopulation can be just as important as repopulation of a decimated group). Harris terms this "the primacy of infrastructure".

What the infrastructure is the dominate over is 1) the values and beliefs that people hold and 2) the way social groups and institutions form and interact.

Given that this is how I organize my perception and interpretation of events, I come to disticntly different conclusions than you do about the way things work. Since I've posted the results of that view many times, I'll give you a birthday gift and spare you the repetition.