Check out the July 13 edition of Rolling Stone, where Al Gore concludes that the real energy issue is not whether we will "run out" of fossil fuels. Rather, the question is whether we will burn so much of the existing supply to make the entire planet uninhabitable before rethinking our…
I’ve previously written that dollars are fungible (See “The Curse of Fungible Dollars”). In that article I pointed out that dollars are completely interchangeable. I noted that there is actually only one kind of dollar and that dollars don’t come pre-labeled as “Christmas ornament dollars,” “pedicure dollars,” “Xbox dollars” or “charitable cause dollars.” I further suggested that we work hard to brainwash ourselves that non-fungible dollars exist and that we are free to spend any dollar we haven’t chosen to label a “charity dollar” on anything at all, conscience free. To see the absurdity of that mindset, try to imagine a charity refusing your donation because the money you offered came out of your “vacation” fund.
Many Americans would consider my fungible dollars article to be a curse because it has the effect of moralizing every dollar we spend. That every dollar is potentially a dollar we could (and possibly should) spend to help desperate human beings thus becomes a toxic thought that we prevent ourselves from considering. It causes too much cognitive dissonance. . If you doubt the toxicity of such a thought, imagine speaking freely of the fungibility of dollars at a Las Vegas casino or at any other entertainment mecca where those “entertainment” dollars flow freely. The mere mention that all dollars are fungible will trigger the rapid and painful collapse of elaborate mental worlds constructed by everyone within hearing range.
With the same dollars we spend to buy tickets to concerts or sports events, …
In a book called Evolutionary Psychology: A Beginner’s Guide (2005), Robin Dunbar, Louise Barrett and John Lycett addressed this issue. The book drew on additional research that can be found in Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, by Robin Dunbar (1997).
We don’t have limited numbers of friends and acquaintances merely because we choose to have such limited numbers. Rather, as explained in these two works, physiological limitations constrain human social choices. We are limited in the number of acquaintances we can have because we are physiologically limited. This is another example that those who claim to explain human animals without the benefit of careful science do so at their own risk.
Human societies are complex social environments. Archaeologists have determined that pre-modern humans lived in small-scale hunter gatherer societies “characterized by very small, relatively unstable groups, often dispersed across a very large area.” Only after agriculture was developed (10,000 years ago) did large permanent settlements become possible Living in groups gives members huge advantages such as reduced predation risk (we benefit from the “many eyes” advantage and large groups of individuals deter most predators).
Group living comes with costs, too. We have conflicts over limited resources, such as food and mates. Group living stresses immune systems too. The menstrual cycles of female primates are disrupted. In order to obtain necessary food, humans need to travel further each day. Associating with large groups of people also has a huge mental cost. In order to live safely within large groups, …
The conservatives are working hard to characterize the president as incompetent. To do so is an attempt to hide the fact that much of the damage done by the president comes right out of the conservative playbook. George Lakoff elaborates, in this insightful article: The mantra of incompetence has been…
In "What is Conservative Culture?" (July 3, 2006 issue of The New Republic), Rick Perlstein reports that a new kind of prom has spung up in some fundamentalist communities. It's not for high school seniors but for prepubescent girls. They dress up in party dresses and take their fathers as…