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Watch out! He has a wand and he knows how to use it! ;-p

there's a difference between ideas and biological reality. it's how they interact to create experience and cultural complexity that's really interesting.



"From the gender and sexual freedom fairy? "

Okay, I'm going to take a shot at something here and try to understand it from my viewpoint. Assuming you are interested in my viewpoint, which it's fine if you are not.


I read your response here and see you shooting down my perspective. You seem to have a fixed viewpoint rather than be an open one. It seems as if I have to argue with you to have a conversation. It seems we are not exploring a topic together we are arguing to see who is right.


Now obviously, the internet sucks as a means of communication but this is how the discussion comes across to me. This is an attitude I find very frequently in men and I rarely participate in such discussions. I don't give a shit about being right, I care about learning and exchanging ideas. Is it a gender difference? Biological? Cultural? Personal? I have no idea but this is one of the differences I see between *some* men and women in science. Men, in general, seem to get off on a good argument (obviously, not true for all men) while women in general find arguing tedious, or even threatening(obviously not true for all women).

Personally, I love sharing ideas but I have absolutely no interest in convincing anyone of anything ever.

"chad, some of us aren't only using science as post hoc rationalization for directions already chosen. i suggest you consider alternative relationships with it."

are you sure? maybe it's just me then. i tend to see everything done by my conscious mind as a "coming after" if you will...coming after what? biology, perhaps, perhaps something more like life force, will (for lack of a better term) but more accurately as just what Watts called "happenings" - moments happen, they occur, like events the way Baudrillard describes them. my main justification for saying this however, goes to the psychology of James, more accurately to Peirce. theories are moments of rest for our minds; they help us feel comfortable with being alive. this isn't to say that revolutions in scientific thought, or any other theory, is not disturbing, e.g. galileo; it is only to say that as our knowledge progresses it is in the service of our desire to feel safe and secure. this, i think is the whole appeal of the scientific process. it emphasizes experiementation, method, the reproducibilty of results etc. in an effort to put our mind at ease about the unknowable future. this, again, is NOT to belittle science, only keep us honest about why we are scientific.

my relationship to science, or rigor of this sort, is ever changing and i hope you can add some mash of material to its shape.

I said, " free will versus determinism, like many other debates, gains its value only as a means for rationalizing what we already have done or know we are going to do."

you said, "that is a position on the issue, not coming from a place outside of it as you feign."



somewhere else i said, "how can any rational explanation overcome this problem and try to establish something a priori or even outside of the infinite present moment?"

my response...doesn't the question directly above on my part suggest to you already that i do not believe in an ahistorical position? oh, perhaps it was my position of love as another cosmology...if that is it then let me clarify, "love" is no more ahistorical than anything is, it is entirely rooted in the moment or instant to which it occurs. this in fact, is what makes love something of an infinite capacity and able to actually fully embrace the infinity of each moment (zeno - sort of). that, however, goes aside to another potential thread.

i don't think you would assert this but i want to caution anyone that thinks the scientific method is an ahistorical alternative. the seduction of this possiblity is easily understood due to the repitition of results that science emphasizes; it however, is simply not viable. science occurs in daily lives of people. we can trust it to help us make decisions any more than we can trust ourselves, so why not just trust ourselves?

i just had an interesting thought that i have never pursued but i wonder if the early scientists (who ever they are) relied heavily on the scientific method to compete with what was still a firm hold on reality posited by the belief in God. perhaps it had to compete in a cultural environment that literally wrote the book on what its methods were to be. science was, and is, in the service of something. i dare not say what but for shorthand lets go with will, not nietzsche's but schopenhauer's. we can say, i hope together, that science emerged from an environment that placed deifinite practices on its methodology- the method of science itself is culturally inscribed.

i am terribly off topic and although i want to question you on your approach to "synchronizing the different areas of [the] brain..." i want to stick to the question at hand...gender and freedom.

i said, "do not be nice to a gender bender because you have come to the conclusion to do so, that is more detrimental than fear or anger; rather appreciate and support them simply for no reason at all. "

you said, "what exactly does "not reason at all" look like to you? i find it to be a non-sensical statement. if you are talking about non-transaction specific altruism and adopting a general strategic posture of kindness, then that is a posture that has evolved. morality does not come from the sky; it comes from the earth."

first, morality comes from earth. i love this thank you, i am going to use it if the need arises if you don't mind. but i am not a moralist. "no reason at all" is amoral. morality requires reasons, it requires the immoral (a reasonable construction is created in the instant the duality is contemplated). morality does not work with the immoral. to get "beyond this" has been the project of many people that have lived on this earth- to a place beyond "good and evil" , to stay in the context i have placed it. my position, which as you point out, i definetely have one, is that gender and freedom , like many other strategies, occur or erupt (baudrillard) in each moment. they arise out of the moment in which they find themselves occuring and they dissolve away as the next moment occurs. i realize this is a problem for both science and more particualrly for evolutionary biology- that is, if these things want to lead. it is not a problem, however, if science has a different intention, one the likes of which i am sadly incapable of describing, then perhaps its potential can really shine through. but rationality is always late.

the short of it is i posit love as a way of living because it takes the guess work out of it. if you decide to love everyone you do so regardless of the current scientific finding or dominant religio-etho trends of the time. if we consider love in this moment ahistorical then we just need to step outside the box a little and at least pretend (lyotard) we are capable of stepping out of the box. for now i enter every encounter with every living being with as loving a disposition as i possibly can. sometimes this manifests as a slap, sometimes bravery (usually having to face my own fears), sometimes i am kind. i am especially fond of gender benders and those other "deviant" classes partly due to my respect for them and partly due to my being a white boy, my opportunities at deviance aren't so culturally inscripted. either way love is, in my mind, and getting to the heart of freedom, a better place to start from than science. in one single step you arrive without any reason whatsoever. where does gender and freedom come from? from our desire (think in terms of bataille and excess here) to love- we manifest gender and freedom, and perhaps oppression, in order to satisfy our desire to overcome the obstacle and love each other in spite of ourselves. it is entirely different approach, ala baudrillard but certainly not of baudrillard. if he reversed the death drive i can certainly reverse this, given time and diligence.

finally, and thank you for your patience, i think N's song would be just as radical in some way or other, but still similar to Zarathustra's only perhaps a bit louder, with some techno thrown in.:) and, by the way, he was writing for us anyway, i think he anticipated this kind of possibility we are discussing.

blue-j
"basically you are condescending and virtually telling us that all our silly little discussions and science projects are for naught, and if we just focus on loving each other, everything will be cool. i sense stereotypes operating here, pitting rationality vs. emotion, and assuming you have arrived just in time to save the hyper-rational from their cold, lonely existence. but i am a fuzz bunny already!"

i do not intend to condescend but i do intend to challenge a little. i do this only because i am in the middle of these challenges my self and hope to gain some insight into my projects. unfortunately most of my questions are related to your other post so i will start another for those but i do want to address this point directly.

science is not "silly" or "little" in fact, it is rigorous. i hope you don't think that i suggest that just because science, evolutionary biology more particular in this instance, can't answer your initial question with any satisfaction (afterall this is what theories are supposed to do for us- satisfy us - read W James on this with me) doesn't mean that science or evolutionary biology is all 'for naught'.

as far as the reality of gender and freedom being real, please elaborate. it seems to me that (and i reach back to your social constructionist past self here) both come into existence, are "instantiated" in the social mechanisms that construct them (read Judith Butler with me here). how can one ever measure freedom except juxtaposed against tyrrany? your notion of freedom sounds a little too absolutish for me right now. i am glad, however, that you use the word "instantiation"- the root of this word is "instanti" or "instance", like a moment. it comes and goes, it appears and disappears. go to marx's critique of labor and how men can be abused at work because they are encouraged to go home and abuse their wives. the freedom shifts and moves depending upon the instance. this is what i mean by phantasmagoria for both gender and freedom.

oh, by the way, i am here to pull, at least my self, out of that "hyper-rational...cold, lonely" existence.

now for the good stuff but first, one more aside. if we did focus on loving each other everything would be cool. imagine a world after, say, six successive generations did nothing but focus on how to achieve harmony amongst their fellow beings...interesting idea to me. and it can fit with evolutionary biology because we would certainly be modifying our genetic code to accomodate our new enterprise. not because of that genetic code but with it.