Two Fatal Errors

Yes. It has been a really long time since I wrote anything here. But I have been thinking ...  so, here goes ...

I have an idea that has been percolating for a while and I want to get the core of it into writing and then see where that goes from there.

I have been listening to the perspectives of people on the radio, as well as people at my work and any other information sources that gives me a sense of how people think the world works. By "world" I mean the way in which everything interacts and unfolds - the nature of things. I am primarily focusing on the human sphere of influence. I am noticing specifically two fatal flaws in how the world is perceived by those of us who have been strongly influenced, both consciously and unconsciously, by the dominant Eurocentric (Western) worldview. That includes me. I think these are fundamental problems although I am not claiming that they are the only ones.

Fatal Flaw #1 - Humans think that they make rational decisions based on facts.  This is the flaw about human's perception about themselves - the internal flaw. This flaw is a big one that has many components. One component is that humans think they can act independently of their brain physiology. Moreover,  humans think that their brains (which determine their methods of making decisions) are significantly different from animal brains and the brains of early humans. I have long thought that humans operate based primarily upon emotional triggers and that they create or bend "facts" and "reason" to suit those emotional responses. This results in large scale delusion about reality and is tied to our hyperfocus on emotional gratification and avoiding unpleasant emotions - advertising, drugs, warfare, etc.

Fatal Flaw #2 - Humans believe that the world is mechanistic and that they can influence it mechanistically. This is the flaw about human's perception about the world around them - the external flaw (yes, the notion of external is a delusion and a perceptual flaw). On very small to global scales people attribute errors in predicting future events (in economics, weather, etc.) as mistakes in applying the mechanistic model rather than a fundamental flaw in the model itself. For example, in referring to errors in predicting a snow and ice storm hitting the southern US I just heard a news person state that even meteorologists are humans who make mistakes. The dominant world view thinks that with big enough computers and correct data that we can predict the weather precisely. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of complex nature of reality. Our understanding of complex systems is in its infancy and is not understood nor is it held by the masses. Even on small scales within the interactions of a small group of people, say at my work for example, people are frustrated by the unpredictability of how the interactions of the group's interactions will unfold.

These flaws in what we believe about ourselves and the world are not at all independent of each other. I think adherence to these flawed perspectives is fueled primarily by fear of losing control. If we can neither understand nor control the world or ourselves in a rational mechanistic way then we are not in control of our own destiny and all the fears associated with that lack of control emerge and intensify.

There is a lot more to explore about these ideas but that's it for now. To be continues (well maybe) ...