[CLIP]
> Noctem also wrote :-
>
> > The reason subject is one on which Neo-Tech literature has an
> > interesting take (based largely on Julian Jaynes' work): that
> > survival pressures forced the invention of reason and that it was
> > taught as a survival technique rather than developed as a genetic
> > feature. This would help explain R. B.'s jump from the level-1 to the
> > level-2 mind. It would also explain the mechanism of the development
> > of the level-3 mind, which would be an invented survival adaptation
> > to living in a multicultural society.
>
> I've always been fascinated by the concept of something being
> "invented" which we in turn call "man-made" and finally "unnatural".
> Given that everything falls in the set of Nature, how can we
> differentiate between a bird's nest and a skyscraper? Why is the
> former "natural" and the latter "unnatural"?
ARGHH! 2nd-century Christian heresy is still alive in 20th century
secular society?!?
Then again, heresies have to be effective at spreading before attracting
official censure.
=====
I'm serious. The so-called heresy [it rated an ecumenical council....]
of Gnosticism is based on precisely the above phenomenon: the declaration
of the material world as inherently "evil", and the "spiritual" as
inherently "good". In this case, we are focusing on "man"'s creating the
item as making it particularly material [it wouldn't exist without us...?]
There were two variants, both of which oversimplified Christology from
the mainstream viewpoint. The core assumptions were also explicitly denied.
It also has a long track history; one can make a flimsy(?) case that the
Protestant work ethic, and the Victorian aversion to untamed nature, are
both different phenotypes of the assumptions that also generate
Gnosticism. Another such case can be made that "consumerism" is a minor
mutation of the Protestant work ethic.
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
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/ Kenneth Boyd
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