>My friend in London reckon that critical thinking "works better" than
>"mysticism" in that it allows us to do more environment-affecting work, like
>putting satellites in orbit, engineering global comms networks etc. But then
>I suppose that, if a lot of scientists' and engineers' work proceeds by
>non-critical thinking (and I'm sure it does, because we don't have time to
>question ALL our assumptions ALL the time), then what "works better" is this
>mixture of critical and non-critical thinking.
>
I agree. We are a mix, and that is healthy. Unfortunately, technological
wonders are most likely reinforcing dysfunctional mystical and political
beliefs and therefore increasing the speed and degree of the damage they are
doing. How about focusing on discovering the laws of memetic interaction,
and then applying them to politics? We would re-write the Constitution based
on the yet to be discovered laws of memetics. I think I only know one law so
far.
1st law of Memetics:
The strength of a meme is in direct proportion to the strength of its converse.
This would explain the political savvy saying, "Power comes from who you
choose to fight, not who you know."
Peter