Season 5
No Sugar Tonight
Kaos
Season 6
Lesson from the Bioble - 10
Season 7
Science vs Religion
Probabilistic Ethics
I love sports. The process of playing or watching people compete within a defined set of rules is so marvelously civilized. Way different than warfare, where life and death are the measures of success. Sports are based on intellectual agreements that define the physical and behavioral parameters for a competition. I want to examine sports from the perspective of evolution, and look at how the major social adaptations play out in that aspect of our modern civilizations.
Chaos is the opposite of order. Kaos was the opposition to Control in the old TV series Get Smart. That show was a spoof on the Cold War actions represented in mass media back in the 1960's - which I grew up with. The Cold War was the last act of the 20th century conflict that started in Serbia and ended in Berlin. The Great War, its sequel WW II, and The Cold War were the summation of evolutionary selection for democracy over autocracy. Prior to the 20th century, we had aristocratic autocracies running their colonial empires. What we ended up with in the 1990's and moving forward were civilizations with a preference for democratic governments and capitalist market economies. For the last forty years, the evolutionary competition has been between democratic governance and open markets. The markets are winning. Democracy requires stability so that we can have reasonable discussions about problems. Markets are managed by economic aristocrats who prefer short term profits to worrying about long term problems. That's why the economic forces favor chaos. As long as they keep people arguing and worrying about whatever issues can be dredged up, there are fewer opportunities to Question Authority, and change the rules.
The tenth commandment from the Bioble, the holy book of the evolving Church of Science is reviewed.
I've retired, but now I'm committing to this - Science! And I'm ready to offer up a better explanation for some of our problems. Guess what's not included?
How can we make a better world? We need to agree on what is ethical. We may never agree on what's moral - whatever each of us thinks is 'good vs evil'. But we can agree on some rules so that we can get along and work together. We might even be able to solve some problems that way.
Everyone should be able to look at their personal history and understand where they came from. Otherwise, how can you figure out where you're going?
Why are you here? Who knows? Well, you are the only one who can give meaning to your life. You have to look around and figure out what are the current forces active around you and how they influence you. You have to understand your past, and how things shaped who you are. Then, if you can take time, you can find out what is good in life and work toward that.
My Goodness! What is that? Good is such a relative term for so many things in our lives. If you are a believer in Science, a member of the Evolving Church of Science, what do you think is good. Here's what I think...
An analysis of artificial selection. When we think about 'domestication', altering the life histories of various species to meld into our human civilizations, we don't always appreciate the repercussions. We use our consciousness to direct our actions. We work with available information, knowledge and belief, to raise crops and so much more. Artificial selection is really just propagating ideas about how we should organize the world.
In the evolving church of science, we understand our mental information is sorted into personal beliefs (which are not verified) and knowledge (which is verified through multiple external sources). When we make choices about our actions, we are encouraged to use as much information as we can, because that makes the actions more likely to reach the desired goals. We should all be doing a little more math...