emotions. His idea was a reaction to the dominant view of the day, espoused by 17
th
Century philosopher
Thomas Hobbes (Is it not high time we ban such useless professions as philosophy- or its egregious Modern
bastard spawm- ethology?), that ‘....the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’ was true. SP sees
current slavishness to ‘natural’ & ‘organic’ products as evidence of this current benighted rejection of Modernity
& its creature comforts. I’ve long agreed. I call this ‘Chicken Littleism’. People always yearn for days of yore
when things were better, sunsets were more beautiful, & decency was all about. People point to global warming,
AIDS, ethnic cleansing, serial killing, & terrorism as proof that now is not as good as yesteryears. Conveniently
they elide right over things such as lack of female suffrage, slavery, Jim Crow, Colonialism, World Wars 1 & 2,
Vietnam, the Cold War, the Civil War, Communism’s horrors, Fascism’s horrors, & even such banal things as
pop up toasters, penicillin, & television. I ask you, go back in 25 year increments & ask if you cannot detect
steady progress? In the year 2003, as I write, look at all around. Now, recall 1978: no computers, the Cold War,
no MTV, the Oil Crisis. Go back to 1953: Jim Crow, lynchings, the Cold War, McCarthyism, no cure for polio.
Back to 1928: the verge of the Great Depression (in the USA- in Europe it was already underway), Prohibition,
Al Capone, the rise of Nazism & Stalinism. Now 1903: still Jim Crow, Child Labor, no electricity outside of
small urban enclaves, a morass of a US war in the Philippines, no female suffrage. Given my choice I’d sooner
live in 2003 than go back- & I’d wager that 2028 will be far better than 2003. The NS has unraveled so
thoroughly that it even seems a little odd, & late, that SP thinks it still holds sway today. After all, it is now
known (just to limit the idea to its North American archetypes) that when the ancestors of Native Americans
arrived across the Bering land bridge 10-12,000 years ago that they lived in a constant state of war & hatred with
each other for eons (a fact that Europeans exploited in a convenient divide & conquer tactic), often resorted to
genocide, slavery, & cannibalism, they wiped out almost all the large mammals that populated the continent at
the time (according to Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, And Steel this played a pivotal role in Native Americans’
lack of technological advancement millennia later- they had no beasts of burden- BOBs), & were therefore easy
prey for the BOB-ful European Conquistadores!), as well as wiping out earlier human arrivals such as the
Kennewick Man’s people, & other intriguing fossil finds. It is also well-known that native Americans were
wanton in their destruction of forests (flora) & buffalo (fauna), as well. Huge piles of bison bones have been
found where the animals were driven off cliffs en masse. Of the 100s of beasts only a few dozen were ever eaten
before scavengers finished them off. So how does the ridiculous NS idea remain? SP attributes it to a distrust of
Modernity, but I would add a good dash of Madison Avenue exploitation also helps.
Idea #3 that SP takes his anger out on is the GIM- the idea propounded by 17
th
Century philosopher Rene
Descartes. Of the 3 ideas (or ideals) this is actually the 1 that SP is least convincing on. The reason simply being
that despite all the tests & cognitive studies, there has yet to be an alternative that answers all the mysteries of
consciousness. The fact that the dog may eternally have to chase its tail in this field suggests, to me, that the GIM
will surpass the other 3 in longevity. SP initially tries to explain away the GIM by showing the structure of
rhetoric that has blossomed around the idea- such as ‘use your head’ implying a distinction between the you &
the mind/soul/essence, etc. Overall I think SP does a decent, though not complete, assault on the idea, but (much
like Daniel Dennett- oft-cited by SP- in his Multiple Drafts theory of consciousness expounded in Consciousness
Explained) he leaves little niggling openings that a lot of his arguments are mere semiotics. Personally I doubt
the homuncular idea of consciousness, but it hangs on as a viable alternative for the alternatives’ failures. Some
of these alternatives are elucidated by SP, but with far more attributed success than is accepted by most. The real
problem with the GIM is that- unlike the BS & NS, it is far harder to prove empirically. More on this later.
Oddly, SP ends his assault on this trinity by defending philosophy as a profession- because of its influence,
which he has just detailed as far too often being noxious.
This trinity also leaves wide areas of speculation open about things such as criminality, homosexuality,
addiction, race, sexuality, etc. SP later opines that people fear that if genes have some influence on people, that
influence is conflated with total influence. This is easily disproved, & SP does so at some length & with great
clarity. But why do people conflate some with total? Probably because of innate human laziness, & the
distortions that pervade the media- especially in soundbiting ideas that need speechifying to elucidate
thoroughly.
1 of the best areas that SP manages to elucidate his views is that of the famed ‘twin studies’ of recent decades-
wherein researchers will delineate all the habits & predilections of identical twins raised apart, & marvel at how
similar their lives end up: similar favorite colors, spouses that look similar or are from the same ethnic
backgrounds, political views, sexual histories, favorite sports &/or sports teams, etc. You know the drill. This is
not unexpected rhetorically, nor scientifically, since identical twins share the same DNA. SP also well illustrates