Does human sense of fairness match to standards of Capuchin monkey?

It is believed that in humans, upon entering into puberty stage, they start questioning their childhood beliefs. Now, I am realizing that how shallow is that questioning?  Actually, the life of this questioning is very brief and is soon shut by dominating social values that make individuals who dare to differ either based on their conscience or misunderstandings look freaky and odd. 

 It is not just biologists who have struck by close relatedness of organisms to each other. I guess, every culture has noticed these relatedness and have their own explanations. What I want to point out is that, these explanations are constructed very well to fit perfectly to the dominating social values and norms. This is just a manifestation of human arrogance that they want to see the whole Universe revolve around them. What we usually know as Anthropocentric world view. A perspective or world view that is not anthropocentric hurts human ego and arrogance.

 It is not unusual to not get struck by very close similarities of apes to humans. When I was just a kid and was not exposed to evolutionary theory, the only prevailing explanation was that the apes are descendants of the "cursed ancient nations" that had disobeyed God. Now, I understand that how arrogant humans can be  that they even go to extent of demonizing innocent animals. Of course, if one is not exposed to biological perspective, these explanations make them to think of apes as something to hated or at least something not clean/disgusting. It is another way of intimidating people to not question the dominating social values. 

If one follows the same line of reasoning in observing human behavior regarding animals one can understand clearly that why despite of availability of information and the ability of humans to think rationally, they  demonize each other (Animals yet have still long way to wait). It  really makes sense when I see the intimidation of dominating social values. To me, it appears that  most of  humans do not have the courage to maintain the freedom of their minds. Now look at this. Morality is one of the three basic constituents of Philosophy and it stands at the core of Theology. Why the morality should be so specialized and complex when everyone needs to have it? The simple reason is that the individual's sense of justice and fairness is thoughts as something dangerous to society and making things complex is a way of blocking free thinking (Mankind are generally lazy in thinking) by intimidation of complexity (You are not qualified to have a conscience; You need to be logician or specialized in religious studies to have good judgments).... 

 Watch these two interesting videos of experiments and decide what kinds of teachings are responsible for the sens of fairness in these monkeys? Isn't it the absence of intimidation? (Complex cultural constructs)

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What is really noticeable are protests against discrimination and inequality. When I watched these two videos, I really felt that by accepting the discrimination and rationalizing injustices either by legal, cultural and religious constructs, the mankind have lowered their conscience or moral standards and let me dare to say that human standards are not even matched to the standard of these Capuchin monkeys (because either way we tolerate or even accept different levels of discrimination)

SECRETS OF THE TAJ MAHAL

Meme is still waiting for its language

I just looked up in dictionary to reassure myself that my understanding of “Meme” is not much different from that of a “standard” one and found this definition; … “(biology) a cultural unit (an idea, value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one person to another by non-genetic means (as by imitation)”…. Frankly, I am happy that Meme is non-genetic. If it was genetic, then perhaps we might have been calling it, “Memememe” and that is not a good looking word.  No, it is not me who thinks so but it is the “neuroscientists” who imply so. You may have read and heard several times that the brain inside our skulls is not actually a single brain but rather, it is 4 in 1; the reptilian brain, mammalian brain, Ape brain and Homo sapiens brain. That means, there is not a single “Me” but a “reptilian Me”, a Mammalian Me”, an “Ape Me” and a “Homo sapiens Me”.   

Though we have “Memememe” but our personalities are the product of meme, meaning the cultures we are exposed to. My intention here is not just to play with words but to say that memes that are responsible for giving us a sense of identity and personality is mostly “constructed reality”. No, I am not trying to imply that there is a war between the “constructed reality” and “natural reality” but instead that there is war within “constructed reality” and the main weapons is the “rationality”.

Well, it is good to rationalize things but anything out of moderation loses its originality. At least, the efforts to mathematize the language tell us so (The efforts to produce a logical language like that of mathematics based on symbols is now an example of classical failure in Philosophy). To me, the thinking that, math is the only rational way of expressing things is underestimating the complexity of reality especially the life. I am telling so because it has shattered one my childish dreams. From my early introductory (just out of curiosity) reading in Psychology, I found that there is a “subconscious mind” that the conscious mind remains mostly unaware of its “thinking” and one of the main “reasons” is our unfamiliarity to its language. It uses the language of the “symbols and images” and the verbal and numerical languages that we (conscious mind) understand are not of much use to communicate with this part of our minds. It is a fact that when we sleep, the conscious mind goes passive and unconscious mind becomes active and the unconscious mind communicates with us in form of dreams and usually they are strange and we do not know their meanings. Because we do not understand their meaning so we usually just discard them by ignoring them. The idea that a symbolic language would help us to communicate with unconscious mind was very thrilling for me. Modern arts somewhat were attracting me as I was “believing” that these seemingly “irrational” creations are influenced by “unconscious mind” and are windows for us to look into unconscious minds of their creators.

As I learned that computers have their own language that is very different than ours and we need an intermediary language to translate our language to the language that computers understand and likewise translate the language of computer to our language, so we could communicate with computers, made me even more hopeful. Perhaps, what we needed was an intermediary language.

With this thrilling idea in my head, I was looking for an intermediary language (How naïve) and when I learned about Bertrand Russell’s book, “Principia Mathematica”  and that it is a book about “symbolic logic”, I got really excited. It was not hard to find it. I was available at Provincial library. I started reading it very carefully but my hope was evaporated when I found out that it is neither an intermediary language nor a language for unconscious mind. In fact, it is not even a language for conscious mind (This is one of the reasons that I got allergic to mathematics and it is really taxing me high on my “intellectual” health). I know that I am the product of meme (Cultural unit however, I take it as me + me; Conscious me + Unconscious me) but actually this meme is me-me and still awaits for an intermediary language to make it meme. 

When passive becomes active…

It might be a constructed misconception but I found it interesting in case it holds some truth in it and that is, “women change their minds frequently”. I found it amusing because I was born and raised in a country (Pakistan)whose half population (women; that are approximately more than 90 million) are dominantly passive population and it is a prevailing concept that the rest of the population (90 million men) value or better to say honor “standing on one leg” , no matter what. A thin layer of society that is active men and women are very slow in changing their minds. Although, I understand that it is a distorted face of “Real men keep their words” but “unfortunately”, it is now widely practiced and is a reality. It is also amusing that people are aware of this and there are many jokes on these stereotypical concepts that are not appropriate to repeat here (Making fun of it and standing firm for it; that is the sole paradox that is appreciated and even there TV shows that are totally based on this single paradox)

Let’s for a moment, assume that it is true, “women change their mind frequently”, then how Pakistan will look like if the 90 million passive populations become active??? One thing that will change for sure is the shift from “contradictory society” to “paradoxical society”. Let me explain, what does it mean?

Contradict mean, denial of “truth”, denial of others’ realities and contradictory society means, taking firm positions that, others’ truths (beliefs, constructed realities or whatever you like; doesn’t matter much) are utterly wrong and should be resisted or wiped out. In other words, there should be only one world view or “truth” exists and it should prevail.

Paradox means, self-contradictory or understanding that things that appear true have also another face (“wrong”) OR conflicting realities and the possibility that both might be right or both might be wrong. Paradoxical society means, people accepts the co-existence of multiple realities and people do not try to exterminate the reality of a part of society just because it is not matching with their own.

Although it is just a contemplation that by once 90 million passive population becomes active, that are supposedly frequently change their minds, a society shifts from contradictory to paradoxical society. One might ask that, why a society goes from paradoxical once it is not contradictory? Whether we accept or not but it is a fact that all societies are actually either contradictory or paradoxical in their basic nature. There is no truth or reality that does not contradict others or itself. Let me give an example, there are people who oppose “Evolutionary theory” that is a unifying theory in biological sciences but follow biological research in health. On other hand there are people who are great defender of “Evolutionary theory” but politically favor socialism or libertarianism (both of these two systems are thought to contradict evolutionary theory; Evolution is not product of controlled/regulated environments). It is just the nature of reality and it seems that there is no escape from contractions and paradoxes.

Changing the perception, not what you like most?

I like Sherlock Holmes and have watched all the series and movies based on this fictional character. The expression, “I suspect nothing and everything”, taking the “absence” of something as important clue as “footprint” and drawing big conclusions from seemingly very small and sporadic clues are my favorites that have dragged me to be big fan of this character. In short, Sherlock Holmes is what a rational man can/expected to do in controlled and deterministic yet thrilling fictional world. The utmost efforts of mankind to rationalize everything and look down to what appear as irrational are a self-serving evidence that rationality is most sought trait at least to “modern-humans” (Sometimes when I come across some evidently irrational expressions and comments in favor of rationality and sanity, I just get a stroke of puzzlement; Thanks to our brains that have evolved to ease us by changing the perceptions to create reality at least by illusion if not by facts; foods for beliefs?).

Cottingley Fairies
Being a fan of the fictional character of Sherlock Holms as a symbolic representation of a rational man, it is natural to think of the mind behind the character as a highly creative and rational person. Arthur Conan Doyle is the creator of this character but you may be amazed to know that the creator of such a rational character also believed that fairies do exist. In 1921, he wrote the book, “the coming of fairies” and he believed that the 5 photographs of fairies that were taken by two cousins, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths in 1917 in Cottingley, England were original. He was a member of “Ghost Club” and based on the differences of beliefs on “spiritualism” broke up with his friend, Harry Houdini who was a magician and was opposing “spiritualism”. So, how a rational person accommodate such an apparent paradox? Before pondering on this question let’s explore some more related paradoxes…

This is what one of my teachers told us as a joke,

…. The government started a literacy project for distant villages and was sending teachers to villages to teach people reading and writing. In some villages the village chiefs were opposing and resisting the project. A teacher reaches in one of such villages where village chief was against the project. He chooses the mosque as his classroom and evenings for his classes. It was a good strategy as people were free at evenings and were coming to mosque for evening prayers and following chatter. He succeeded to attract most of villagers and it made village chief furious. The village chief appeared in one of the class sessions. The teacher wrote “snake” on board. The chief went to blackboard and draw a snake beside the word and asked villagers, which one looks like snake, my snake or the teachers snake? Villagers replied your snake. The chief was successful in driving out the teacher by saying that he was fooling people…..

This is not really funny to make you laugh but I remembered this parable yesterday when I saw some large abstract sculptures and paintings exhibited at concourse between Albany State Museum and MacDonald. I am somewhat OK, with those abstract painting that have expressive color combinations but what about sculptures? The materials, colors and shapes, nothing in them are expressive. Expression is at core of Arts. Without expressions nothing makes sense in Arts. The modern Arts are like Arthur C. Doyle beliefs in fairies, there should be something that is above our understanding to merit as an imaginative.

I would have forgotten about the Modern Arts but today seeing a wooden abstract sculpture that has replaced by “late” fountain in front of library tower at University reminded me again the debate of the teacher and village chief. To me, nothing is more expressive, beautiful and romantic than water, especially fountains and water falls. I think, the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang is right. Perhaps as our rationality grows so is our irrational parts and Modern arts is an expression of our co-evolved irrational part. May be my obsession and thirst for natural beauty is due to my primitive rational part.

I better to grow more rational so my irrational part also grow and start loving modern arts. No I think, a better solution is to change my perception to accommodate more paradoxes. It is much efficient way..hehehe. In fact, there is one aspect of modern art that I appreciate and that is the factor of “rebellion” but not to the extent that Ai Weiwei and Aliaa Magda Elmahdy's went. It is my understanding that cultural rebellions, though sometimes controversial helps in shedding hardened skins and shells during cultural metamorphosis. So, how rational men accommodate irrationality under at an attractive names of Modern Arts and even religious devotions? I think, the answer lies at plasticity of our left hemisphere. It has the job of rationalizing our deeds and likings. No matter, how much irrational and paradoxical are our devotions and likings, left hemisphere is very good at rationalizing things and convincing us.