|
Civilization is more extensive but no more favorable than that of any society that has passed before us. As fast as wealth piles up here, poverty springs up there. Increases in material abundance are matched by increases in bitter resentment as production and success beget scarcity and jealousy. Scientific advances are matched by human failings, construction by decay and happiness by misery. These harmonious equations are maintained by the characteristic errors, ignorance, ill will and general stupidity of civilized people.
Western Civilization owes its technological predominance to the application of reason to the study and control of nature, but a major stumbling block to the study and control of ourselves has been the assumption that, since we can use reason, we are reasonable. We have had 100 years since Freud to acknowledge that we are basically irrational, but the models for human behavior proposed by the methodical scientific community are invariably idealized constructs which are much more self-consistent and orderly than people would ever want to be. The problem for behavioral scientists is that logic must be used to explain irrationality. Although reason is useful for extending a line of thought to the next point, it is of limited value in untangling complexity. Logic is certainly a useful analytical tool, but the overall physiological condition of an organism, for example, is not particularly rational and cannot be comprehended by anyone limiting his thinking to linear logic. (E.g., there is no logic in balancing hunger and thirst, sleep or sex. These are drives or states by which competing physiological systems cooperate to maintain the dynamic imbalance we recognize as life.) The best that can be done in analyzing such phenomena is to use polygraphs to provide data for statistical models which allow us to predict the probability of normal behavior. In fact, approximation is the best way to represent matters of such complexity. This basic principle is even more important when one attempts to understand human behavior. Behavior is very much a compromise phenomenon. It may be analyzed logically, but as a functional whole, it is comprehensible only in terms of relationships among interacting systems. Only by accepting a compromise model of the human being in all its inconsistent ineptitude based on misperceptions of the environment can one begin to understand what being human means. Although we gather a lot of information, we also ignore a lot and may even be pointedly ignorant in matters of great importance to us simply because our schema directs us to be ourselves. Likewise, the information people possess may be used inappropriately because certain behavioral patterns are preprogrammed into or excluded from the response repertoire. This is both human and stupid. As all indications are that there was and now is more than enough stupidity to go around, to the extent that the past is a guide to the future, we
 stupidity.net 
|