Amusing ourselves to death by Stuart McMillen – Aldous Huxley, author of “Brave New World vs. George Orwell, author of “Nineteen Eighty-Four”

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.

What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who would want to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information.

Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism.

Orwell feared the truth would be concealed from us.

Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.

Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy and the centrifugal bumble puppy.

As Huxley remarked in “Brave New World Revisited”, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

In “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In “Brave New World”, people are controlled by inflicting pleasure.

In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

“Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” by Neil Postman

I think I need to read Brave New World again. It seems that Huxley was quite accurate. We are a society of apathetic, ignorant, ego-centric fools.

Found Here.

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First let’s look at the old fashioned set that so many people want festooned on government property to hopefully force everyone to be good, obedient, god-fearing christians.

According to the bible, there are 3 sets of commandments by Moses’ god. (see Wikipedia’s page here)

• Exodus 20:2-17
• Exodus 34:11-27
• Deuteronomy 5:6-21

Most of these commandments are the words of an angry, jealous, childish god. They aren’t helpful, moral or ethical. They don’t advance us as a species. In fact they hold us back with threats and superstitions.

So here’s my task, which I will gladly share with you:

• Come up with 10 Personal Commandments (you can have 10 or less, and you can call them something besides commandments, if you like)
• These are 10 rules, morals or virtues you set for yourself. You might want to hang them on your wall to remind you, or put them on your desk. You might want to teach them to your children.
• Write them down and take your time with your list. (please leave a comment to let us know you’re working on your list though! ) I need to have my list by October 11 for our local Morgantown Atheists meeting. So that is a good goal for you to have yours done as well.
• Remember to keep each commandment succinct. That will make it easier to remember.

I’ll try to remind you a few times to keep working on your list. Make yourself a note and keep it posted where you’ll see it, like on your bathroom mirror, so that you keep it in the back of your mind.

What is important to you? What would you want to teach your children? What rules, morals and virtues matter to you?

On October 12, we’ll follow up with a post of your lists as well as my own. So by October 11, email them to me, in succinct list form along with the name you want attached to it to Heaving Dead Cats. Put ’10 Commandments’ in the subject line to help me out.

Have fun with it. Really think about it. Let us know you’re working on your list!

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Charles Darwin celebrated his 200th birthday February 12 of this year. So of course many of the science podcasts I listen to, as well as many of the science and skeptic sites I visit, have been talking about evolution and Darwin and all that good stuff. Evolution is often paraphrased as the term, survival of the fittest, which is inaccurate. Here is how Dictionary.com defines it, as well as some other terms, just so we’re all on the same page:

• Survival of the Fittest
  a 19th-century concept of human society, inspired by the principle of natural selection, postulating that those who are eliminated in the struggle for existence are the unfit.
• Natural Selection
  n. The process in nature by which, according to Darwin’s theory of evolution, only the organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics in increasing numbers to succeeding generations while those less adapted tend to be eliminated.
• Evolution
  Biology. change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.

I’ve been slowly forming some random thoughts regarding the human population and evolution and I thought I’d write them down. Your input would be most welcome, as usual.

I heard on The Naked Scientists ( podcast number or which exact one, I’m not sure) recently that humans aren’t really evolving and haven’t for the last couple of thousand years or so. Chris, the Naked Scientist, was talking about something else so it was one of those explanations for something else, not the topic of conversation. So he didn’t go into detail.

My ears perked up though because I’ve been vaguely wondering about human evolution in the past several thousand years. Mainly because humans seem to do things backwards from the rest of nature. Or we seem to do that lately in our history.

For instance, we take care of the old and sick, to the point that otherwise frail and less than hearty people are able to reproduce, and to reproduce much longer into older age than ever before. This is when a woman’s eggs may have more genetic defects in them. Which is why women who are pregnant over a certain age are encouraged to get tested for genetic defects more than younger women are.

I have an aunt who was born with a serious birth defect – spina bifida. She needed countless surgeries over her childhood, and several in her adulthood as well. She ended up getting married and having a child, which even a hundred years ago would not have been possible.

There are huge differences in child mortality and survival throughout the world even today, based on availability of medical care, basic nutrition and other factors. But even 100 years ago the infant mortality rate was higher, right? What was it 2,000 years ago when medical care was rudimentary at best?

So what does this do to the gene pool and to human evolution?

I was talking to my friend Jeff about this yesterday and he made a comment that we are evolving, just with machines now. But I would suggest that’s not the same thing. It certainly doesn’t fall into the biological definition of evolution. I’m not saying that we aren’t evolving at all. But we seem to have stalled at least. Instead of natural selection within the human race, we have technology of all different sorts to compensate for whatever lack of genetic strength we may have.

This could be as simple as red headed people living in the Mediterranean. They don’t need to get sunburned and get skin cancer because they can wear sunblock and protective clothing and stay indoors more. Or a child can be born with asthma, something that would have shortened her life long ago, perhaps. Instead while she may take medication and change her lifestyle a bit, she can grow up to have children, who may also be prone to asthma.

Did you see that movie, Idiocracy? I didn’t watch it because, well, it looked really dumb. But the concept is interesting and is something I see in my life nowadays, to a small degree. The premise of the movie, from what I gathered, is that smart people stop having children so only stupid people have kids, giving birth to dumber and dumber people, until everyone is idiotic. I don’t know about that idea. Because both my husband and I are way smarter than our parents. But I do see people who can barely function in society having kids while smart people make the decision to refrain from reproducing.

Here’s another point. Let’s talk about fishing. I’ve been hearing about how we fish and hunt. Humans take the biggest and strongest animals and fish from the population in huge numbers. Now, when it comes to cattle and poultry, we raise what we want to eat. But for fish we still get them from the wild in a lot of cases. The impact on those populations has actually caused the fish to evolve, but in a reverse sort of way.

There was this study published recently which I heard about. Basically they took this population of fish and treated them as if they were being fished as is common practice today – taking the biggest, leaving the smallest. After 12 years they found that the fish had to adapt and start reproducing earlier than they used to. This has a negative impact on the population, which then affects what is available for us to harvest.

In the wild a lion will target the weak and the young, which makes sense. But we don’t do that. We go for the biggest and strongest, leaving the young and weak. We seem to do it backwards. Which seems like it’s bad for the rest of the environment.

The good news is that this reverse evolution can be reversed. I found the fishing study. Here’s a link: ‘Undesirable’ Evolution Can Be Reversed In Fish, By Letting The Big Ones Go

Those are just some ideas I’ve been knocking around in my head. Your thoughts are welcome, as usual.

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The top 10 non-religious countries according to the study are:

1. Sweden
2. Vietnam
3. Denmark
4. Norway
5. Japan
6. Czech Republic
7. Finland
8. France
9. South Korea
10. Estonia

This is from the paper, from the site I was at:

High levels of organic atheism are strongly correlated with high levels of societal health, such as low homicide rates, low poverty rates, low infant mortality rates, and low illiteracy rates, as well as high levels of educational attainment, per capita income, and gender equality. Most nations characterized by high degrees of individual and societal security have the highest rates of organic atheism, and conversely, nations characterized by low degrees of individual and societal security have the lowest rates of organic atheism. In some societies, particularly Europe, atheism is growing. However, throughout much of the world – particularly nations with high birth rates – atheism is barely discernible.

Unfortunately the link to the paper leads to a dead end. But I did some other research to try to find out more. Phil Zuckerman wrote a book called Society without God. I have to point out, though, the study that Mr. Zuckerman conducted was interviewing 150 Danes and Swedes over 14 months, so while the results are quite compelling, it wasn’t an enormous amount of data that he pulled from.

I found a site with another paper by Gregory S. Paul rather wordily titled “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies”. I didn’t read the whole thing, but from what I gathered, it’s coming to a similar conclusion as Zuckerman.

Then I found this gem of an article at Slate entitled “Does Religion Make You Nice? Does Atheism Make You Mean?” written by Paul Bloom. This thought provoking piece addresses several different ideas such as how Americans feel about atheism, religion and morality, on both sides of the issue.

He talks about some experiments called The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality where it seems that people are nicer and more generous when they a primed with religious words. But Paul Bloom says the same effects can be shown when people are exposed to posters with eyes on them, so it would seem that people are nicer when they feel they are being watched, and are never alone, which christians believe.

Paul Bloom goes on to say that in America there certainly is a correlation between religion and “niceness” and then mentions Gross National Happiness where Arthur Brooke finds that atheists are less charitable than god fearing folks. Atheists donate less blood and offer less change to homeless people, which he speculates makes atheists more miserable.

Now, here’s where things get interesting and go back to Zuckerman. As mentioned above, he studied the Danes and Swedes who are organically atheist. But they’re quite nice to each other. They’re committed to social equality and they have less rape and murder than America.

Then the next paper I talked about, by Gregory S. Paul, looked at 18 democracies and found that the more atheistic societies had relatively low murder and suicide rates and relatively low incidence of abortion and teen pregnancy.

What does it mean then, when you put it all together?

Paul Bloom has a fascinating explanation that seems to make sense. It’s about community and society, more than believing that you’re under constant surveillance by an invisible man in the sky. Humans are better and happier when connected to others. Robert Putnam, a sociologist, wrote Bowling Alone where he says we need to associate with others for happiness and health as well as a more stable democracy.

That’s what Zuckerman found with the Danes and Swedes, who are very community oriented and who often identify themselves as Christian even though they don’t actually believe in god.

Back in the old US of A, atheists are shunned and left out of community life. Religion is one of the main ways that people come together, so atheists are left out in the cold. PZ Myers says, “Scattered individuals who are excluded from communities do not receive the benefits of community, nor do they feel willing to contribute to the communities that exclude them.”

I have to say, this strikes home for me. As an atheist living in a rather religious area, it sucks. I certainly feel little or no community with all the people who worship god out of the right side of their mouth, and spew forth hypocrisy from the left. They don’t want anything to do with me either.

While I’m rather generous to the people in my small group of friends and family, when it comes to my community I don’t have much to do with it. I don’t flaunt my atheism around here, but I don’t kowtow to their bullying christian ways either.

I also have to say, I’m a rather happy atheist. I’m certainly not miserable because I am godless. But it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say it would be nice to be more connected to society and not feel so isolated.

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How about a self contained living river ecosystem in your living room? I love the idea of combining art into something practical, useful and also great for the environment, so this really fits the bill. This French designer, Mathieu Lehanneur created a fish hatchery and hydroponic growing system for plants. The water is chilled for the fresh water fish, then the plants get their nutrients from the fish water. They then clean the water for the fish. Brilliant! Of course, Mother Nature came up with the idea first, but hey, it’s still a great idea. Found at Inhabitat.

So, it’s very cool, but I don’t think it would fit into my budget. But I have another idea for you, which I also found at Inhabitat. The Farm Fountain!

Two artists, Amy Youngs and Ken Rinaldo, came up with this clever design. It uses aquaponics to create an ecosystem in your house. The water starts in the fish pond down below. Then the waste water is pumped up to the soda bottle planters and bubbles down through the soilless medium from one level to the next, until it gets back down to the fish. LED growing lights from an inexpensive floor lamp finish the ecosystem. Amy and Ken are really cool, because they give step by step instructions to make your own. Clever stuff! This one is right up my alley and I might have to see if my dear husband would mind having me create this in our home.

I have an Aerogarden which I got recently. I’ve grown some fantastic herbs in it, and will start some tomato plants when they’re finished, but this is even better, because it’s a complete ecosystem.

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