Inertia

Interaction with other entities necessitates identification of that entity. Since people are incapable of omniscience, the process of identification is the creation of assumptions. Since the properties of physical entities are literally infinite and our understanding of physics relatively limited, the probability that identification is 100% accurate is 1/∞. This means that, inherently, everything individuals know about external entities has some untruth. Identification is a simplification of infinitely complex things which is necessary for interaction. It is like a jar we put flour in. The process of establishing personal identity is the process of creating identities for all the things that are received by the mind of the individual. Sensory information is received, bundled, identified, then assimilated. Assimilation is where self-identity formation takes place. Introducing new information into an organized system of information (paradigms) has potential to shift or nullify existing information, which affects all information connected with that information, in effect necessitating re-organization on different scales. Any re-organization means changing association between bits of information, which means that the information must be identified differently. Information that stimulates pleasure will carry greater weight. Inherent desires as well as socialization channels positive interaction into pleasure centers, but interaction can only occur when information has been organized, which requires identification. Thus, breaking down identification to allow re-organization of information has potential to temporarily inhibit a level of stimulation of the pleasure center. The greater this potential, the greater inertia acting against the assimilation action. Improper socialization or inherent mental attributes may channel non-social thoughts and behaviors into the pleasure center. If the inertia is too great, assimilation into the realm of comprehension will fail and the information will be rejected.

The level of intellectual curiosity I think is related to the degree an individual has learned to stimulate the pleasure center from information assimilation. Learning can be a very enjoyable experience for many. The realization that successful assimilation increases understanding channels the feeling of successful assimilation to the pleasure center, so that the force of assimilation is much greater and more often overcomes the inertia of stagnation. Of course each assimilation is unique, so different types may not be as much facilitated by this learned channeling.

Thoughts on Morality

Stepping out of theological context for this post. I think the idea of social morality is refined into "pro-social" and "anti-social" behavior. Laws are created to establish pro-social behavior. What pro-social behavior is changes on account of majority consent. Whatever allows for greater mutually beneficial social bonds will be endorsed. Communication technology has very great affect over this, since it affects the scope of influence of power. Communication is central to establishing consent of pro-social behavior among groups. The greater the communication power, the larger the scope of change is possible. Of course many aspects of social context act as inertial forces fighting against these changes. The smaller and more relevant the changes are, the less force will act against them. Given time and power great social changes may occur in this way. The idea of "relative morality" is essentially a reflection of this principle on a smaller scale. Most normal humans will seek to establish social bonds to improve their chance of survival. Thus, their motivation is pro-social and, if socialized properly, will result in pro-social behavior. These behaviors change with the social definitions of pro-social behavior, but the motivation is the same. Improving chances of survival can be labeled synonymous with finding individual peace. Improper socialization or other unusual issues may cause either a reversal of motivation (anti-survival) or a means of achieving survival via anti-social means. This then creates the seeming paradox of morality, where the individual is trying to find inner peace (attempts to be pro-social) but is acting in an anti-social way. The disparity of understanding between different groups concerning the definition of 'pro-social' creates a similar issue, i.e. how members of one family interact with each other may be detestable to members of a different family. This is a social issue of pro-social against anti-social, and is often used as an argument against a single universal system of morals.

The process of individual socialization and the process of group consent communication is the connection between the first and second part. Both will cause change for the purpose of greater success in social interaction, stronger mutually beneficial social bonds. Failure will create confusion and dissent.

Thought as I was reading

This isn't, of course, the first time I've touched on this idea, but I think one of the main reasons why reading the Book of Mormon strengthens one's testimony of the Gospel and brings him/her closer to the presence of God, at least for me, is that the thoughtful and truth-seeking reader will become increasingly aware, with each verse, of the gulf of reason inherent in the idea that the pages of the Book of Mormon - all 531 pages - were written for a self-serving purpose. It simply does not make sense why anyone would write it other than what it claims to be, and I believe this realization that is gained as one reads the book is one of the main sources of the power of conversion of the Book of Mormon.

thought

A brief thought: I thought of Bill Maher just a minute ago. A few weeks ago I said in a conversation that I disagreed with about 20% of what he says, but later that day I realized what I meant to say was that I disagreed with about 20% of his apparent mindset. As much as I rally around many of his ideals, I can't help but feel that he is very close-minded. Self-righteous. Like many of the well-known people who I agree with about 80% of the time, he believes himself to be (I'm pretty sure this is a near-exact quote) the only person with his head screwed on right. Well actually I'd suppose most people have that belief to some extent (including me). Anyway the point is that as I thought about this close-mindedness I came up with this sentence: the more open-minded a man is, the more capable he is of converting his enemies. I think I would also argue that the more open-minded, the greater potential to reach truth one has - whatever it is that you want to define truth as, your deviance from the direct path is determined by your weight of bias. So, no matter what ideals you pursue, you are more likely achieve the greatest happiness, as well as inspire the most people to join you, the more you disavow yourself of personal infallibility.


Also, open-mindedness inhibits institutionalization, or brainwashing. How can you be brainwashed if you incorporate the possibility of fallacy into your paradigm?

More society

Primary relationships, i.e. very close relationships, employ a pragmatic system of interaction. Tertiary relationships, or those with people we don't know at all, are most commonly handled idealistically because there are no distinguishing features between any individual of any tertiary party other than their potential to be anywhere between completely fine and completely inimical. Secondary relationships are with those who we may know "casually", such as normal friends, co-workers, employees of frequently frequented establishments that you've gotten to know on a first-name basis, take a very uncertain middle-ground that differs from relationship to relationship. With this perspective, I think I better understand how insanely difficult social and economic policies can become in a society of such numerous and complex social structures, and quite honestly I believe most of the American public (yes I'm generalizing) is not equipped to comment on or tamper with such policies. I don't mean they're not mentally equipped, but rather they don't have enough understanding of said social structures and other important social factors, and (more generalizing) are generally not found possessing the intellectual and psychological framework to process this information correctly, i.e. are too biased. I'd almost say there's decent merit in requiring a passing grade in a standardized college-level introductory sociology course in order to allow people to vote, or for that matter enter political forums or be a journalist for a news station or a political talk-show host, etc. I say standardized because I'd want to brainwash people I believe an understanding of the objective principles of the "science" of sociology is fundamentally important to accurately process information about other societies and the interaction between them, and so I would want the curriculum  to be unaffected by the emotional input of its teachers, a thing which I think sociology would tempt of the more emotionally loose professors.

Society

Recently I had a partially heated discussion with two of my roommates. I didn't have a specific point I was trying to make, rather I was hoping to dispel some of the misconceptions manifested in my cohorts. The discussion began because I commented on a story given to one of my roommates in an email. Here's the basic idea: At the request of his students, a professor implements a grading system where the scores are averaged and awarded to everyone. Test scores drop because the students who don't study demoralize those who do, and the story ends comparing this to Obama turning the country socialist. In hindsight I should never have had that conversation, because I realize my friends were not equipped with the proper mindset to accurately analyze this field. I realize this is my word alone, but I am adamant about this opinion. This post is more about some afterthoughts and refinements that were made as I reviewed my argument.

I don't know if I consider myself "socialist". Here's how I see it: You cannot rally around the flag of capitalism 100% and be a "true Christian" (I use this term loosely to describe empathetic people). Capitalism by default means that some people will be screwed no matter what. One of the ideals of socialism is to account and provide for those people, even if it means bringing the outrageously well-off people down a bit to do it.

Here I must bring up a point that was made in the discussion. I used the example of tribal societies to show the positive outcomes of socialistic ideals put into practice ("social context", an extremely important concept for this discussion, was a word I used many times, but that appeared to have been acknowledged exactly 0 times). The counter argument was that it was obviously terrible because so many of these societies were destroyed or absorbed by the agricultural societies (I had to explain to them this period of social history). I then brought up the fact that there were still societies like those that exist today, so therefore the society itself was fine in that regard, but that it was the world around them that changed. The reply: well that just shows that those societies are inferior to the agricultural societies. I don't know how I couldn't make this argument at the time as it is pathetically obvious. The great depression, one of the many economic dips inherent in a capitalist society, caused many people who were formerly possessors of what we consider the standards of living to drop below the poverty line, in many cases the absolute poverty line; so much so that not only was heavy government regulation necessary, but bread lines and other government handouts were necessary. Basically, people were suffering, not necessarily because their way of life was unsustainable (if you are to insist that capitalism is sustainable, and also assume that the majority of people at this time were not directly responsible for the over-speculation and other major contributors to the economic crisis), but because their social circumstances changed.

I'm short on time. There's one other idea I had. The example of the professor failing his class has a host of critical differences from American society, something which I don't have time to mention. But, as my brother pointed out recently, we have a tendency to mentally group people - you might use the categories of primary, secondary, and tertiary. Basically the farther away from primary people are, the less human they naturally register in our minds unless overridden by a higher though process. Example: Muslims vs. your family. Consciously you may recognize them all as humans and thus equal, but that is contrary to the natural reaction. So, I assume the professor's class must have been your average large class where people form their many personal social groups and consider everyone outside of them lesser. On the other hand, such a system would have worked marvelously in my Arabic class, because it was small enough and full of smart enough people to where we were all one close social group, and issues like a lack of desire to study could be addressed, which would be nearly impossible in larger groups due to the natural social grouping process exhibited by us humans.

Started out thinking of art and then generalized

Humans attribute meaning to the world around them according to what they have learned to attribute meaning to. One influence in this learning is a tendency to secure a personal identity during the socialization process. They first create meaning on their own, and then these meanings are adjusted in an effort to fit personal social needs. The frequency and time between these two steps will vary according to external circumstances and degree of socialization, i.e. advanced socialization will diminish the time between the two steps - personal meaning is immediately exchanged for social meaning, and external circumstances will determine how often a new item enters the mind for examination.

Thus the less successful one has been in the socialization process, the more likely he will not understand how to interact with the society he lives in.

My Testimony

The criticisms that come against Christianity or any other religious faith usually are a matter of perspective. A believer will answer issues on the assumption that the doctrine of his faith is correct... and actually that is the story of experience of every human being, being considered religious or otherwise. That is our mortal inheritance, the fallacy of induction: since you cannot know everything, it is tempting to assume that that which you do not know follows the same logic as the things that you do know, which is illogical to assume (or at least, I assume so) as has been undeniably demonstrated by history. If we don't make this assumption, then you accept that anything is possible. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that seeming issues with Christianity are often seen in two major categories: it was God's will, or you're just paranoid and want to perpetuate your own sense of identity which has been built around the idea of God. As a Latter Day Saint, I feel I will add my input to the subject which happens to be a central pillar of my testimony. Some of the things that I am asked about when it comes to the veracity of the LDS church come to this standoff that I have talked about. Of course I have thought for a long time about such issues and my conclusions are, in the end, supportive of the Church and the Gospel. In trying to analyze my own bias in these issues, I realize that a few of my arguments do not conclude on what might be called empirical reasoning; as in, it usually involves phrasing of this sort: I don't really know for sure, but I am willing to believe there are reasons which we are not aware of for which these things happened. This same argument is not unusual at all in different contexts; this is how the idea of "scientific thought" grew out of spiritualistic philosophy and medicine. Indeed this is the argument that corrects spurious relationships - we acknowledge the fallacy of induction and (ideally) move to increase our understanding of the subject.

Still, so far I have not moved away from the ledge of perspectives. I was just reading the very first verse in the Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 1:1, which says: "I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father; and having seen many afflictions in the course of my days, nevertheless, having been highly favored of the Lord in all my days; yea, having had a great knowledge of the goodness and the mysteries of God, therefore I make a record of my proceedings in my days." This caused me to reflect on my own testimony because I felt I could relate very well with Nephi's explanation. I feel I have had many, many spiritual experiences, ranging in intensity... but there are things that I have experienced and written down that defy all the natural logic I possess; these are what Tom Rogers might call "hooks", or what in this context might be called "things that unambiguously take you off the ledge". I brought up Nephi's words because he mentions "many afflictions" before giving his testimony. I suspect he might have used "highly favored of the Lord" as a reference to being blessed with divine help to interpret his afflictions wisely, although that's just a random guess. Anyway, I related to this because the "hooks" or "ledge-pushers" stored in my brain and paper all started out with something going wrong, in some cases very, very wrong. But they were core to the eventual positive outcome (which, in my opinion, is kind of an obvious point. I mean to say, I think the questions of "why does bad happen in the world/to me" requires not understanding what makes good things happen in the world, or, on a slightly different platform, why homeostasis is the antithesis of things like 'desire', 'drive', 'achievement', 'progress', 'dreams', 'joy', and all of the things that make the human experience enjoyable).

So I guess I just wanted to write what was on my mind, which is this: I believe in my faith, and my faith-supporting conclusions, not necessarily because of how solid each argument initially sounds, but because I feel I have been given more solid evidence for them than any evidence to the contrary.

I think that's kind of the idea pretty much the main purpose of the Book of Mormon. I don't see how this has passed over so many heads...

I think I've already expressed many of these things in former writings. Well maybe in this post I've connected and solidified some things.