Butterflies and Wheels

I didn’t blog yesterday, partly because I was busy on other things but mostly because every time I came on-line, I went straight to Butterflies and Wheels.

On Sunday, Normblog posted an enthusiastic review of B & W and so, like A E Brain, I went to have a look. Now I find I can’t stay away. It’s like Norm wrote: “the place is an online cornucopia; it's a palace full of treasure.”

Alan Brain dipped into B & W and came up with a quiz about taboos and moral intuitions. I don’t normally do quizzes but I thought I’d give this one a go. My results:

Your Moralising Quotient is: 0.00.
Your Interference Factor is: 0.00.
Your Universalising Factor is: -1.

According to the blurb, this makes me "fully permissive". I’m not sure my friends and family would agree with that. I’m regarded as being pretty judgmental around here, particularly by the boys.

Anyway, there’s plenty more on B & W to look at.

There’s an interview with Peter Stringer, whose book “Animal Liberation” caused quite a stir when it came out in the seventies. Here he’s talking about the left and evolutionary psychology.

Singer argues that the left’s utopianism has failed to take account of human nature, because it has denied there is such a thing as a human nature. For Marx, it is the "ensemble of social relations" which makes us the people we are, and so, as Singer points out, "It follows from this belief that if you can change the ‘ensemble of social relations’, you can totally change human nature."

Talking about evolutionary psychology; there’s also an interview with Steven Pinker, in which he discusses reactions to EP and its application in the political sphere. Pinker’s view, summarized by B & W, is that “an excessively optimistic view of human plasticity can lead to social engineering, coercion, and genocide”.

If that all sounds too serious, there’s also fun to be had at B & W. Check out the Fashionable Dictionary. It's a hoot.

Enlightenment
Sinister, destructive period of history which had a 'project' to dominate nature, prefer reason to superstition, and stop going to church. All a big mistake, but postmodernism will fix it.

I’ve got to start rationing myself to short visits at B & W, otherwise I could end up spending all day there.