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(Re)programming Note

8/4/2017

2 Comments

 
Picture
The view of things to come.
A little over a week ago, I posted my final response to the 100 philosophical thought experiments in Julian Baggini's wonderful book, The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: and ninety-nine other thought experiments. That post marked the culmination of five years of blogging for me about evolutionary philosophy and the worldview I hold as a result of my thoughts on that subject. As you can see on my greatest blog hits page, I started this journey with an examination of 10 core tenets, followed that up with a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive way to know thyself, and then continued on to do 60 profiles on the survival of the fittest philosophers. Now, after also going through the 100 thought experiments, I'd say my philosophy groundwork is thoroughly done.

I do still have a few more things I'd like to clean up with my philosophy posts though. At the end of the last entry, I introduced my idea of evolutionary well-being, which I've been encouraged to excerpt and clarify for an article to be published elsewhere. In fact, I may pursue peer-reviewed publications for several of the ideas I wrote about during my thought experiment blogs. But before I do that, I will write a summary post here recapping the major findings from all of the thought experiments, and then design some sort of infographic to put on my greatest blog hits page so new readers can find specific experiments on the topics that interest them. Once that is done, however, I plan to take this blog in a new direction. You are hereby warned.

On the home page of this website, I introduce myself as "a writer and philosopher." I also list the three goals of evphil.com as being:

  1. An attempt to clarify ideas within a new school of philosophy
  2. A means to expose those ideas to competition, cooperation, variation, and selection—i.e. to evolution itself
  3. A platform to share fiction and non-fiction works that expound upon this collection of ideas

Now that I see my philosophy-building as relatively complete, all three of these goals have been met for my non-fiction writing. Therefore, it's time to turn my attention to the fiction. At least for a while. I've published one novel, Draining the Swamp, and I'm about to start the process of selling my second novel, The Vitanauts. I've also published three short stories of strengths — Curiosity, Love of Learning, and Judgment — but I have 21 more of those to get through before that project is complete. In the introduction to those short stories, I note that:

In 2004, positive psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman published the book Character Strengths and Virtues which scoured ancient and modern texts of wisdom from around the world and found six core virtues composed of twenty-four character strengths. Seligman and Peterson suggest that practicing these universally good traits leads to increased happiness. So, in order to encourage this, I'm writing a short story about each strength. I hope that by spending some time contemplating each one, you can build more strengths and become a happier person.

Who doesn't want to be happier?!

So, with all this in mind, I'd like to start using my blog to work on the rest of these short stories. I plan to post each one for free until the next one is ready. Whenever a new story comes out, the previous one will be taken down from the blog (although any comments will remain, so people can continue their discussions), and I'll put the previous story up for sale electronically, just like the first three are right now. Once I'm done with this project, I'll turn them all into a bound book for publication. I'd love to get feedback on these as I write them though, so please stick with me for these free previews. If you decide it's even better and more thought provoking than the philosophy, spread the word! (If not, I'm sure you'll figure out what to do...)

Before I get to all that, I'll be heading off to Ireland for a bit of a tour. But once I return, I hope you'll agree that this blog will be headed to more verdant destinations too. Thanks very much to everyone for all the support I've received so far—it really has been a wonderful five years of concentrating on philosophy and making new friends—but I hope you'll enjoy this new direction as much as I'm looking forward to taking it. I'll be back with more just as soon as I can!
2 Comments
Chuck Schneider
8/5/2017 04:45:01 am

1st. Hope you have a wonderful trip to,Ireland. I visited once and found that early Irish history very interesting, and have since read several ( dozen) historical fiction novels. I presume you are familiar with Fidelma! If not google the name and find a dozen novels to entertain you hike you visit Ireland.

2nd. I enjoyed reading your response to Prob #100. But, the real dilemma needed a humanistic reply, not details of current socioeconomic trends.
One long term evolutionery change will be how we will handle or what direction will humanity take when we reach the End of Work, or face and face the StarTrek economy. We are rapidly becoming more efficient in producing the basic needs of society. But, consumerism and marketing has its limits. - I am pretty well off coming from a lower middle class background - However, I don,t have or want a Rolex watch, the air I breathe is free, can only use a few TVs, or houses.
Our society will soon be able to produce adequate supplies of basic human needs - without everyone working to produce them.
What direction will humanity take when all of our basic needs ( lower levels of needs) provided without much effort or daily time is needed to satisfy our needs? Ie StarTrek economy.
This leads to the question "How do we define Evolutionery Success"?
It appears we are the only earthbound species that is aware of its evolution, and with the capacity to guide or direct its future.
Perhaps we need to reread BRAVE NEW WORLD and 1984 with our recent knowledge of the science and concepts from C.WIlson, Heilman (positive psychology ), Stephen Hoffstader (?), and even people such as Murray ( socioeconomic status ), and J. Haidt, as well as many others?
I,m 70+ years old, so why do I still care about humanity,s future - it in my (our) genes, I guess.
Should w work towards developing a " feel good pill" that was suggested in one of the earlier questions?
These questions leads to your third new development - one,s individual response as an Evol Phil person.

3rd. As an individual how should I best try to become the best I cab be given my talents and personality?
Believe it or not, I have looked at the concepts of the 24 character traits, as well as, concepts of the 16 personality types of the (what,s his name) psychoanalic Red Book. ( I,m a retired financial
mathematician by trade, and have a life long love of mathematics, logic, and physics.). So history, social sciences, and psychology are only recent areas that I am reviewing as important enough to study.

You mentioned you will be sharing with us some fictional expositions of the various 24 character traits. My question as to how each individual should deal with each of these traits, as well as, the 16 personality traits? While I can fairly well determine what my individual (probably gene inherited) are, what should I " work on"?
If I am outgoing, aggressive, and self reliant, should I try to become more introverted, submissive, and whatever? I think not! MOst psychologists say lead with your natural strengths. But, be aware of your weaknesses.

Please excuse my lengthy expression of what I fell are some unanswered questions not fully developed in our quest for understanding and future direction of Evolutionary Philosophy.

One method I have employed to resolve some issues of Evol Phil is to look at the issue from the ( imaginary) prospective a higher species might have if they were merely observing the human species every few hundred years or so from a spacecraft in our solar system. How are they ( humans) doing ?

Looking forward to your future blogs after you return from Ireland.

Chuck Schneider



Reply
Ed Gibney link
8/6/2017 01:36:01 pm

Thanks for all the encouragement, feedback, and ideas Chuck. 1st - I've not head of Fidelma. Don't read much historical fiction. But I'll look out for one of these. I bet I find one for free in a campsite book exchange or something. Thanks!

2nd - There was an interesting article in The Stone section of the New York Times recently canned The Bushmen Who Had The Whole Work Life Thing Figured Out.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/24/opinion/the-bushmen-who-had-the-whole-work-life-thing-figured-out.html?_r=0

A lot of people have predicted we'll work less *someday* but people always seem to continue filling their days with work. We have the energy to do so and we become destructive or depressed when we aren't fulfilling potential towards something meaningful. How do we define "evolutionary success"? I think it's by fulfilling as many of the hierarchies of needs in all the branches of life as we can, which will leave us with robust survival and lots of meaning for our lives.

3rd - My next novel deals exactly with your questions about what it would look like to "improve" your personality. I think it can be done, and ought to be done, and I look forward to writing more about that soon to get your and other's reactions. Cheers!

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