X-Message-Number: 21687
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 22:56:47 -0500
Subject: Re: Comments to Ettinger and Donaldson
From: Brian A Stewart <>

I hope you don't mind my jumping in here.

<snip>
>Exposing/opposing a corrupting cult and being made into a political
refugee 
>as a result has given me an unusual interest in the subject.  My wife's 
>long standing wish to understand how the Germans let the Nazis take over

>has been granted--to her dismay.
 
I assume you are talking about the Scientologists and not the Bush
regime...?  8-)

(BTW, how is your fight with the Scientologists going?  I've lost track,
unfortunately.)


<snip>

>I propose there is another trait for which I am still seeking a
descriptive 
>name.  Times of privation (mapped today into declining income per
capita) 
>turn on an evolved psychological mechanism that makes some of us into 
>killing machines.  This mechanism was an essential genetic survival tool


<snip>

It sounds like you are talking about something akin to a "rally around
the flag/leader/nation/group/etc" type phenomena.  Is that correct?

It might also be related to the drive which makes some people head out to
the frontier ("Well, there doesn't seem to be anyplace for us *here*--
maybe we'd do better elsewhere....")...?

>To apply this insight to the current situation in Iraq (and the rest of
the 
>Arab world), educating the women, improving their status and making
birth 
>control available is a good place to start.  Unfortunately that's about
the 
>*least* likely thing the current administration is likely to do.
 
Unfortunately, what seems most likely to happen there is that the Shiites
(sp?) will ultimately take over, IMO.

<snip>

>>Evolutionary psychology is interesting, but evolution is over.
(Individual
>>improvement will not be called evolution but bioengineering.)
> 
>I agree.  Even if complete control over genes were to be a thousand
years 
>in the future, there is not enough time for significant evolution by 
>natural means to happen.  But for the next few decades we are stuck with

>what we have and we *really* need to understand what it is. 
Evolutionary 
>psychology is about as powerful a thinking tool as I know about to get
that 
>understanding.
 
I thought that there was some evidence that occasionally evolution
occurred in jumps...?  (My guess would be in response to something akin
to a plague, which would kill off some and not others, perhaps leaving
other traits as a side effect.)  It is just something I seem to recall
having read years ago, maybe outdated.



Brian A. Stewart-- Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we
are to stand by the President right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and
servile, but morally treasonable to the American public."
                            - Theodore Roosevelt

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