Luckily Broken

What I've found most interesting about my study of Darwin this semester is about some of the limitations of the human brain, and how some of those limitations may be a very good thing.

What I'm referring to here specifically is our ability to change our minds, or lack thereof. Anyone who's ever been in an argument has surely recognized that getting someone to change their mind is no small feat. Some of those people may also realize how hard it is for someone to change their own mind as well. This is something that is clearly a factor of humanity, and something we've struggled with for a long time, as is clearly evidenced by motivated reasoning.

It took Darwin to really make me see this phenomena because of the blatant contradictions within the man. On the one hand, Darwin's Origin of Species completely turned humanity's self image onto it's head. The conclusions reached in his work challenged every notion of biblical genesis, and really changed human civilization forever. His work sparked a massive paradigm shift, but he was hardly the only one to do so. Galileo, Newton, and several others have really altered our understandings of the way the world works.

However, on the other hand, Darwin used his theories to propagate both racism and sexism, two very common sentiments of the time. While it's absolutely true that hindsight is 20/20, Darwin took on the established authority of the Christian creed and yet failed to do so with the much simpler social norms of both racism and sexism. These issues would not have been unknown to Darwin, as they were both hotly debated with the American Civil War gearing up, and the Woman's Suffrage movement well underway. How could a man who spent so much time empirically studying the natural world come to the conclusions he did? (Dennis, Richards)

While the answer could simply be motivated reasoning, the simple fact that this sort of neglect occurred is really more interesting. This sort of willing blindness is something that is fairly universal to mankind, and though science is meant to be purely objective, clearly, it is still bound by the constraints of humanity.

It is important to note that Darwin and other scientific minds are not the only ones guilty of this either. Multiple studies have shown that people will generally engage in all manner of defense mechanisms to avoid having to alter their opinion. The popular disagreement with Darwinism that persists today outside of the scientific community is a good example of this. People tend to either alter their mindset slightly to make it compatible with new developments, or they outright deny them. (Drew)

Recently however, there is some speculation as to whether this rigidity of thought is perhaps fading. Jamais Cascio makes the case in his article Get Smarter that we are perhaps undergoing a change in our thought process that would make us more flexible. He contends further that with advances in AI and cognitive enhancement, this may really become a non-issue, as our consciousness becomes increasingly collective. But is this really what we want?

It seems to me that there a couple of positive things about going two steps forwards and one step back. Because the ideals espoused by Darwin are, by contemporary standards, abhorrent, it seems hard to make the case that these ideals are positive in some way, and really they aren't. What is positive, however, is the discussion generated from them. Thorough discourse is necessary for stable advancement, and if Darwin hadn't raised those ideas, they would not have been defeated, and they may have been an open door for future brands of racism or sexism. Essentially, that one step back is vital because it provides a stable base for the next two steps forwards.

Because of the rapidly accelerating speed of human development, this discourse will become only more vital. Science and technology have moved to a point that deeply troubling things are now within our grasp. Without the opportunity for discussion, morality will be in danger of falling far behind our technological growth.

The very limitations that are built right into us may, within the coming decades prove to be one of our most valuable assets: a form of counter balance to our perpetual and headstrong drive forwards.

This video shows an example of how we really do need to slow down and consider our advancements. While none of the things mentioned here are particularly harmful or menacing, it's really just indicative of our inability to step out of the present and look at the big picture.

Cascio, Jamais. "Get Smarter." The Atlantic, July/August 2009. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/intelligence/

Dennis, Rutledge M. "Social Darwinism, Scientific Racism, and the Metaphysics of Race." Journal of Negro Education. Summer 1995. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3626/is_199507/ai_n8730395/

Drew, Weston, Blagov Pavel S., Harenski Kieth, Kilts Clint, and Hamann Stephan. "An fMRI study of motivated reasoning Partisan political reasoning in the U.S. Presidential Election ." (2004): Web. 13 Sep 2009.

"Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy." maniacworld.com. Web. 30 Nov 2009. .

Richards, Evelleen. "Darwin and the Descent of Women." in Darwin. 3rd ed. Phillip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.