Do metaphysical belief systems win on social climbing tools?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Count Lucanor
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Re: Do metaphysical belief systems win on social climbing tools?

Post by Count Lucanor »

Papus79 wrote: November 15th, 2020, 10:28 pm What glitters and dazzles to us, or inspires the heck out of us at that age tends to lose its luster.
No doubt everyone's life is different. The good thing about childhood is that your mind is like an sponge that absorbs everything, you're in full discovery mode, and things do not need to be sophisticated and complex to create lasting impressions. I didn't have access (and I'm sure many neither) to planetariums, big science museums and other impressive buildings, but that didn't stop me from being curious. My school had a small museum of very old desiccated animals right across my first grade classroom. It had been there almost intact for decades, with very old furniture, giving it a sense of decadence that I found fascinating. I could imagine how many people had been there and seen those objects, and this nostalgic connection to a past I had not lived myself has remained with me the rest of my life. My school books also opened up windows to learn about galaxies and the solar system, and the first books with stories I read filled me with curiosity about the many things the world could offer. But the simplest things of life at home, a ride to the countryside, walking with an older cousin to buy hot bread in a breezy night, going to the old movie theater (Roosevelt Theater it was) with my brothers to see outdated films for a cheap price...the most silliest things, they are still very much present in my mind as the enjoyable moments of life. There were many bad moments, too, of course, things that at that time I wished I had not gone through, but later in life I learned that they were actually valuable experiences. And then being a teenager, social pressures, love, sex, music, studies, work, etc., all with good and bad memories, with peak points and valleys, very deep valleys that made me question what was life good for. But it is going through the darkness that gives you strength and even regaining that sense of discovery apparently lost after childhood, maybe lacking the innocence and amazement of the first years, but I wouldn't say with its luster lost. Every new layer that life adds to it has its own luster. And now the good thing about mature age is that having been the outcast, you have learned to live with your own standards and embrace them, the weirdness has paid off in the form of your mind independence.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Papus79
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Re: Do metaphysical belief systems win on social climbing tools?

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In some ways though I think you're making the point that I was trying to make earlier about individuality not being whole cloth or a public platitude - ie. those deeper experiences, interpretations of experience, and structuring of what you find important is private. It's something other people don't have access to the degree that you're able to put them in words well (which you clearly have) means you can relay them reliably and yet it's still only a relatively small fraction of your private ecosystem. Having that private ecosystem is where things will happen within it that are distinct to you or, in the likelihood for nearly all of us that there's little or nothing uniquely novel happening in that system there's at least enough in there in the way of rare events combining that make us something different than the collection of external values we were given - even if what that closed-loop is permeable from the outside, receiving information, and constructing its events largely from that data.
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baker
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Re: Do metaphysical belief systems win on social climbing tools?

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Papus79 wrote: November 14th, 2020, 3:22 pmFrom that - what I mean by metaphysical systems winning by their social climbing tools, quite often our needs - as a species of animal - trump our need to live by veridical truth. The need to have viridical truth at the expense of human needs is often taken as a sign that a person is a 'nerd', or going further it's a sign that they might be on the autistic spectrum.
Absolutely. Insisting to live by veridical truth makes one, at best, "poorly adjusted" to the real world.
"Don Quixote" is a satire just on this topic, for example.
So yes, this is much more in line with what I'm examining and my argument would be that quite often the veridicality of those truth systems has less importance, in the totality of one's life, than how many people that belief system either puts you in the good graces of, helps you surpass on the socioeconomic ladder, or both.
Absolutely, esp. in monocultures. I'd go so far as to say that in monocultures, the officially professed belief system (usually a religious one of a religion that has been the majority religion for centuries in that country) becomes largely irrelevant per se; what is relevant is to profess allegiance to it, not actually believe it or live by it. I've seen this with Catholics in traditionally Catholic countries, as well as with Buddhists in traditionally Buddhist countries.

(This also explains why outsiders and adult aspirants have so much problems with those religions: they take the doctrinal claims at face value. Something that only the most poorly adjusted natives would do.)
When then, way further down the road, leads back to my OP question - do metaphysical beliefs and their cultural stickiness or endurance have more to do with their social utility than their veridical truth?
Yes. One has to account for human cunning and subversiveness. And maybe the sheer zombieness -- because some well adjusted people can ignore issues of veridical truth with such ease that it surpasses all cunning and subversion.
baker
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Re: Do metaphysical belief systems win on social climbing tools?

Post by baker »

Another example: professing belief in the Theory of Evolution. There are social groups where professing belief in the Theory of Evolution is a dealbreaker.

If, for example, you want to make a career in secular academia, regardless of the field, or if you want to be on good terms with your secular bourgeois coworkers, you have to profess belief in the Theory of Evolution.

It doesn't really matter whether the ToE is true or not, and it's useless for the most part (unless you're actually working in academia in the field that directly concerns itself with this theory). What makes it so relevant is its social role.
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Papus79
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Re: Do metaphysical belief systems win on social climbing tools?

Post by Papus79 »

baker wrote: December 10th, 2020, 8:08 am Another example: professing belief in the Theory of Evolution. There are social groups where professing belief in the Theory of Evolution is a dealbreaker.

If, for example, you want to make a career in secular academia, regardless of the field, or if you want to be on good terms with your secular bourgeois coworkers, you have to profess belief in the Theory of Evolution.

It doesn't really matter whether the ToE is true or not, and it's useless for the most part (unless you're actually working in academia in the field that directly concerns itself with this theory). What makes it so relevant is its social role.
Right. I think even to be tolerated you'd have to be talking about some other theory that came from the scientific community that maybe significantly reinterprets the evidence of evolution but still does so in a secular or naturalist frame, and even then you'd be annoying because you're not helping them win what's left of the culture war with theism (although this one's getting strange, for example Christianity it's okay to war with, many Islamic communities have been more savvy about weaving in the protections of what's commonly called political correctness in the west as a seeming 'outside' religion had that option). There's also the new elephant in the room, ie. anti-science reactionism from the left, and it's much harder to deal with because it's much better armed for combat than Christian monoculture ever was and it's an open question what the scientific and academic fields will be able to do other than bow to it and ask to be spared.

I can't help but think of game theory logic as a sort of 'broken' thinking or creole thinking where it can use the language of reason in places but you can see from all of the disjunctions that it's being used instrumentally for shielding or armor rather than for its own sake.
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