We went to a very interesting dinner with colleagues yesterday evening. Among the many interesting topics of conversation that came up, was the whole subject of inner city poverty, and how (with the exception perhaps of Katrina) it is mostly invisible to most people. That’s a problem I think. If suffering isn’t salient, then it’s difficult for people of good will to do something about it. Along the same lines, we were discussing the notion of how it is possible, in a culture of rampant materialism, to lose the ability to empathize with suffering. And that also is a kind of poverty, though of a different sort.
In the meantime, I am reading a wonderful book: “Inside The Neolithic Mind” by David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce (ISBN 0-500-05138-0) which was given to me by the head of our Center for Social Complexity, Claudio Cioffi. The Neolithic Revolution of course was the transition of Homo sapiens from being hunter/gatherers to agriculturalists. What is interesting about this book is that the author’s theorize this occurred not because of some Kipling-like “Just So Story” but rather as an epiphenomenon of social engagement with altered states of consciousness (such as those induced by drugs, near-death experiences and even chanting). And in turn, not unreasonably the authors posit that such group reactions to altered states of consciousness also led to religion. The book is a great combination of archeology and cognitive neuroscience. I highly recommend.
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 