From: steve (steve365@btinternet.com)
Date: Wed Feb 27 2002 - 05:39:44 MST
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jacques Du Pasquier" <jacques@dtext.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2002 10:21 AM
Subject: Re: thoughts on origin of religions
>
> Very. Remember that the human brain is unchanged since a very long
> time. The reason why it seems so different now is it is full of very
> sophisticated cultural products; those rely on the written word to
> develop. Oral tradition can only go so far.
>
> And this is the real way I intended this link between writing and
> philosophy. The idea is not that any person worth the name
> "philosopher" must have written many books. The idea is that you can't
> get to a certain level of elaboration in thought if you don't live in a
> society in which writing has been invented. We were talking about world
> view developpement in various societies, remember?
<snip>
> Our brain was not designed to do philosophy (nor science) as you may
> realize. It was designed to be distracted, to react in real time to
> threats, etc. We manage to think more refined thoughts with the aid of
> that intellectual augmentation called writing.
Very interesting post. If what you say is correct (I personally think it is)
then what are the implications of the decline in the use of the printed word
and the move to a more visual culture among the majority of the
population-which I think is happening in modern societies ? Steve Davies
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