I know I am meant to phrase it, hullo that looks odd, but I have noticed attempts by several posters to suggest that we have outgrown a primal level of thinking and have moved forward from the magicko-religious age to an age of enlightenment and reasoned thinking. This ignores a trend in modern behaviourist studies and is belied by many of the comments left by reasonably intelligent people and by the american electorate.
There are two quite interesting posts from et alia trying to use scientific method to rebut the certainty that the election was lost due to democrats identifying with gay mariage, abortion rights, and stem cell research. Indeed that is how I had read it. But why? Because enough people had said so and they had backed it up with an exit poll reading the highest figure 21% gave as their primary concern issues of morality. So et alia examines the argument more rigorously, isolating the variable, if it were true then certain things would follow. He pretty much demolishes the certainty that morality played any identifiable part in voting compared with 2000. Not surprisingly apart from the track back few understood the argument. Few accepted a difference between anecdotal evidence and quantitative analysis. No one suggested a form of qualitative analysis to objectify what they felt in their heart to be true. L'ame a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. But there are tests for that too. I later read an article by David Aaraonovitch in the Manchester Guardian i think one of the british broadsheets and he too analyses the data we have none of which suggests that the election was highjacked by the issue of victorian morality. Yet people still believe it to be so. He was countering the view that Bush and his supporters are stupid. His analysis was that they were employed and doing very well. I dislike Blair. And he may well have alienated Scotland. But as long as middle england is happy and these aren't stupid people they are just very well off, he will be re-elected with a large majority in parliament.

Mick Arran here suggests also that americans have advanced beyond the need for superstition magick after all the age of reason has come we are all enlightened rational beings. There has been an awful lot of research to suggest that the part of our brains that can do crosswords is completely useless in terms of survival outside of buildings. The part that senses danger or reacts to a car pulling out suddenly is a part of our brain that liberals are ashamed to still possess. There is some fascinating research on what constitutes consciousness, how the brain works. But resisting the desire to ramble many experiments tend to suggest both that we are far more bigoted than we would like to believe but we have elaborate self-censoring that goes on usually before we act. Also most counter-intuitive scientific knowledge isn't really believed by people. Examples are we might say I know that x isn't true but I don't believe most people think that way. In most ways human beings do not believe the truth that science provides us, we believe in superstitions we live in the magicko-religious world.

An interesting read is The Curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon. It's taken from a Sherlock Holmes story which provides incidentally most of the expert evidence for Al-Qaeda, the argument of absence. The whole book provides examples of commonly held beliefs which the aspergers/autistic protagonist takes to extremes but qualitatively we live in the same autistic world, a magicko-religious world. Few understood the statistical argument shown by et alia. Even those who understand scientific method chose to believe the evidence of anecdotes. What struck me was that what we take to be worthy evidence is closer to primal civilisations. It is not so much a concern that the religious right may have power but that liberals who claim to follow a rational humanist enlightened approach are far more superstitious and irrational in their mindset than their antithetical enemy. Since we clearly live in an autistic world, and human contact is between bishops on opposing squares and of opposing colours, then the only form of contact is conducted in the encounter with the void, the abyss. That is my eureka, friendship, love, family, festivities may all be beautiful divertissements but it is only through authentic encounter with despair, the desert experience, epic sorrow, that true connection flowers. America, Europe, western civilisation was only meant as a beautiful overture for Yeat's prophecy, the world be utterly transformed and a tragic beauty born. Shalom Shalom.


Compare this to a standard view of america which is more accurate and what does that mean.other types of maps