A mental exercise

OK.. this is how it works

1. Choose two things to swap the colours of (grass and sky are obvious ones)
2. Picture how odd the world would look to you if that was how things were...
3. Realise that maybe everyone else sees things that way
4. Realise that that means... you are the odd one.
5. Realise that if we called blue green and green blue they'd still be the same colour.
   
6. Go on to realise that the invention of language means that all differences like this are irrelevant.
7. Admire the power of social agreement to overcome differences in subjective experience.
8. Start calling chocolate "Ryvita" in the hope that you're wrong.

I hope my point comes over. I first came up with this exercise (without the long words of course) at school aged around 7... I was deffo still in Crawley at that point so I couldn't be older than that at the time. The look I got from the friend I tried to explain this to was priceless...

As I have grown up I of course realise that my revelation was far from original - many people have realised this before, my particular interest in it is the way people use all manner of words and phrases to say something and mean the same thing - what an amazing creature Homo Sapiens is when it not only knows that "Car" describes a four wheeled automobile, but also "motor", "beamer", "Herbie" etc refer to different version of the same thing...

Now.. one man's grass is another man's pot... and yet you should still know what I am talking about,and these two words have gained new additional meanings over the years that we can still discern from little more than the framing context - If I was to say "brand new terracotta pot" you would know I mean something different from "the police confiscated his pot" - though neither is totally exclusive, in the world of stoned gardening based branding for drugs or excessive garden based policing, but the human species is incredibly able to make value judgements to a degree just not required by basic everyday life - or indeed required at the time such abilities were evolved.

I heard a great argument that the human forebrain has evolved too fast for us, that we are capable of far more abstract thought than our tiny differences from other apes' drives and reflexes can cope with.

A Gorilla may well be able to think in such abstract terms as to be, for example, racist or sexist for the reasons a human may be, but such things as genocide of those other tribes with whom this particular racist ape has a beef is just beyond it for whatever reason. Its clear no gorilla has ever made an atomic weapon, or wiped out an entire section species based on its religion - evolution simply doesn't work that way.

We find these things come easily. Any whacko can do his best to blow up people he just doesn't like for totally spurious and abstract reasoning - just this week a man was convicted for just that. And its because of such abilities that we have created such fourth level abstractions such as societally accepted rights and wrongs in the forms of laws... luckily this particular man was caught and convicted by these laws.

Homo Sapiens' forebrain has got to the point where it can see, anticipate and override something as basic as evolution - good thing too for anyone living below the poverty line worldwide since any world society based on evolutionary principles would leave you for dead!

The downsides and upsides are so complex that some of us believe there is a little soul up there telling us what to do... I don't buy that, but that's a subject for another time. I hope I've given you some food for thought anyhoo...

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