Your Weekly Dose of Logic: Golden Age? Part I

It's been quite a while since I blogged, but such is life in the dreary desolation we call winter. Anyway, down to business. The creator of Dilbert recently posted a very intuitive blog that I wish to add neuropsychological credence to.

You may find it here
It is absolutely true that energy and medical technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace; here's a few medical headliners courtesy of Science Daily and Medical News Today:

Human Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Created Without The Destruction Of Embryos

Human Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Created That Avoid Immune Rejection

Beating Heart Created In Laboratory: Method May Revolutionize How Organ Tissus Are Developed

Skin Cells Reprogrammed To Behave Like Embryonic Stem Cells

First Primate Embryonic Stem Cells Cloned By US Scientists

To expound upon the point of technology resulting in the reduction of war, one may look simply at the development of nuclear weapons and its effective relegation of war to diplomacy as seen in the Cold War; if one sees this as insufficient, then let us consider Neurobiologist Bruce Wexler's idea of internal-external consonance . This is a refinement of the idea of cognitive dissonance, explaining how people develop a sense of internal self from the external world, and once fully developed have a difficult time assimilating change, instead largely acting to manipulate the external world around them to become consonant with their internal viewpoints:

"It is the neurobiological imperative to maintain consistency between internal structures [of the brain] and the external environment that fuels the struggle to control the story...Neurobiological antagonism to difference, and the associated pressure to eliminate strange or foreign peoples with different ideologies...contributes to violent conflict...[However,] the angry consternation of the [society's] elders will not stop the youth of each culture from assuming characteristics from the others and then changing their cultures from within as they themselves assume leadership roles and act to make the external world consonant with their hybrid selves."

With that in mind, once one considers how technology brings together cultures that, although initially resisting change because it does not fit with their internal view of how the world should be, it becomes increasingly evident that one global culture will arise--one accepting of regional differences, that works synergistically toward a common goal of individual and global health.

This is a process, like evolution, that takes many years, but America is a microscopic example of what is happening globally. The general trend of our intracultural abuse has been negative (reducing), evidence being Women's suffrage and the abolition of slavery. This is also the evolutionary process foreseen by Ernest Lawrence, Neils Bohr, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Edward Teller, scientists in the Manhattan Project, who used technology to reduce war to a diplomatic antagonism by relegating the security of the West and the USSR to a state of mutual dependency.

It was an excellent post, but of course the naysayers came out in full bore, projecting their psychopathology onto Scott Adams. So let's address some of the points stated in repudiation of the idea of a future Golden Age in my next post, shall we?