Summary: Humans are very adept at creating systems, institutions and cultures which insulate and isolate them from surroundings that are harsh. This ingenuity also helps create critical situations from which humans are unable to emerge. Societies often become accustomed to hardship, unmotivated to prevent it. Yet humans are also very skilled at rationalising their inabilities. While learning is one of the human species' special skills, under certain circumstances it fails. A progress trap is one of them. Innovation has unpredictable results that defy solutions unless humans are boldly creative. Science creates unknown factors: pollution and disease, climate change. Subjugating nature is part of man's culture, but while science has given us powers for dominating nature, it has created a poor ability to learn about the adverse effects of such domination.

Excerpt

These split-brain experiments show that a rational explanation can be an incomplete, inappropriate or incorrect rendering of the actual stimulus, and this raises the possibility that: Any experience can be rationalized, if the vocabulary is available.
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General faith in sensory observation, in intuition, in art and emotion all have declined drastically with the ascendancy of empirical science. State budgets for art are minimal compared to those for road building. Churches are commonly remodeled as apartments. One is far more likely to be institutionalized for being overly emotional than for being excessively intellectual. But Descartes was indeed in error when he said “I think therefore I am.” The empirically correct statement would be I am, therefore I think. Hume was close to the truth when he said that reason is the slave of passion. The thinking brain is in fact the instrument of the being wherein it resides.

The similarity between the decline of intuitive, non-rational factors in the technical world and the emotional hijacking identified and elaborated by LeDoux, and Goleman, cannot be ignored.


See also: 8. A two-sided story Division of mental labour

The difference is that their hijacking is sudden, resulting in the fight or flight response, while reflection and deliberation are suspended. The process identified in this study is a slow ‘sabotaging’ of the moderating role the intuitive mind plays over a long period of time, a process imperceptible to individuals or societies.

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