The trouble is that these antibodies are not logical. On the contrary; these antibodies are often highly illogical. They are the blind spots that let us live with a dangerous meme without being impelled to action by it.
That is a brilliant point. I also loved you description of the Buddhist monk taking questions from a Western audience. The image of incompatible knowledge blocks is a great one, that actually makes a lot of sense of how various ideologically conditioned people are able to functionally operate.
The example that comes up for me is animal suffering. I believe that torturing animals in factory farms will one day be regarded as a moral evil on bar with war, slavery, etc. I while I refrain from meat, I have a blindspot for eggs and milk, and still a bigger blind spot for other’s eating meat. If I didn’t have the latter blindspot, I wouldn’t be able to function in society. I don’t go around consciously thinking of factory carnivores as moral monsters. Maybe if I were more rationally driven I would think this way, and that might be a very bad thing.
Maybe the true judo move is to learn how to include the practical rationality of when to compartmentalize in the rational calculus. Of course, we might not have such fine grained control over these unconscious aspects of our cognition.
That is a brilliant point. I also loved you description of the Buddhist monk taking questions from a Western audience. The image of incompatible knowledge blocks is a great one, that actually makes a lot of sense of how various ideologically conditioned people are able to functionally operate.
The example that comes up for me is animal suffering. I believe that torturing animals in factory farms will one day be regarded as a moral evil on bar with war, slavery, etc. I while I refrain from meat, I have a blindspot for eggs and milk, and still a bigger blind spot for other’s eating meat. If I didn’t have the latter blindspot, I wouldn’t be able to function in society. I don’t go around consciously thinking of factory carnivores as moral monsters. Maybe if I were more rationally driven I would think this way, and that might be a very bad thing.
Maybe the true judo move is to learn how to include the practical rationality of when to compartmentalize in the rational calculus. Of course, we might not have such fine grained control over these unconscious aspects of our cognition.