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From: geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu (Gordon E. Banks)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: sex/gender
Message-ID: <3184@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>
Date: 1 Aug 89 14:53:50 GMT
References: <8907071844.AA10158@cattell.psych.upenn.edu> <10546@polya.Stanford.EDU> <12869@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <10781@polya.Stanford.EDU> <3118@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <43161@bbn.COM> <3144@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <43390@bbn.COM>
Sender: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
Reply-To: elroy!ames!cadre.dsl.pitt.edu!geb (Gordon E. Banks)
Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
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In article <43390@bbn.COM> elroy!ames!BBN.COM!rshapiro (Richard Shapiro) writes:
>
>Examine these two points a little more closely. Let's agree that
>people can "override" our "natural social order". What is the
>resulting order? By definition it's no longer the "natural" order;
>presumably it's some kind of hybrid. The more overriding we do over
>time, the further removed this hybrid order is from the original
>natural order, i.e. the more "artificial" it becomes.

You have overinterpreted what I said.
Since culture is not hereditary, there is the constant tendancy
to move back toward the baser nature and civilization is only
precariously maintained.  Furthermore, it takes constant effort as
individuals to use our frontal lobes to override our limbic system, and perhaps
the great mass of the people still are primarily governed by the
latter.  So we don't want to take the overridability argument
too far.  It is something to be strived for, but few will actually
achieve it.

>Now even a quick look at social history makes it clear that the social
>order has busily been changing throughout recorded history.

But who was it that said "the more things change, the more they
remain the same."  In many ways, our changes have just facilitated
our more efficient application of bestiality to relations with each
other.
>
>We're also agreed that human beings are unique in this ability to
>override nature -- other animals are bound by the natural order

I'd rather put it another way...our nature provides a different form
of adaptability in our higher cognitive processes.  We
still have a nature which we can not transcend.  We also still have
parts of our nature (emotional) which we do share with other animals
and I see no possibility that we can soon become like computers or
vulcans and transcend that completely.  If you wish to argue
that we can completely transcend our natures, I would think that
it is you that would have to offer strong arguments as well.