Curious Mammal

"Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried." - Thomas Jefferson I don't think anything exemplifies our culture's belief (mania) in progress, modernization, and innovation than new inventions. We have become war-torn veterans of innovation, each of us with a wary eye on things that work vs. things that say they work. Today, we have people selling products that making things either more complicated than they need to be or just down right useless. See video. We may see these products and laugh now, obviously we are well equipped to deal with the absurdity of their messages, but in the ea rly days of our countries inception, with a reimagining of the American landscape, it may not have been so easy to distinguish between a worthy product and, let's say, crap. Perhaps, the faith in these new inventions proves that people were optimistic and willing to view t...

"Objectivity does not require taking God's perspective, which is impossible." -Mark Johnson Early scientists and social scientists thought that they could discover the world as it really was. By adhering to strict standards and methods they thought that they could unearth facts without any doubt as to the validity of the results. Today, we know that social and cultural baggage cannot be excluded or dismissed. The results that our scientists come up with are bound not only linguistically to a culture, but also the philosophy backing the pursuit of truth is culturally bound. We are in fact unable to see reality "as it really is". But this is not the end of the discussion, but rather the beginning. The realization of our limitations only gives us a clearer view of what it is we know and how it relates to us, others, and the world as it stands. It comes to this point ...

The frontier in North America is the consummate example of the potential of human envisioning. Though the frontier never truly existed in the sense most people view it, a clear border between wild untamed lands and civilization, it does give us an excellent view of the power of human imagination. Though ideas don't guarantee success they do spur movement and with an ocean separating thousands of years of divergent developing peoples, the effects of change were drastic on the frontier. Just as people came to dominate the plains when first arriving across the Bering land bridge, so did Europeans when traveling across the Atlantic Ocean. "The place, its resources, its alignment of peoples, and especially of timing of the frontiers' arrival made for a volatile combination." -Elliot West Forces outside of ourselves can shape our lives. Events, peoples, things outside of our perception and knowledge can shape our decisions before we even make them. The fact th...

Three main metanarratives, grand schemes for interpreting and writing history, of modern history are: 1. The heroic model of progress due to scientific thinking 2. The development of America as a nation 3. The ideas of modernism. Each of these three have influenced how we learn, what we learn, and how we view ourselves and others. Postmodernists reject all three of these as fictions created by Western thinking, among all other labels including being called postmodernists. In their view, all "truth" arrived at is a mirror of the real world and cannot be seen as reality in the true sense. Though some argue whether language is at fault, due to its nature, or if simply living within the context of culture prevents us from ever dealing with reality most postmodernists see the creation of narratives as truthseeking. Practical realists look at these narratives as a reflection of the real world due to the fact that even though we are not dealing with direct reality we ar...

Perceived: Everything that an animal is aware of in its environment. Effective: Everything that actually influences that animal and everything the animal affects. These two terms help us understand many things about our world and our view of the world. It gives us insight into what is real and what is imaginary. It showcases what we may think is really happening and what is actually happening in any given situation. A discussion on these two terms and how they interrelate with one another is important in regards to understanding why people act as they do, how they may be misinformed, how that may lead to false conclusions, and what consequences arise out of action. Most of us perceive what we hope is reality. We see the sky and the ground, other people around us, night and day and we see how these things affect us. This is the perceived world. Sometimes we see things that are not there. Just turn on any sporting match and you will see a clear example of what this means. The refer...

-On the plains people of America "In the heart and centre of this great and powerful republic, and in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, there exists a nation of barbarians, living in the hunter state, among whom the use of the plough and hoe is unknown, and to whom the word of God is not preached. Why?" - Thomas Twiss (1856) In reading about the roots of our culture and the ideas of progress and innovation as a mainstay in our mindset, I thought it would be advantageous to highlight the other side of the coin. Early historians and some people today still feel that Americans are unique and special. Our history proves that as we formed a unique and vibrant nation on the ideals of the Enlightenment. But our culture of progress, heroic science, and democracy is just one culture among many. It goes unnoticed and taken for granted that the ideas of self-reliance, innovation, and progress are not universal and that they are in fact fallible. In reading about the frontier...