The real battle of our time is not between political parties, or between progressive and traditional ideologies, or between people of different ethnic backgrounds or income levels. Those conflicts are real, of course, but the closer you pay attention to them, the clearer it becomes that something more fundamental is playing out.

Broadly speaking, there is a meta-culture war underway between ideas, values, and people generally aligned with coherence, one the one hand, and, on the other hand, ideas, values, and people aligned with incoherence. 

Complicating matters is the fact that none of us is coherent all of the time. It's a messy situation. 

Our ancient brain circuitry evolved not to support truth-seeking and freedom, but rather tribalism, superstition, authoritarianism, and unabashed self-justification. Cultural norms and societal rules determined by the unchecked influence of our ancient biases condemned humanity to millennia of deprivation and stagnation. And we still see the influence of these biases today, in our personal struggles with incoherent thinking and in irrational conflicts within and across human societies. 

The Enlightenment project represents a sliver of Humanity that rejected cultural incoherence, giving birth to the world of possibility opened up by objective curiosity and the individual freedom to act on it. 

The Enlightenment has lifted more people out of poverty and created more flourishing in the last 100 years than any other phenomenon in our history. It did this by culturally prioritizing objective curiosity and the individual freedom to act on it.  

But that dynamism doesn’t run on autopilot. Civilization is not self-cleaning. And, frankly, neither are we as individuals.

Cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and evolutionary psychologists have figured out that we’re not born tabula rasa, that we have genuine obstacles to overcome personally and culturally. 

If we want to become coherent thinkers, capable not only of enjoying the flourishing we have and extending its reach further but also of defending the processes that make new flourishing possible for us and our children, then we have work to do to keep our minds from falling under the influence of irrational biases, privately as individuals and publicly as citizens. 

Learning about these biases isn’t navel-gazing. Consider it fieldwork for the defense of your own mind and civilization. 

Because if you want to uphold Enlightenment values—freedom of inquiry, individual rights, rational public discourse—you can’t do it while being unconsciously steered by heuristics designed for surviving a Pleistocene mudslide or impressing a shaman. And make no mistake: today’s con artists and professional politicians know your biases better than you do. They count on them.
 
This isn’t about intellectual vanity or self-help for wonks. It’s about knowing your own mind well enough not to become its next victim or someone else’s useful idiot. 

Having introduced the paradoxical nature of humanity, the new episode/essay establishes the scientific basis for our intelligence's strange, stubborn, irrational biases. 

As always, be curious on purpose, be curious on principle!

From an objective vantage point, it’s possible to perceive Humanity’s paradoxical nature and its effects.  

The “ultimate paradox of humanity” is this: our extraordinary intelligence is entangled with ancient biases that would sabotage it were they not checked by our ability to align our thinking with evidence and logic. As we look in the mirror and at the world around us, we see evidence of what happens when those biases prevail. 

In a word, incoherence.  

Curiosity reduces incoherence where it is active, and incoherence thrives in its absence.

The way our minds work, we must choose to be rational while irrational propensities either conceal that choice or suppress it. 

That somewhat demystifies why it’s taken so long for humanity to break free from a past dominated by irrational, inhumane thinking and behavior.  

Starting about 300 years ago, a young but robust Enlightenment project enabled more of Humanity than ever to gain an objective perspective on human endeavors. The purposeful, principled curiosity it ignited for a relatively small fraction of the global population represents the first widespread coherent response to millennia of domination by mysticism, tribalism, and authoritarianism. 

But this triumph is not on autopilot. The opposite is true. While Enlightenment values must be deliberately affirmed, our irrational biases are always on. 

For the Enlightenment project to continue making flourishing possible, every generation will be called upon to muster coherent responses to the cognitive and psychological biases within us and to their destructive cultural effects.

This is the first episode in a multipart Leap of Curiosity mini-series on the long, rocky road to human flourishing. 

Thank you for listening! Please subscribe if you haven't already, and remember, as always, be curious on purpose, be curious on principle! 

The nature of the universe is such that it is possible for life to exist, just as the nature of humanity makes it possible for human flourishing to exist. Neither life nor human flourishing are inevitable—they are conditional. 

Understanding the specific conditions that make flourishing possible, and understanding the ways in which flourishing can be (and tragically often is) undermined is possible to us if we're objective—if we align our thinking with facts, if we don't permit ourselves to be distracted by personal biases or derailed by illogical ideas. Objectivity has given us all of the extraordinary advantages and benefits we take for granted in scientific, medical, and technological endeavors. We shouldn't take the risk of being anything but objective about human flourishing and what it takes to make it happen. 

Life for humans has never been better, but it took a very long time to make the progress we've made. And there are still billions of people for whom flourishing is an incomplete reality. In fact, this is the case for most of us. The Enlightenment project has gotten us this far, but we have more work to do. 

Work that will only get done if we commit to being... 

Curious on Purpose, Curious on Principle. 

Thank you for listening! If you prefer digesting content by reading or watching it, you'll find article versions on Substack. There are video versions of some of my podcasts on YouTube. And there's a Facebook group for discussion of ideas in the episodes, too.    

Substack | YouTube | Facebook

#CuriosityOnPurpose #CuriosityOnPrinciple #Freedom #Reason #Enlightenment #Justice #Peace #BelieveInQuestions #Skepticism #NoMoreSuperstition #NoMoreTribalism #NoMoreAuthoritarianism #NoMoreRacism #NoMoreMisogyny #NoMoreIrrationality #NoMoreCoercion #NoMoreFraud #NoMoreProfessionalPoliticians #NoMorePoliticalParties #NoMoreDemocrats #NoMoreRepublicans #HumanityFirst #HumanityOnPrinciple

The nature of the universe is such that it is possible for life to exist, just as the nature of humanity makes it possible for human flourishing to exist. Neither life nor human flourishing are inevitable—they are conditional. 

Understanding the specific conditions that make flourishing possible, and understanding the ways in which flourishing can be (and tragically often is) undermined is possible to us if we're objective—if we align our thinking with facts, if we don't permit ourselves to be distracted by personal biases or derailed by illogical ideas. Objectivity has given us all of the extraordinary advantages and benefits we take for granted in scientific, medical, and technological endeavors. We shouldn't take the risk of being anything but objective about human flourishing and what it takes to make it happen. 

Life for humans has never been better, but it took a very long time to make the progress we've made. And there are still billions of people for whom flourishing is an incomplete reality. In fact, this is the case for most of us. The Enlightenment project has gotten us this far, but we have more work to do. 

Work that will only get done if we commit to being... 

Curious on Purpose, Curious on Principle. 

Thank you for listening! If you prefer digesting content by reading or watching it, you'll find article versions on Substack. There are video versions of some of my podcasts on YouTube. And there's a Facebook group for discussion of ideas in the episodes, too!   

Substack | YouTube | Facebook

#CuriosityOnPurpose #CuriosityOnPrinciple #Freedom #Reason #Enlightenment #Justice #Peace #BelieveInQuestions #Skepticism #NoMoreSuperstition #NoMoreTribalism #NoMoreAuthoritarianism #NoMoreRacism #NoMoreMisogyny #NoMoreIrrationality #NoMoreCoercion #NoMoreFraud #NoMoreProfessionalPoliticians #NoMorePoliticalParties #NoMoreDemocrats #NoMoreRepublicans #HumanityFirst #HumanityOnPrinciple

You should check out Leap of Curiosity on Youtube and on Substack.

We live in a time overflowing with information—but starved for understanding. Opinions fly faster than thought. Certainty shouts louder than truth. In the noise, it’s easy to forget that one of the most powerful things a person can do is ask good questions and dare to follow where they lead.

That’s what Leap of Curiosity is about.

Not blind faith. Not knee-jerk skepticism. But the disciplined courage to wonder, to investigate, to think for yourself—and to change your mind when facts demand it.

Curiosity isn’t childlike. It’s civilizational. It’s the engine behind every real advance in science, justice, and human flourishing. And yet, in too many places and all across the political spectrum today, curiosity is stifled. 

There are clear rewards for towing the party line and reiterating the dictums popular in whichever groups you belong to. And there are clear punishments for challenging certainties and dogmas, for refusing to go along with popular but groundless stances, for refusing to be more loyal than rational.

The right to think, to question, to choose your life’s course without being interfered with—this is all on the line right now.

If you want to live in a world where you’re free to be yourself and get to enjoy the flourishing that arises in cultures where everybody else is free to be themselves, then now is the time to stand up for Curiosity. The moral and political principles of individualism and freedom abide within the natural expression of Curiosity. 

We live in a world in which people who pretend to have all of the answers are making a mess of things. The truth is, better questions lead to better lives.

Leap of Curiosity is for those who want to understand the world and Humanity, and work towards a world shaped by honest inquiry. 

Subscribe to the podcast, and check out the YouTube and Substack versions on this content. Please also consider joining the FaceBook page to be notified when new content is available and participate in online discussions about the ideas that come up in this series. 

Substack—https://leapofcuriosity.substack.com/p/curiosity-on-purpose-and-on-principle?r=533t7r

YouTube—https://youtu.be/06AGz-wLHk8

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#CuriosityOnPurpose #CuriosityOnPrinciple #Freedom #Reason #Enlightenment #Justice #Peace #BelieveInQuestions #Skepticism #NoMoreSuperstition #NoMoreTribalism #NoMoreAuthoritarianism #NoMoreRacism #NoMoreMisogyny #NoMoreIrrationality #NoMoreCoercion #NoMoreFraud #NoMoreProfessionalPoliticians #NoMorePoliticalParties #NoMoreDemocrats #NoMoreRepublicans #HumanityFirst #HumanityOnPrinciple