We’re evolutionarily optimized for the savannah, not for the stars. It doesn’t seem to me that our present selves are really as capable of being effortlessly content with our worldview as some of our forebears were, because we have some lingering Wrong Questions and wrong expectations written into our minds. Some part of us really wants to see agency in the basic causal framework of our lives, as much as we know this isn’t so.
But it does mean that it’s not a moral failing to be disillusioned with the world, now and then, in a way that our religious next-door neighbor isn’t. Taking it to an extreme can signify a lack of understanding and imagination, but some amount of it may well be proper for now.
No, I think it’s right as written. Our religious next-door neighbor may not feel disillusioned, and we might, and this is not necessarily a moral failing in us.
We’re evolutionarily optimized for the savannah, not for the stars. It doesn’t seem to me that our present selves are really as capable of being effortlessly content with our worldview as some of our forebears were, because we have some lingering Wrong Questions and wrong expectations written into our minds. Some part of us really wants to see agency in the basic causal framework of our lives, as much as we know this isn’t so.
Now that’s not a final prescription for hopelessness, because we can hope not to be running on the same bug-riddled brainware for our entire existence, and because there do exist ways to make the universe much more interesting than it presently is.
But it does mean that it’s not a moral failing to be disillusioned with the world, now and then, in a way that our religious next-door neighbor isn’t. Taking it to an extreme can signify a lack of understanding and imagination, but some amount of it may well be proper for now.
Speak for yourself… that never occurred to me as something natural or something I “Wanted to see”.
I think you have an extra negation in the first sentence of your last paragraph?
No, I think it’s right as written. Our religious next-door neighbor may not feel disillusioned, and we might, and this is not necessarily a moral failing in us.
Oh, whoops. I accidentally read the “does” as a “doesn’t”, reading the extra negation right into there...