Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization—Articles and Reviews, 2006–2019

he first group of articles attempt to give some insight into how we behave that is reasonably free of theoretical delusions. In the next three groups I comment on three of the principal delusions preventing a sustainable world— technology, religion and politics (cooperative groups). People believe that society can be saved by them, so I provide some suggestions in the rest of the book as to why this is unlikely via short articles and reviews of recent books by well-known writers. America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century and now all of it due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources and the addition of 4 billion more ca. 2100 will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a nightmare of crime and poverty. The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests. This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone else—there is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently, social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system. Hence my essay “Suicide by Democracy”. It is also now clear that the seven sociopaths who rule China are winning world war 3, and so my concluding essay on them. The only greater threat is Artificial Intelligence which I comment on briefly in the last paragraph. PREFACE .............................................................................. I THE DESCRIPTION OF BEHAVIOR WITHOUT DELUSION 1. The Logical Structure of Consciousness (behavior, personality, rationality, higher order thought, intentionality) ............. 2 2. Review of Making the Social World by John Searle (2010)---10 3. Review of ‘Philosophy in a New Century’ by John Searle (2008)--33 4. Review of Wittgenstein's Metaphilosophy by Paul Horwich 248p (2013)--54 5. Review of The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker (2008)----78 6. Review of “Are We Hardwired? by Clark & Grunstein Oxford (2000)---92 THE DIGITAL DELUSION --COMPUTERS ARE PEOPLE AND LANGUAGE IS MATH AND HI-TECH WILL SAVE US 7. Is JK Rowling more evil than me? ..................................... 95 8. Scientism on Steroids- a Review of Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett (2003)---101 9. Review of I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter (2007)---117 10. Another cartoon portrait of the mind from the reductionist metaphysicians--a Review of Peter Carruthers ‘The Opacity of Mind’ (2011) ................................................................................... 137 11. Will Hominoids or Androids Destroy the Earth? —A Review of How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil (2012) ...................... 166 12. What Do Paraconsistent, Undecidable, Random, Computable and Incomplete mean? A Review of Godel's Way: Exploits into an undecidable world by Gregory Chaitin, Francisco A Doria, Newton C.A. da Costa 160p (2012) ................................................ 180 13. Wolpert, Chaitin and Wittgenstein on impossibility, incompleteness, the liar paradox, theism, the limits of computation, a non-quantum mechanical uncertainty principle and the universe as computer—the ultimate theorem in Turing Machine Theory ................ 196 14. Review of 'The Outer Limits of Reason' by Noson Yanofsky 403p (2013)--201 THE RELIGIOUS DELUSION – A BENEVOLENT UNIVERSE WILL SAVE US 15. Review of Religion Explained-- The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by Pascal Boyer (2002) ...................................... 219 16. Review of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by Ken Wilber 2nd ed 851p (2001)-233 17. The most profound spiritual autobiography of all time? - a review of "The Knee of Listening" by Adi Da (Franklin Jones) (1995) 251 18. Do our automated unconscious behaviors reveal our real selves and hidden truths about the universe? -- A review of David Hawkins ‘Power vs Force--the hidden determinants of human behavior –author’s official authoritative edition’ 412p(2012)(original edition 1995). ................................................................................... 255 THE ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY DELUSION-- DEMOCRACY, DIVERSITY AND EQUALITY WILL SAVE US 19. The Transient Suppression of the Worst Devils of our Nature—a review of Steven Pinker’s ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined’(2012) .......................................... 260 20. The Dead Hands of Group Selection and Phenomenology -- A Review of Individuality and Entanglement by Herbert Gintis 357p (2017)266 21. Altruism, Jesus and the End of the World—how the Templeton Foundation bought a Harvard Professorship and attacked Evolution, Rationality and Civilization. A review of E.O. Wilson 'The Social Conquest of Earth' (2012) and Nowak and Highfield ‘SuperCooperators’(2012)---279 22. A Review of The Murderer Next Door by David Buss (2005)--294 23. Suicide by Democracy-an Obituary for America and the World(2019)---306 24. How the Seven Sociopaths Who Rule China are Winning World War Three and Three Ways to Stop Them .......357 The first group of articles attempt to give some insight into how we behave that is reasonably free of theoretical delusions. In the next three groups I comment on three of the principal delusions preventing a sustainable world- technology, religion and politics (cooperative groups). People believe that society can be saved by them, so I provide some suggestions in the rest of the book as to why this is unlikely via short articles and reviews of recent books by well-known writers.America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century and now all of it due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources and the addition of 4 billion more ca. 2100 will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a nightmare of crime and poverty. The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests. This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone else-there is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently, social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system. Hence my essay "Suicide by Democracy". It is also now clear that the seven sociopaths who rule China are winning world war 3, and so my concluding essay on them. The only greater threat is Artificial Intelligence which I comment on briefly in the last paragraph.