The Paleolithic Paradigm takes us one step further in the nature/nurture debate. Certainly a certain percentage of our behaviors are biologically based. However, culture has the power to override much in genetic commands. The Amish exemplify this, no matter how much "we" qualify them as "quaint". Painting with a wide post-modern paint brush, Stocker takes on a journey through four cultures to show how different people can be. He offers the analogy: our genetic structure is the framework of any house. How we cover and decorate that frame is often the product of ancient traditions. However, we are all products of the same cognitive processes, thus explaining why we take ideas put into our heads as children to the grave whether we accept them, reject them, or alter them. It is this commonality the author examines. Accordingly, he wants to know, if we understand our cognition processes, can we change out behavior at will?

The Paleolithic Paradigm

By Terry Stocker

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Terry Stocker
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-2291-4

Contents

1. WILL THE TRUE RELIGIOUS RITUAL PLEASE BE REVEALED?.....................52. SELLING DREAMS.........................................................173. WHEN IS TRUTH?.........................................................264. JARGON:................................................................725. ANOTHER APPROACH.......................................................926. STAR-SPANGLED EYES.....................................................1107. AMISH..................................................................1778. TEQUILA................................................................1889. UNIQUE IN ALL THE WORLD................................................23210. IS THERE REALLY A MAN IN THE MOON?....................................29411. LOOSE TALK............................................................31112. MR. GALILEI...........................................................33113. WHY ME?...............................................................34614. A NEW TAKE............................................................35615. UFOs AND BLACK HOLES..................................................36916. SO PALEOLITHIC!.......................................................37917. MUTANT IMAGES.........................................................43618. GETTING READY TO DIE..................................................45219. BUYING A DREAM........................................................49620. THE BIOLOGY OF ORDER..................................................510POSTSCRIPT................................................................546

Chapter One

WILL THE TRUE RELIGIOUS RITUAL PLEASE BE REVEALED?

Our innocence and faith were no more productive than his lust or despair. The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison

A multiplicity of Americas dots our mental landscapes. One America believes in abortion; another abhors it-to the point of killing abortion doctors. Spanish is the first language in another U.S.A. that is growing rapidly these days and is sure to rearrange visions of future U.S.A.s. (Keep your eyes on that word: future.) Native Americans live out their lives on reservations because they were put there by a more powerful not-so-native America. Yet, the latter gleefully boast their bedazzlement of 4th-of-July firework celebrations for "freedom." Some individuals characterize the U.S.A. as a great melting pot; others depict it as a salad bowl composed of discrete entities, each composed of well-defined boundaries. Indeed, if you have been to Korea Town in L.A., your appreciation for the "land of the free" should be enhanced. (Mine was, and I could read the signs.) But, you don't have to go to Korea Town to know that well-defined boundaries are sometimes an American reality. One can read about this in Kwang Chung Kim's Koreans in the Hood: Conflict with African Americans. (Keep your eye on that word, "conflict;" it is going to be with us to the final pages.) In the LA riots of 1992, Afro-Americans quickly understood boundary maintenance when armed Koreans stood atop their buildings to stop the pillaging. (Type "L.A. Riots" at www. youtube.com, and watch.) Yet, you don't have to wander to or read about L.A. to encounter well-defined boundaries; they are probably right in your hometown if you believe in the marriage gap.

Repeating the point, a multiplicity of Americas can be conjured up, and for this reason, according to Gary Althen, if you ask certain Americans, "... to tell you something about 'American culture,' they may be unable to answer, and they may even deny that there is an `American culture.'" As testimony, if you walk into neighborhoods throughout America and ask about "the truth" and "the future," both concepts will soon become a huge assortment of plurals.

In the following pages, we will wander through America's religious panorama, which is undoubtedly the most complex mosaic of beliefs about truths on afterlife (and communicating with it) anywhere on the planet. One truth all believers seem to have in common is that there is a deity or deities or spirits that can be communicated with via rituals. A recent book to be recommended for viewing America's religious vista, and political ideology, through the eyes of others is A Place at the Multicultural Table: The Development of an American Hinduism by Prema A. Kurien, an Indian Christian.

Adding to the mix, between 2006 and 2008 a plethora of books on atheism beckoned would-be buyers to question our ultimate existence with a more rational stance, grounded in logic and new scientific data. (Not to mention the updating of The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief.) From this, radio and television producers eagerly provided auditory and visual stimulation of rabbis and priests debating atheists-each beginning from a stance that precludes the other's ideological premises. But one thing is certain, the collective consciousness is moving away from long-ago, deeply entrenched religious ideologies. For example, long ago, Christians used to fast. That was a time when Christianity had an every day reality, with monasteries and monks highly visible on the physical panorama connecting the masses to a similar lifestyle of Jesus and his disciples. But fasting dropped away, and motorized transportation swept us away from those individuals riding burros. The monasteries and monks diminished, relegated to an antiquated lifestyle.

Changes in medical theory helped the collective consciousness shift to a more rational/scientific understanding of how the body operates. Medicine was no longer linked to religion. Then about 100 years ago, the pace picked up, with the likes of Bertrand Russell publishing Why I Am Not a Christian in 1927. That would be expanded and re-presented in 1957 as Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. I was a mere 7 years old then, but I would hear about the book only when attending university. No one in my small Ohio town spoke of it, if indeed they knew about it. In keeping with good capitalism, the book was reissued in 2008 by Barlow Press to join the other atheistic texts nudging our collective consciousness to think seriously about what we believe.

However, keenly perceptual individuals, akin to Jonathan Haidt, demonstrate that atheism is not all it is cracked up to be, but it is doubtful that more than just a few dedicated philosophical-type individuals will be reading his words. Some details will be considered later in this book.

I am not an atheist. Yet, I do not believe any goddess or god is in any way concerned with human affairs, in part because of having witnessed too many unanswered prayers. Up will jump the "all-knowing" Christian to lecture about how God works in mysterious ways. Amen to that! Those not of Christian orientation sometimes inquire, "If God's ways are so mysterious, how could we know God really exists?" Others, myself among them, ask why would a god want to be mysterious or act in mysterious ways? Of course, the religious clergy immediately informs us that science and religion are two different endeavors. Amen to that!

Still, when sufficient data is presented, I can accept that some deity might be concerned with the morality of human dealings, but please, someone, anyone, answer this question: How and why does anyone believe that she or he has some ritualistic way of...