Wednesday 6 March 2013

street smarts

Not to disparage conventional wisdom since there is much to be culled from a rare quality called common-sense and knowing better, but folk-neuroscience has practically invaded all aspects of public dialogue and holds up a very inaccurate but tantalizing fun-house mirror to ourselves.

Stock phrases and jargon, I think, are good vehicles for a whole host of excuses that prompt us to look in possibly the wrong direction. Self- assessments are imbued with the stuff of expediency, culture, what’s psychologically plausible and stereotype, and then become a template applied to the inner-workings of others and rarely, ironically to ourselves. It is a positive development that we can defer to our brains as captains of our destinies but more understanding, as social and political animals, is needed before we can really apply these sort judgments for anyone.