08-17-2014, 06:00 AM
I actually kind of get why some people don't believe in evolution. I personally love it and think it's wondrous, and can connect the idea and theory to every moment that I live and every living thing that I witness.
But, it's not like gravity, where you can drop a stone a hundred times and notice that it drops every single time. Evolution is an entire system, often with a process too slow for us to really see happening, so it has to be explained more than it is experienced, and only through that explanation can we connect it to experience.
I don't remember being born, actually, but having watched other people get pregnant and give birth, and listening to people who remember the way I was before I could remember, and seeing pictures, well...the common opinion becomes good enough for me.
I'm also a fan of contemporary political theory, or identity politics. Statistics can show the effects of a marginalized group of people, but if the group of people who are not being marginalized don't get it, or even those who are supposedly marginalized don't get it, I sort of get why they don't--because it's a system, the kyriarchy, with microaggression and situational privileges and relative privileges and all that. I keep on with it because it's explained a lot, it's articulated a lot about my own personal experiences...and then comes unpacking the baggage of what I must own up to. If the latter came first, of course I'd be put off by it and consider this social theory "just a theory" or conveniently self-serving of people who like to lay claims of being oppressed just for personal emotional manipulation or something.
Is the systemic a way to get a better perspective of the personal, to you? Or do you check what system is worthy of believing in, by personal experience? Or something else?
But, it's not like gravity, where you can drop a stone a hundred times and notice that it drops every single time. Evolution is an entire system, often with a process too slow for us to really see happening, so it has to be explained more than it is experienced, and only through that explanation can we connect it to experience.
I don't remember being born, actually, but having watched other people get pregnant and give birth, and listening to people who remember the way I was before I could remember, and seeing pictures, well...the common opinion becomes good enough for me.
I'm also a fan of contemporary political theory, or identity politics. Statistics can show the effects of a marginalized group of people, but if the group of people who are not being marginalized don't get it, or even those who are supposedly marginalized don't get it, I sort of get why they don't--because it's a system, the kyriarchy, with microaggression and situational privileges and relative privileges and all that. I keep on with it because it's explained a lot, it's articulated a lot about my own personal experiences...and then comes unpacking the baggage of what I must own up to. If the latter came first, of course I'd be put off by it and consider this social theory "just a theory" or conveniently self-serving of people who like to lay claims of being oppressed just for personal emotional manipulation or something.
Is the systemic a way to get a better perspective of the personal, to you? Or do you check what system is worthy of believing in, by personal experience? Or something else?