The Social Narrative[]
All of those things that you and I are taught by parents and teachers, the things which we took on faith, without our own efforts at experiencing, reasoning, and drawing our own conclusions, are elements of the Social Narrative. This Social Narrative is handed down from one generation of a culture to the next, constantly altered and amended. While this narrative is a great aid to the progress that can be made in the world, an aid both to the society that maintains it, and the individual who receives it, it has strengths and weaknesses of its own. One of these weaknesses is that, in view of its great strength and utility in almost every endeavor, it becomes difficult to raise any questions as to its fallibility! I hope to demonstrate the source of its great utility, and then detail just where we can expect it to compare unfavorably to the individual efforts it seems to supplant.
The Temporalities of the Narrative[]
The Social Narrative has its roots in the distant past, a narrative we can examine today in only historical terms. In these historical terms, however, we can clearly see society and the social narrative adopting techniques in a purely utilitarian way; the contemporaries don't understand the causes of these phenomena, but they are perfectly willing to make use of, and further develop, their effects.
For instance, to a contemporary of the time, the human capacity for spoken and written symbolic language would have been a complete mystery, in comparison to what we know of it today. The ancient Egyptians made perfectly good use of hieroglyphs as a means of written communication, all without knowing much of anything of the role of human brains in the production of language, nor any knowledge of the laws of genetic inheritance or the DNA molecule, which, respectively, shape the evolution of human brains, and shape the individual brain and its capacity for language. The working knowledge of language, and its inclusion as both a method and subject of the Social Narrative, long preceded any inclusion of the very causes of these social phenomena.
Causally, biological potencies long preceded the eventual (complex) uses to which they are put.
Narratively, these uses preceded their causes, and are seen, incorrectly, to have shaped them.
We evolved blindly to be more intelligent in any way that was advantageous; language was just one of the first applications that made the "front page". (Remind anyone of VisiCalc???) P:D
The Phenomenal World See the section on Teleology. Real eye-opener.
The Social Rhetoric is "The Greatest Story Ever Sold", The Authoritative and Unabridged Collectors' Edition.
Still think Kant rebutted Hume? Perhaps you'd like a chance to reconsider?
Playing Catch-Up[]
Rather than being a leading, shaping, and causal force, Social Evolution is woefully behind Biological Evolution, as this Wikia so aptly demonstrates. P:D