>Kirt,
><<  Ideology has faith, even in the absence of "support" (even in the presence
>of contradictory evidence). >>

Liza:
>Yes but intuition and a "gut" sense about something, even when everything else
>seems to contradict it, turns out so very often to be our intelligence working
>when we don't even recognize it. I wouldn't want to discount this.  I think
>we're much smarter than we usually think we are.

Interesting. Intuition and ideology are not similar to me though. Ideology
may be faith in an outside construct, which IMO includes ideation which is
not a result of experience. Intuition, to me, is an ideation which is a
direct result of experience, but, as you say, we may not be aware of the
united sensations/emotions which lead us to that ideation. Our attraction
to outside ideas may seem quite "intuitive" at times (as in "I read
Instinctive Nutrition--or Mucusless Diet or ???--and knew right then and
there that it was _it_!), but people have the same "eureka" reaction to
political systems, religions, invented new-ageisms, etc. Intuition steers
us toward (pehaps even unites us with)  reality, whereas ideology keeps us
from experience. Maybe. I don't know, but I wasn't dissing intuition...but
yeah, I was dissing ideology.

><<  Human nature isn't perfect, and it includes a bunch of stuff that doesn't
>much work ;) >>

>I prefer to think of it this way - that human nature is in fact very perfect
>(Jaloa will, and probably already has,  proven that to you).

Actually...as easy as it is to romaticise about a 6 week old daughter, she
is more an example of the double-edged sword than perfection to me. Born so
absolutely helpless and immature for so long (so much growing to do of
course)...but how else could it be? if big-brained humans are to get out of
the birth canal properly? A trade-off between vulnerability/need and
increased brain size, no?

And this trade-off contributes to your point below since....

>But people begin
>to get "warped" at a VERY young age by sometimes well-meaning-but-misguided
>adults, and sometimes deliberate evil, and sometimes accidents.

...even a traumatic birth can be a warping experience, and the absolute
need of human infants means they are perhaps even more vulnerable to
mistreatment at the hands of their caregivers, caregivers who can believe
things which are not useful. These things can probably reverberate
throughout ones entire life. And the triple whamy may be that: perhaps our
big brain and its ability soak up such early pain throughout a lifetime as
ideation is the double-edged sword needed for survival, albiet neurotic
survival to a lessor or greater degree.

In any case, the idea that "people begin to get 'warped' at a VERY young
age by sometimes well-meaning-but-misguided adults, and sometimes
deliberate evil, and sometimes accidents" is in large part why I feel that
human nature includes a bunch of stuff that doesn't much work. Overall, our
grand capacity for ideation is the greatest double-edged sword of all. We
can figure out most anything, symbolise most anything, including things
that don't exist--which is both our glory and our Achille's heel.
Especially with our intution screwed up from early on, we have little skill
in differentiating the useful ideations from the useless and harmful ones.
It seems that humans--OK, at least me then ;)--are by nature _believers_.
We got all that extra brain and can never really turn it off--nor probably
should we ;)

>Because of my
>work, I am lucky enough to have seen over and over again that underneath the
>weird behavior that we all have, there is always an unbelievably perfect
>human. (and I work with some pretty weird people from time to time).

Unbelievably needy. Unbelievably beautiful. Unbelievably intuitive--yeah,
but "perfect"? I can't buy it. Fallen from grace. Making it up as we go
along. Basically kind--yeah, but "perfect"? Naw, if for no other reason
than it is an unreasonable and unattainable model.

>On another subject - this evening I received SEVEN private emails in reply to
>my comments on jr's list about "snake-oil" sellers in the health-food world -
>all thanking me profusely for clarifying some confusion about conflicting
>theories, and two asking "what 'other' raw list? you mean there is another raw
>list? how can I get on it?"
>
>Isn't that great? I'm really glad I wrote that paragraph.

Me too. It was a beaut. My whole thing about keeping it up over there was
exactly that--the idea of newbies coming on and thinking jr's list was the
extent of the raw online universe, thinking that the self-appointed gurus
were universally respected in the "raw community", was _so_ embarrassing to
me. It is cool that you're getting some private reaction. There may never
be equilibrium over there but you are providing some important balance,
methinks.

Cheers,
Kirt