The real battle of our time is not between political parties, or between progressive and traditional ideologies, or between people of different ethnic backgrounds or income levels. Those conflicts are real, of course, but the closer you pay attention to them, the clearer it becomes that something more fundamental is playing out. Broadly speaking, there is a meta-culture war underway between ideas, values, and people generally aligned with coherence, one the one hand, and, on the other hand, ideas, values, and people aligned with incoherence. Complicating matters is the fact that none of us is coherent all of the time. It's a messy situation. Our ancient brain circuitry evolved not to support truth-seeking and freedom, but rather tribalism, superstition, authoritarianism, and unabashed self-justification. Cultural norms and societal rules determined by the unchecked influence of our ancient biases condemned humanity to millennia of deprivation and stagnation. And we still see the influence of these biases today, in our personal struggles with incoherent thinking and in irrational conflicts within and across human societies. The Enlightenment project represents a sliver of Humanity that rejected cultural incoherence, giving birth to the world of possibility opened up by objective curiosity and the individual freedom to act on it. The Enlightenment has lifted more people out of poverty and created more flourishing in the last 100 years than any other phenomenon in our history. It did this by culturally prioritizing objective curiosity and the individual freedom to act on it. But that dynamism doesn’t run on autopilot. Civilization is not self-cleaning. And, frankly, neither are we as individuals. Cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and evolutionary psychologists have figured out that we’re not born tabula rasa, that we have genuine obstacles to overcome personally and culturally. If we want to become coherent thinkers, capable not only of enjoying the flourishing we have and extending its reach further but also of defending the processes that make new flourishing possible for us and our children, then we have work to do to keep our minds from falling under the influence of irrational biases, privately as individuals and publicly as citizens. Learning about these biases isn’t navel-gazing. Consider it fieldwork for the defense of your own mind and civilization. Because if you want to uphold Enlightenment values—freedom of inquiry, individual rights, rational public discourse—you can’t do it while being unconsciously steered by heuristics designed for surviving a Pleistocene mudslide or impressing a shaman. And make no mistake: today’s con artists and professional politicians know your biases better than you do. They count on them. This isn’t about intellectual vanity or self-help for wonks. It’s about knowing your own mind well enough not to become its next victim or someone else’s useful idiot. Having introduced the paradoxical nature of humanity, the new episode/essay establishes the scientific basis for our intelligence's strange, stubborn, irrational biases. As always, be curious on purpose, be curious on principle!
