When I was talking about mentoring, I was not talking about an emotional act,
but about a rational and purposeful act of preservation and transmittal of
knowledge. The point is not in spreading memes, but in teaching how to think
well, and listing what knowledge is available. Knowledge and information are far
more fluid than DNA, they can, are, and should be re-engineered and improved by
each new generation. Dogmas are rigid, and need heavy infrastructure to survive,
as institutionalized religions demonstrate - what a waste.
Eugene mentions basic unquestionable motivations, not rooted in reason. Exactly:
people evolve, and the motivations that ensure superior reproductive fitness
proliferate in the population. Wanting to survive, and wanting to reproduce are
examples of two perhaps most important desires. Would you now stand by these
evolved patchy selfish heuristics, and forget about reason?
The fundamental concepts are life and scarcity. Scarcity implies competition,
competition implies adaptation. Scarcity is an essence of the universe (as far
as we know), while the odds of the long-term surival of life is what our
fundamental rational goal could be. It's far-fetched and notional, but it still
implies some concepts such as creation of better forms of life, continuous
improvement, expansion, etc.
Best regards,
Aleks
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