5: Teach me how - to Social Science?

In The Social Blueprint, you’re going to learn about original theory regarding human nature.

You can appreciate that most of us, especially after age 25, tend to be reluctant to revisit our worldviews when they are challenged by a competing theory. But, this is indeed the force of damage keeping our eyes closed, leading to lives which never truly grasp what is going on around us. In this way, damage is like a blindfold, causing a person to stumble about and injure themselves badly. We must lift the blindfold to perceive the world and interact with it productively.

Therefore, when we attack the unified theory of human nature presented by damage, we do so as a climber upon the slopes of Mount Everest – first stop is base camp, where we acclimatize to the elevation of new ideas.

You should be warned! Not all the theory in The Social Blueprint has been proven scientifically – much of it relies on logic and common sense, as we have already flagged with the phenomenon of damage.

Because the idea of damage is so logical yet unproven, it reminds us of the giant squid; humans had never filmed a live giant squid until recently, yet knew these cephalopods existed because their bodies would wash up on shore. Sometimes it takes the scientific community a bit to catch up to logic. It’s the nature of the beast (science – not the squid. Maybe the squid.)

This is because social science and social theory, such as The Social Blueprint, are hard to test in a laboratory setting – proving that a person is self-destructive because of a subconscious problem cannot be done with a scale or a blood test.

But nor can we wait until some chemist wizard concocts the experiment which can confirm or deny the existence of damage, and social damage. Instead, like any good doctor, we must examine the patient's symptoms, make our best diagnosis, and treat accordingly before the disease seizes us.

And there is no doubt that we can diagnose ourselves with damage – remembering how damaged behavior is the opposite of love and self-sacrifice, how can we disagree that as a species, we seem to have stopped wanting to make sacrifices, even small ones, for our societies? Climate change encroaches, but we do very little about it. The next generation teeters on the brink of functionality, but we do very little. Our political systems become bloated and toxic, but we do very little.

This is all to be expected – it is not actually anyone’s fault, and there is a solution (hence why we, the authors, really like The Social Blueprint). Maybe we’re biased. Have a read!

Just remember that social science is something with a wide margin of error, unlike science, which can be reproduced a hundred times with the same result. Instead, we encourage you to apply “the smell test” and common sense. If a theory “smells” off – don’t buy it! You wouldn’t if it were a squid. But if it smells okay, have a meal! There’s more where that came from:

Episode 5: Where's Your Proof? (TSB Chapter 5)