But I hope we will skim the surface in a way that will be intriguing and leave all of us with lots to ponder. This question of the connection between culture and conscience is fascinating, and we are only going to kind of skim the surface tonight. TIPPETT: I’m so happy to be back at the American Museum of Natural History, and to be here with Humans in Nature, the Center for Biodiversity. We were gathered by the Center for Humans and Nature for its “Questions for a Resilient Future” series. Melvin Konner teaches in the departments of anthropology and neuroscience and behavioral biology at Emory University. Jonathan Haidt teaches ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. TIPPETT: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. HAIDT: Yeah, that’s why I start my counting after the Civil War. KONNER: I thought the Civil War was a pretty serious episode of polarization.ĭR. HAIDT: We are more polarized than we’ve been since the Civil War.ĭR. If you read about the election of 1800, you see, by far, the nastiest presidential election this country has ever …ĭR. MELVIN KONNER: But, the idea that we’re more polarized than we’ve ever been, I think, is not true. So I’m actually very optimistic about the future, just not the congress.ĭR. It’s going to be to invent some app, some way of solving problems separately. And so they’re not going to be - their activism is not going to be to get the government to do things. And young people have grown up never seeing the government do anything except turn the lights off now and then. JONATHAN HAIDT: I’m not optimistic about the American government, but I am very optimistic about America’s future, because I think people our age who grew up expecting that the point of civic engagement is to be active, so we can make the government fix civil rights or something, we’ve got to make the government do something. Our conversation preceded this cultural-political season, but offers provocative perspective on it.ĭR. The liberal view of capitalism as essentially exploitative may remain alive and well, he says, but the ironic truth of history is that capitalism, while championed by conservatives, actually generates liberal values as it takes root in societies. Now he’s studying the relationship between capitalism and human conscience. Biological anthropologist Melvin Konner has studied the evolution of childhood social psychologist Jonathan Haidt gained prominence with his work on why good people are divided by politics and religion. KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: It was supposed to be a discussion of culture and conscience with two social scientists. Pac-Man, please get yourself into a therapy program and check your eating disorder at the door because there's no telling how many diseases you're picking up by swallowing mouthful after mouthful of sewer pellet.MS.

Pac runs around, eats any piece of garbage he can suck off the floor of a sewer or spectral plane and he's constantly picking fights with people. He / it is basically a trash eating hobo.

It was all decent enough platforming fun, but honestly, we're real worried about Pac-Man. The next part of the game was a more treacherous grassy area that gave us an opportunity to climb ropes, dangle along edges, hop up, up and up staggered pillars and eventually vault from one pole to another by spinning around and launching Pac's fat yellow body gracefully through the air. Like before, we spent much of our time seeking out and eating every pellet we came across so that we could.well, we don't know what. The various crushing devices, plumes of green toxicity, mashing spike things and otherwise poorly laid out work areas had to contribute to quite a few 'accidents.'Īfter that we tried exploring the Spectral Plane, which seemed to be like Pac-Man 's homeland, only a fair bit more purple. Our adventures took us 'round a hazardous sewer system poor sanitation employees must struggle to cope with on a daily basis.

At least, we don't remember any robot-scorpions back in 1980. At one point we even got to go robo and use a huge mechanized suit of armor to dispense Pac-vengeance. We just played a few levels of Pac-Man World 3 and found ourselves running around, using a charged Sonic-esque rolling attack on enemies, punching other bad guys, doing some basic jumping puzzles and beating a mini-boss upside the head. 2D and 3D versions of old mazes included. He's going to punch, stomp, roll into, and eat his way to victory.

Unable to defeat Erwin, the ghosts call Pac. The side effect of this is an inadvertent collapse of Spectral existence into the real world (the one with all of the giant yellow balls that eat things). When it comes to evil names, Erwin is a villain we rank right alongside Crisis Zone's terrorist leader, Derrick.Įrwin has created a machine designed to penetrate the Spectral Realm (ghost home). The ghosts behind Pac's teleportation are being terrorized by Erwin, a mad genius of sorts.

Pac man pinky real body