The Metaphysics of Quality resolves the relationship between intellect and
society, subject and object,
mind and matter, by embedding all of them in a larger system of understanding.
Objects are inorganic
and biological values; subjects are social and intellectual values. They are
not two mysterious
universes that go floating around in some subject-object dream that allows them
no real contact
with one another. They have a matter-of-fact evolutionary relationship. That
evolutionary relationship
is also a moral one.
Within this evolutionary relationship it is possible to see that intellect has
functions that
predate science and philosophy. The intellect's evolutionary purpose has never
been to discover
an ultimate meaning of the universe. That is a relatively recent fad. Its
historical purpose
has been to help a society find food, detect danger, and defeat enemies. It can
do this well
or poorly, depending on the concepts it invents for this purpose.
The cells Dynamically invented animals to preserve and improve their situation.
The animals
Dynamically invented societies, and societies Dynamically invented intellectual
knowledge
for the same reasons. Therefore, to the question, 'What is the purpose of all
this intellectual
knowledge?' the Metaphysics of Quality answers, 'The fundamental purpose of
knowledge is to
Dynamically improve and preserve society.' Knowledge has grown away from this
historic purpose
and become an end in itself just as society has grown away from its original
purpose of
preserving physical human beings and become an end in itself, and this growing
away from
original purposes toward greater Quality is a moral growth. But those original
purposes
are still there. And when things get lost and go adrift it is useful to
remember that point
of departure.
The Metaphysics of Quality suggests that the social chaos of the twentieth
century can be
relieved by going back to this point of departure and re-evaluating the path
taken from it.
It says it is immoral for intellect to be dominated by society for the same
reasons it is
immoral for children to be dominated by their parents. But that doesn't mean
that children
should assassinate their parents, and it doesn't mean intellectuals should
assassinate society.
Intellect can support static patterns of society without fear of domination by
carefully
distinguishing those moral issues that are social-biological from those that
are intellectual-social
and making sure there is no encroachment either way.
Lila ch23
In the battle of society against biology, the new twentieth-century
intellectuals have taken
biology's side. Society can handle biology alone by means of prisons and guns
and police and
the military. But when the intellectuals in control of society take biology's
side against
society then society is caught in a cross-fire from which it has no protection.
The Metaphysics of Quality says there are not just two codes of morals, there
are actually
five: inorganic-chaotic, biological-inorganic, social-biological,
intellectual-social, and
Dynamic-static. This last, the Dynamic-static code, says what's good in life
isn't defined
by society or intellect or biology. What's good is freedom from domination by
any static
pattern, but that freedom doesn't have to be obtained by the destruction of the
patterns
themselves. Lila ch23
Until the First World War the Victorian social codes dominated. From the First
World War until the
Second World War the intellectuals dominated unchallenged.
>From the Second World War until the seventies the intellectuals continued to
>dominate, but with an
increasing challenge - call it the 'Hippie revolution,' - which failed. And
from the early seventies
on there has been a slow confused mindless drift back to a kind of
pseudo-Victorian moral posture
accompanied by an unprecedented and unexplained growth in crime.
Of these periods, the last two seem the most misunderstood. The Hippies have
been interpreted as
frivolous spoiled children, and the period following their departure as a
'return to values,'
whatever that means. The Metaphysics of Quality, however, says that's backward:
the Hippie
revolution was the moral movement. The present period is the collapse of values.
The Hippie revolution of the eighties was a moral revolution against both
society and
intellectuality. It was a whole new social phenomenon no intellectual had
predicted
and no intellectuals were able to explain. It was a revolution by children of
well-to-do,
college-educated, 'modern' people of the world who suddenly turned upon their
parents
and their schools and their society with a hatred no one could have believed
existed.
Lila ch23
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