Dear Helmut,
Yes, and I think Aldous Huxley put it well in his little book Brave
New World Revisited, where he said:
“Biologically speaking, man is a moderately gregarious, not a completely social
animal -- a creature more like a wolf, let us say, or an elephant, than like a
bee or an ant. In their original form human societies bore no resemblance to
the hive or the ant heap; they were merely packs. Civilization is, among other
things, the process by which primitive packs are transformed into an analogue,
crude and mechanical, of the social insects’ organic communities. At the
present time the pressures of over-population and technological change are
accelerating this process. The termitary has come to seem a realizable and
even, in some eyes, a desirable ideal. Needless to say, the ideal will never in
fact be realized. A great gulf separates the social insect from the not too
gregarious, big-brained mammal; and even though the mammal should do his best
to imitate the insect, the gulf would remain. However hard they try, men cannot
create a social organism, they can only create an organization. In the process
of trying to create an organism they will merely create a totalitarian
despotism.”
Gene
From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 12:30 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Aw: RE: Re: [PEIRCE-L] REPLY TO HELMUT RAULIEN on "Peirce's Questions,
i.e. "icon" and Destiny?
Dear Gene,
I agree. The self concept is the opposite of a potato. But I must revise what I
wrote, that intelligence helps social competence, because ants are socially
very competent, but not intelligent and have no self consciousness. I rather
think, that reflection can disintegrate one from the social context, and social
systems "know" that, so they produce myths and "consensus trance" (Charles
Tart), to keep people from thinking and in agreement with the system.
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 12. Juni 2014 um 17:34 Uhr
Von: "Eugene Halton" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
An: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>"
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Betreff: RE: Re: [PEIRCE-L] REPLY TO HELMUT RAULIEN on "Peirce's Questions,
i.e. "icon" and Destiny?
Dear Helmut,
Or maybe rather: Die Quantität der Potate ist indirekt proportional zur
Intelligenskapazität ihres Kultivators! (Or, as it is put in the south: Der
Dümmste Bauer hat die grösste’ Kartoffel’!).
Loosely translated: “The size of the potato is indirectly proportional to the
IQ of the farmer; or, the dumbest hick has the biggest spud.”
Gene
From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 11:14 AM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: Aw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] REPLY TO HELMUT RAULIEN on "Peirce's Questions,
i.e. "icon" and Destiny?
Maybe the ability of having a self concept is proportional with the
intelligence or the well functioning of the mind, because the mind is a
reflecting system, and also self-reflecting, if it is highly developed. But
intelligence does not guarantee social competence: Asperger people and are
often very intelligent, but lack social competence. I like the term "social
agreement", though many agreements have been established long before a human
was born, and are eg. present in the epigenes and genes. Social agreements, I
think, are the structure of a social system (Luhmann said, expectations and
expectations of expectations are the structure). And the more one shares these
agreements or expectations, the more social competence he or she has.
Intelligence, of course, helps too, but not alone. And a trauma, like having
been neglected as a child, or experience of violence, like in a war, can
destroy or block social agreements and with it social competence.
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