Eugene that’s a really interesting quote, thank you!
One might argue on the other side that although the human is too big-brained to pull together with its fellow organisms in the (apparently) seamless way that bees do – its richer set of capacities allows the agapastic activities it does engage in to be more meaningful, and expressive of genuine love for one another. Cheers, Cathy *From:* Eugene Halton [mailto:[email protected]] *Sent:* Friday, 13 June 2014 5:12 a.m. *To:* [email protected] *Subject:* RE: [PEIRCE-L] REPLY TO HELMUT RAULIEN on "Peirce's Questions, i.e. "icon" and Destiny? 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] <[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]> *An:* "[email protected]" <[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] <[email protected]>] *Sent:* Thursday, June 12, 2014 11:14 AM *To:* [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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