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Elaboration 14
The chapter itself, nay, the entire book, gives plenty of evidence
for the notion that the normal (!) reader, given the task to invent
a totally stupid society on a planet, a science fiction, would not
be able to hit on one as crazy as ours. The beginning sociologist
(ideationist, stupidologist etc.) will undoubtedly want to know:
why? Why stupidity when rationality could be possible, or even would
be far more favourable? For him, we need an explanation. Obviously
too, it lies in the history of man, it is the phylogenesis of
stupidity. First, then, it is necessary for him to know that,
because phylogenesis = (equals) ontogenesis, i.e. the development of
any individual until death, is, as Haeckel formulated it, a rapid
recapitulation of phylogenesis, the development of the race. It is
therefore perfectly possible to look at the race history and deduct
behaviour in individual history and vice versa. The phylogenetics of
stupidity, hence, indicate the why of stupidity of today. Second,
the two, phylogenesis and ontogenesis, are not by any means
physical, as the anti-vitalists, the deniers of mind-science, of
life, would have it. Physical phylo-, or onto-, genesis is
ideational, is done or effected on purpose, is life, is progress
(progress is an attribute of structure, i.e. non-physical (mental)
). The physical qualities are therefore merely a manifestation of
ideational change. Third, the natural phylogenesis of first-degree
ideation (the vegetative) to the first plus second degree,
(vegetative plus animal), and then to a first-, plus second-, plus
third-degree (intelligence), can be explanatory for the same stages
in ontogeny (cell, cells in matrix, mature adult). When one looks at
a baby, as Spencer was able to note, one sees the face, (nose
openings, forehead, etc.) of a pre-Neandertal man, and, its mind too
is in that state. The development (mentally) in the individual from
two or three years after birth of the individual, is comparable with
the mental (ideational) primitive man of roughly the Neandertal
quality. It will finally end in the calm, scientific, rational,
clever, non-attached mind (like Epictetus, etc.), in the true human,
but found only in so very few happy individuals. The stupidity as we
know and experience it every day, is a stage in individual
development, comparable with the phylogenetic period after, or
about, the Neandertal period. Further progress, further development,
has stopped. Spencer's Essays on Education, on Fashion, on Progress,
on the Genesis of Science, etc. cannot be missed by the serious
mind-student, the sociologist. They explain more in full what of
necessity has to be perfunctory here. Very Early man lived in quite
small families. It must have been so, because we exist, hence there
was procreation, survival up till procreation. The needs of the
individual, the only drive behind behaviour, then, must have been
limited to practically the absolute essentials (food first, the rest
(shelter, security), a long way second). Men, in those days, had
hardly any intelligent ideas (3 rd degree of freedom over ideas),
and were almost clever animals. Like in the animal world, there was
a tendency for larger groups than families (swarms, packs, herds,
etc.), and the advantages of co-operation. Unlike the animals in
large groups or in families, that remained rational (as seen from
the human standpoint) up to this very day, the tribe of man, the
large group now gained so much efficiency in the acquirement of
their essentials (food, etc.) that a new need took the place of the
original one, the BELLY one. The belly one, the one for essentials
became somewhat superfluous. When the third degree of freedom in
ideation, intelligence, made efficient weaponry, traps, fishing
techniques, and agriculture possible (fore-sight), the essential
(food) became too easy to acquire (hence overpopulation). The
original need then, shifted to a need for organization. It changed
its place with the new need, the control of the individual. This,
from small beginnings onwards, meant a shift from rationality
(animal-like) to ir-rationality, from natural logic to stark
stupidity. Spencer's Essay on Education, starts with this very fact
of life, namely that usefulness became subject to decoration, to
fashion. The CHIEF, and later the divine chief that passed away, the
ghost, god, sperrit, in order to make co-operation at all possible,
had to control the individuals. There were therefore three main
principles of this control, namely: the Law, the Gods, and the
Customs (fashion). They are still in full force today, but in their
later specialisations: The State, the Church, and the Fashion (s).
At first embodied in one man, the chief, there was a development
into a priesthood, that was careful to comply with the chief's
wishes. It is thus that we understand the erstwhile mysterious
stupidity, still about us in undiminished strength, e.g.
automutilation, the willful deformation of heads, necks, feet, the
holes in earlobes or noses or lips, the tattooing or scarring, to be
found today (even in students of pseudology). It is decor over
usability, ornament over rational behaviour, stupidity over sanity
(that much we understand from Spencer's studies). Thus we became
infatuated, obsessed by applause, instead of the former need to fill
our belly. A simple return to the belly problem or to stark
survival, does not, as a rule, mean a return to sanity, although
much of the decor is skipped easily. See e.g. shipping-disasters
(Titanic), fires in cinemas, hotels, ships, concentration camp life,
etc. Starving people in Africa seem to have little patience with
decor, ornament, but on the other hand, there are starving peoples
that do not slaughter and eat cattle because of (religious)
superstition. They rather let the brutes graze the green away, the
little that is left. Superstition seems so strong a commanding
force, that man readily accepts the right to be exterminated,
instead of preserve his life. Applause means that we are (want to
be) best, in being controlled, yet in control. We all are controlled
by Law and Church, but by the fashion first, by having to be as the
others. It is the genesis of contempt. We have contempt for what we
(think) we control, we are in awe for what or whom we think controls
us. (We can observe this well in e.g. Hitler, Goebbels, in the
advertisers, the show-business, etc. Applause decides who has
contempt for who, who controls who). (Nobody had more contempt for
the German people, for the Nazis, than ... Hitler and Goebbels.
Nobody has more contempt for an audience than ... the performer, the
show-man. Nobody has more contempt for the customer, the buyer, than
... the advertisement designer, nobody, more contempt for the
readers than ... the newspaper makers, etc.). Was the satisfaction
to still our hunger a necessity of the primitive (beast), we now
need the satisfaction of belonging first, PLUS being the best in
this belonging, ... applause. Hunger being satisfied by rational
actions, its replacement, the need or drive, is satisfied by
applause. While rationality, rational behaviour is practically
always singular (there being only one best solution for every
problem), irrationality is unlimited, no logic involved. A woman who
is stoned to death because she is not veiled in public (Law &
Church & Fashion) in one part of the earth, might be quite safe in
London, although there, she is not to ... In order to cut a long and
extensive course in basic sociology short, let the sociologist in
spe, be aware of the possibility to compare the two historical
developments, the phylo-, and onto- genesis, and remain aware of
this shift of individual needs (from hunger) to control of the
individual, as drive behind behaviour. He should know that an early
stage of development has become fixed for practically all
individuals he meet. As Spencer observed, all scientists and
scientific institutions, (rituals), all philosophers and teachers,
parents, diplomats, chairmen and committees, all publishers, and
authors (41.1), they are all, not driven by the
real concern for doing the job as job but by the measure of applause
it brings. They are NOT driven by their essential well-being (simple
happiness), but by an irrational substitute, the hang for applause,
the irrational over the rational, by decor-, appearance-, dress-,
stupidity over usefulness (41.2). Spencer mentions
captain Speke who found that the clothes that were given to the
primitives, the carriers of the expedition, were not valuable as
useful for bad weather, but as ornament only. Compare it with
absolute stupid behaviour performed fully unconscious, by the
command of fashion. A man can be seen struggling in repeated tucking
up of his sleeves of jacket and shirt, against the natural fit, in
ackward rucks (the charwomen syndrome). Should you ask him, like the
carriers of captain Speke, why this craziness, he would answer that
it feels nice, i.e. a, for him, logical explanation. Hypnotists,
know that you find the same sham-logic, when you induce a man to,
say, put the waste paper basket on his head, throw the flowers out
of the window, and wrap the table cloth around him. The unconscious
hypnotic command, has to be based on a (for him) logical
explanation. In a similar way, let us not become fooled by the
thought that e.g. a parent or a teacher, does his job because he is
concerned with the pupil's preparedness for life, but let us realise
that he does so because a good pupil, reflects it as applause for
himself. The good headmaster thus, is not so much interested in the
quality of the teachers, or the contents of the lessons, but by the
amount of applause to be gathered by many, by a high percentage, of
pupils that SEEM to be well-educated, that brings him applause. Let
the beginning sociologist (after mastering at least the Spencer
Essays) visit a pub and observe that most illiterates AND literates
behave on a fixed level of the child, or the primitive. Their
humour, e.g. consist mainly of laughing AT somebody else (Beadnell
studied the phylogenesis of laughter and its ontogenesis). He would
recognize the higher form of development in humour, past-childhood,
past-Neandertal, that is to laugh WITH somebody. This is the great
secret behind the so-called candid camera programs. They make you
laugh at people, like the child. Wells had studied Spencer very
well, but he had not extracted the enormity of the basic deduction
from it, namely that 99. 999 percent of the people we meet and deal
with, are fundamentally stupid, because the drive behind their
behaviour, behind every gossamer act, is not the belly, dear life,
but decor, stupidity (41.4). The sociologist who
reasons from out the notion that man is rational, is developing a
(pseudo-) science for a totally different planet. He would examine
behaviour on the false preposition that rationality is the drive
while in reality it is applause, stupidity. How on Earth are
mindscientists, sociologists to understand Tacitus, Plutarch, Livy,
Suetonius, etc., etc. in an effective-, up-to-date way, without
basic knowledge about control, the drive behind behaviour? True, one
can understand them the way their contemporaries did, but that was
some millenia ago, is, in fact, stationary, a state, instead of
progress, a-moving. One may feel horror at the incident with
Sejanus' daughter, of Julius Civilis who gave his little son
prisoners as targets for arrow and spear practice, of Hypatia's
bones being scraped, of a Calif who dined on a floor of corpses of
his enemies and all that. But this is not more qua understanding
than the barber on the corner, the lift-boy, a film mogul or
film-star would achieve, mere pub-talk knowledge. We should know WHY
we have not learned more for thousands of years, AND what we have
missed that way, i.e. stupidogenesis, man as potentially rational,
de facto irrational. An insane bastard for all we know.
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2007-09-11