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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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Ven 2007-09-11