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In scientific circles, there seem to be a tendency to
abhor common sense. This is because it seems that common
sense is attainable by common people only, is a way of common
people, is not specifically scientific. Yet, science
has to thank all its developments and progress to common
sense, it is basic for ideation i.e. for science. From
Lucretius, Galileo, Newton, Semmelweis, Fleming, etc. on, it
is all common sense that did it. This common sense says the
following. When a problem is mondial (planetary, Earth
encompassing), its solution also is to be found in a mondial
form. Everybody knows that when e. g. Germany would ban all
traffic, all production, would close all factories, all crematoria,
all blast furnaces, would forbid all use of wood,
all trade and transport of wood, would enforce all material
to be re-circulated, all implements to be repaired instead
of bought anew, use all available space from Autobahn to
parking lots for re-forestation, etc., etc. it would not
alter a iota to our predicament. It might make us survive a
week longer, it would mean death all the same.
Why?
Naturally, because it is only a very, very small operation in
so large a field, it is totally insignificant, it is not a
mondial measure but a national one, local. Air, water, climate,
minerals, animals and seeds, know of no frontiers, no
customhouses, no barriers by fences. Germany, nay any
nation, could not hope to survive, whatever severe measures
they take (for themselves). Helmut Kohl once said plainly
that there is no such thing as a national environment protection
possible. He was heard to argue that we can shut
down our power stations, but the risks remain because of such
stations right across the border. Nuclear power stations
are absurdities that kill imperceptibly. When the demand
for KWh's is growing out of hand, we should realize that
KWh's are always expressible in per head figures, i.e. the
first and natural solution that springs into mind is reducing
the number of heads, the capita.
When any diplomat or else, (as Kohl did) then proceed to
talk about the need for international agreements, an uncontrollable
Homeric laughter should burst lose. It is just
too comical (but heard everywhere). Agreements, whether
national or intra-familiar, are known to be unworkable from
far before Homer (the Argonauts) onwards till this very day.
The second common sense manipulation may fool us: if we
have to do it on a mondial scale, a planetary scale, why, we
have a United Nations don't we?
No way!
United Nations means literally that the nations remain as
such, like in internationalism. In practice, it is far
worse. It only changes intra-national (intra-country or
intra-religious) into inter-national COMPETITION and that
means in its turn, a survival of greed (economics) and an
unbridled destruction of Earth. It means, in fact, an
enlargement in scale of papers, agreements, resolutions,
that everybody seek to circumvent at the earliest possible
moment (36). The very Iliad starts with the
conflict of a
broken agreement within a 'union' of Achaeans, and, 3000
years of (war) history shows that agreements still do not
work. Agreements mean at least two clods, two or more clusters,
they keep only as long as war is less profitable.
Merging the clods however, make agreements impossible, meaningless,
and war too. We don't want united by agreements,
but we need integration, a total absence of clods, clusters,
agreements or resolutions.
Common sense says: 'let there be no nations, they are nonnatural
groupings' (37). No hargle bargle, no barter
between groups, but the fundamental rights and duties of
every citizen of Earth alike in its place. These rights
imply survival for all, these duties imply co-operation for
survival by all (also meaning you, me, your children, etc.).
Common sense now, can be with regard to two wholly different
purposes. It can be used with regard to the individual
only, in which case it is practically always disadvantageous
to others (seeing that the desires of each clash), and it
can be used from the express point of view of the others, of
the whole, of society (when we are all in the same boat).
Unfortunately, mankind has become inferior in this respect
to the animals that live in herds, packs, colonies and the
like. His drive for all behaviour is centered on the huge
paradox of applause, he wants to be the best (i.e. different)
but also the same as the other members of the flock.
If he uses common sense at all, he uses it only for himself.
It is therefore, that he behaves as a stray ling in a herd of
stray lings, a situation that is unthinkable in animal
nature. Common sense is not so much absent everywhere, it
is only misdirected everywhere. This paradox of wanting to
control yet wanting to be controlled, of being different and
being the same, pervades all society up to the tiniest
detail. As Wyndham shows it for the mother (parents) :
By a dichotomy familiar to us all, a woman requires
her own baby to be perfectly normal, and at the same time
superior to all other babies. Chocky.
Next: Man's Stupidity
Up: The World Solution for
Previous: Catastrophe
Ven
2007-09-11