Friday, 30 October 2015

Is beating someone up through your superior intell

Is beating someone up through your superior intellect any better than beating up someone physically weaker?
I have wondered if using ones intelligence to out argue someone is any better, morally than beating up someone weaker than you. A really smart debater can generally take either side in a given debate and win, whether they believe the point or not is irrelevant. I recall the famous 'Is Religion a Force for Good" debate Tony Blair had with Christopher Hitchens. At the end, having wiped the floor with Blair, Hitchens went on to offer some better arguments for Blairs stance. Now that's a crushing victory. But being able to beat someone in a debate doesn't mean you are necessarily right. Also, it bares the echo of what is wrong with humanism. The most astute off shoot of Darwins 'Origin of Species' was to make it clear man is an animal. The most common misconception of Darwinism is that we are at the peak of some linear path with chimps, Dolphins below us dropping down through dogs to birds to reptiles down to bacteria. That any sophisticated evolutionary path leads to intelligence. The search for life on other planets is of interest until we here misguided humanists assuming what we would call 'intelligent' life is somehow inevitable. In truth a peregrine falcon is superior to us in its own environmental niche. So is a cheeter. So is an eel. What evolution does is result in life forms best suited to their own survival method. A peregrine can fly at 175 miles an hour, the exact top speed is not known but my point is they can a. fly and b. fly very fast. Their area of expertise is just a different one to ours. Dolphins have an intelligence suited to their life cycle. A certain type of intelligence separates us from other animals however it is becoming a bit of an evolutionary dead end. Due to our prizing conscious thought over instinctive thought we reckon we are pretty smart. Yet, as time goes on it is becoming clear, most of our brain activity operates much like any other animal. Our breathing, digestion and countless other processes go unnoticed. If we try carry two full cups of tea from the kitchen to bedroom we can manage it without spilling a drop as long as we don't think about it, try concentrating and we invariably spill some. A cricket fast bowler throws a ball at over a hundred miles an hour. A batsman can only hit the ball by acting instinctively. If batsmen acted consciously, considering the speed, direction and height of the travelling ball they would be bowled out every time. It is becoming clear free will is something of an illusion. For sure, it exists in a sense but largely as a corrective or premeditation system. Herein lies the clear folly of trying to talk addicts out of their behaviour. Herein lies the folly of blaming paedophiles for their desires. We can only blame them for their behaviour. If we are to solve this sickening condition we need to retrain paedophiles as soon as their thoughts become intolerable to society. Studies suggest they can not be cured of the impulse, but they can be taught to control it. The same as the sole cure for addicts. AA have known for a long time that the use of a 'higher power' is needed to overcome their condition. The higher power is the unconscious. The bulk of our make up that isn't acting consciously.
So to return to my first point, bullying someone with your intellect is no more admirable than bullying someone with your fists. Political debate that steers our nations morality is not fought out between who is wrong and who is right. Often a child can see what is right but they cannot construct a language riddle without loopholes. Hence the dominant forces in politics are seldom those pointing the best ways for our species to go forth but are the measure of the most intelligent debaters. This is how nazi politics spread throughout an intelligent nation. It is how or actions to save ourselves from environmental disaster such as global warming can be so futile. Intelligence can often fool its possessor into believing their own errors. Rather than test their ideas by their own intellect they measure themselves against political opponents. Intelligent politicians such as Tony Benn, Enoch Powell and even Ed Milliband may have been able to out think their political opponents in the House of Commons but they were all frequently wrong. I have been in debates where I have been aware I was wrong yet able to force my opponent to concede the argument. Once you have experienced this knowingly it becomes rather similar to overpowering an opponent through boxing, beating them at running or tiddly winks. This is not to argue for unintelligent leaders. During George Bush' presidency it was often used against him that he wasn't very bright. This is true. However it wasn't his stupidity that was at fault, it was his policy. I pointed this out at the time though found intellectuals berating me in the assumption I was arguing for stupid leaders. These criticisms missed the point. Intelligence enables man to trick and deceive. Dogs are fascinating companions because we try trick them. Not only do they look confused when we do but their is a pity in their eyes. Trickery and deceit through intelligence is a simian skill. In groups of chimps we see beta males masturbating openly to the lead females whilst hiding their actions from the alpha males. They shield their erections from the alpha males sight until it withers at which point they will show their flaccidity as if saying, 'what me? Governor. No, I'd never do that, you're the boss'. Our human lives are full of such deceptions in politics, business, academia, any field where the intellect is at play, if not by secretly masturbating to your bosses wife but in other less obvious ways.
The questions science dominate know often fall beyond general understanding. Quantum physics, the Big Bang, particle physics, the universe. We trust scientists on the little we understand but come to the big questions their guesses are little better than ours. The perception that we have learned nearly everything there is to know in the last five hundred years is embarrassingly wrong. The truth is why know very little for sure and a paradigm shift as profound as Galileo, Darwin of Freud is inevitable. Given it took a good two hundred years for ideas Darwin brought to humanities attention to gain public acceptance, ideas that many had described before him. That hypocrates had advanced the same ideas that Freud and later Francis Crick put forward in his 'Astonishing Hypothesis' it seems more than likely that some discredited thinker now has the paradigm shift ready for those open enough to listen. The trouble is entire academic careers are at stake, the credibility of professors are undoubtedly built on misconceptions. To allow the new ideas through generally takes the death of the old order. Peter Russell's primacy of consciousness accommodates the uncomfortable aspects of quantum mechanics which our current model can not adequately do, for example, could easily be right. It is hard to find many holes in his theory. But then it is hard to find a hole in the theory we are just some computer game played by a super race. I doubt it's true but it is hard to disprove as so many things are. Still, we are wrong to take the current scientific consensus as more than our current working model.
It was Paul Gascoignes brain that made him the greatest footballer of my generation. His physique was undertrained, fat even, yet his brain controlled his body in an instinctive manner that out smarted not only his contemporaries who trained to higher fitness levels but also the fitter and academically brighter opponents. Intelligence comes In many shapes and sizes. Power to defeat an opponent comes in a number of competitive arenas. To out think someone less intelligent no more makes you right than battering them in to submission with your fists.


Sent from my iPad

No comments:

Post a Comment