Bamjo P.,


I've used this piece before by Noam Chomsky quoting biologist Ernst Mayr reflecting on the "success" of higher intelligence, but it's appropriate here to use it again:

"His reasoning had to do with the adaptive value of "higher intelligence" meaning the particular human form of intellectual organisation. Mayr estimated the number of species since the origin of life at about fifty billion, only one of which "achieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilisation." It did so very recently, perhaps 100,000 years ago.....Mayr speculated that the human form of intellectual organisation may not be favoured by selection. The history of life on Earth, he wrote refutes the claim that "it is better to be smart than to be stupid," at least judging by biological success: beetles and bacteria, for example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of survival. He also made the rather somber observation that "the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years."
We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid. The most hopeful prospect is that the question will "not" be answered: if it receives a definite answer, that answer can only be that humans were a kind of "biological error," using their allotted 100,000 years to destroy themselves and, in the process, much else.
The species has surely developed the capacity to do just that, and a hypothetical extraterrestrial observer might well conclude that humans have demonstrated that capacity throughout their history, dramatically in the past few hundred years, with an assault on the environment that sustains life, on the diversity of more complex organisms, and with a cold and calculated savagery, on each other as well."

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Dear Poirot,

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Thank you for those observations of Noam Chomsky on Ernst Mayr's research. It is a fact of life that mankind has developed considerable power far beyond his own natural capabilities as well as those of all other living species on earth.

The question raised is vital and concerns every living creature. Have we developed the intelligence, the wisdom and the means to effectively harness that tremendous destructive power with absolute certainty?

That is the question Ernst Meyr and Noam Chomsky have posed though its formulation almost misses the target: "We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid".

I have no hesitation in answering that I consider we do not have the intelligence, the wisdom or the means of preventing the tremendous destructive power we have acquired to be unleashed either willingly or accidentally at any time, with or without warning.

On the subject of the "individual", I would like to observe that my brother and I grew up with a dog called Nippy who was like a second brother to me. Nippy shared in all our adventures, fights and battles, joys and punishments. He is still very present in my mind and if ever there was an "individual" in this life, I would say he was one.

I am also pleased to announce I saw an interesting BBC documentary this evening on the life and works of a lady called Jane Goodall whom you may like to check-out on the internet. She did some ground-breaking research on our cousins, the chimpanzees. She wrote a book which may be worthwhile perusing, titled "In the Shadow of Man" if you get the opportunity.

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Poirot,
I don't think it's just the fault of capitalism. I doubt the world has "ever" facilitated human potential as a social phenomenon (even the privileged few are demeaned, alienated in a staion that can only be maintained by monumental hubris. I'm thinking of Hegel's famous Master/Slave dialectic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master-slave_dialectic ), hence the Buddha's defeatist call for renunciation. Even if such a society came into being, one that nurtured human potential (utopia), it seems doubtful it could ever compensate for the shortcomings that form the tension between our material lives and our idealistic yearnings--though it would help at least to eliminate that form of delusion we know as hubris.
It's certainly true too that remarkable individuals in all fields have emerged against the odds in every culture--the product of privilege and blind luck, or debasement and even bad luck. It's tempting then to just accept the social context of the day as inevitable (and it is to a certain extent. When the world changes its people don't change, they die out), but humanity is saddled with a sense of right and wrong, ergo ethical consciousness and a desire for justice (or consciousness of injustice). Not just personal justice, which is not justice at all, but ambition, but a difficult-to-repress sense that inequity is wrong. Physical inequity is natural (the other day I saw a beautiful young girl walking along with real poise, confident and well dressed, and several paces in front a girl of a similar age, but physically disabled and waddling pathetically), but social inequity offends us. Our system tries to validate material inequality as on par with natural law, the way the cards fell, but a large percentage of us just won't have it, seeing through the rationalisations of injustice and shallow ostentation. These are all aspects of idealism that materialists and some sociologists write-off as so much culturally accumulated baggage. But look at the history of human culture, rich with offended idealism. Materialism is to reductive--but suits the capitalist mind-set to a tee.
So while I agree with you, I suspect few are "happy" riding the conveyor belt.

Banjo P,
I realise I'm opening a can of worms invoking teleology, even exposing myself to ridicule in the context of modern mechanical materialism and derivitive "opinion".
However, teleology has a very long and respectable history that's only been "problematically" interrupted, briefly, for the past couple of centuries, and is now making a comeback as "teleological science", which is "primarily interested in discerning empirical patterns of teleological causation, not in resolving the question of whether these patterns ultimately derive from immanent principles (part of nature) or from a supernatural being" (Menuge 2010).
The fact is that modern science begins by "censoring" notions like teleology as supernatural, insisting that naturalism can only be purposeless, "without" establishing the case. This was an understandable reaction against various speculative mysticisms that crowded the field before the Enlightenment. Yet teleology is a viable thesis Kant and many others have tested and not discarded. Even Francis Bacon, a father of the scientific method, though naive in supposing empiricists could free their minds of Human, individual, social and linguistic biases (his "idols of the mind"), he made an important distinction between anticipating nature and interpreting it. Materialism does the former, it dogmatically anticipates nature, whereas neo-teleologists humbly suggest we explore all possibilitities.
Menuge concludes his essay by asserting a survey of the reasons intended to defend mechanical materialism finds "none" of them compelling. Controversially, he favours "methodological realism", via which "scientists can explore the case for and against design without prejudice, and teachers are set free to present all of the relevant evidence".

My idea of "retroactive teleology" (which I won't go into) is admittedly speculative, though certainly not an item of faith, though my speculations are based on subjective experience and logic.
Though currently out of favour, these are the spark of all idealistic achievement, and I'd argue materialism is baron without idealism.
Granted, such assertions cannot be defended here.

Addendum "The discovery of unsuspected function in non-coding DNA and of so-called vestigial organs powerfully supports teleological science and refutes the predictions of Darwinism, according to which living organisms are make-shift compromises riddled with non-functional elements".

Squeers,

Just quickly - your point on the distinction between " anticipating nature and interpreting it" - is what I was referring to in an earlier post when I said that perhaps humankind possessed knowledge - or a consciousness of things - which is now obscured or to which we have limited access.

In our civilised advancement as a species, we may have 'lost' a fundamental understanding of the world around us and its message.

Poirot,
absolutely. I enjoyed your thoughts above and agree with them, as usual. Hope I didn't seem to be contradicting anything you said.
I see our materialism--scientistic, philosophical and lived--as idealistically reductive, negative, lop-sided and plain wrong.