INTELLECT OVER SOCIETY MEANS PLANNING
Hi LilaQs,
I acknowledge several good posts over the last few days and hope it
doesn't seem arrogant of me to ignore them (for now) and introduce a new
thought of my own. Now that the month is almost ended, let me have a
last stab at "intellect" by considering what we and Pirsig mean by
intellect
controlling society.
Although we have some disagreements about what constitutes a society, I
think that we all agree that society is largely a product of evolution.
Human's have got together in all sorts of social arrangements, but only
the most successful arrangements have survived. Societies continue to
evolve in this Darwinian manner. If we look at human history, we see
that this process of change was extremely slow and gradual with very few
"dramatic" events. The sudden changes were almost externally imposed
either by an environmental disaster, or conquest by people of a
different culture. This stands in contrast with the internally motivated
"revolutions" of modern times.
Way back on 17th August, I wrote:-
>Intellect designs, society ritualizes!
Our modern society is dominated by intellectual control. Everything is
designed and planned. We have town planning, rural planning, educational
planning, transport planning, health planning, family planning, economic
planning, social planning ... Sometimes this planning produces good
results, but occasionally disastrous results.
But just a few hundred years ago all this planning was almost unheard
of. Towns grew haphazardly, "roads" were the trampled tracks which
evolved over time, nobody gave a damn about the environment and nobody
even considered limiting their offspring. Pirsig talks about Victorian
society as a pre-intellectual one, but the Victorians were planners.
They set up libraries, schools, laboratories, hospitals, factories,
railway networks ... all planned, and sometimes WELL planned by
intelligent people who sought and adopted logical solutions to solve
their problems. This is why social grace became a veneer, because the
underlying driving force for change was now the intellect. Social custom
and tradition remained as important forces for restricting change and
maintaining stability. Pirsig talks about Woodrow Wilson as a post
Victorian. Clearly, something DID change after WW1, and that is that
social stability was totally undermined by the war. The horrendous
casualties offended everyone, and at last people like Wilson himself
could stand up and say that the social framework itself needed to be
replanned.
My "one liner" for today is ***Intellect is Planning***
Let's reconsider my example of the rain falling on a mountain. The water
always runs downhill, but never "knows" which route will take it all the
way down. Some water ends up stuck in puddles and never runs further
(unrealised potential). Intellect and planning allow us to see the best
way down, and sometimes to REALISE it by a bit of engineering.
Planning has two parts:-
1. A vision
2. Means for realisation
Human intellect as we know it has advanced the second immensely (science
and technology). That's what gets taught in school. The first is taken
for granted and almost forgotten.
I started this month by question the whole idea of an intellectual
level. Intellect (as planning) is a force for change. The levels define
WHAT we change. Intellect is no more a level than that other force for
change, Evolution.
Best wishes to all for 1999
Jonathan
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