Re: virus: Will and Force ?

psypher (overload@fastmail.ca)
Thu, 20 May 1999 22:55:52 -0400 (EDT)

...again, you have missed the point entirely. You have cited a list of [admittedly valuable and impressive] contributions to humyn understanding.
...someone who doesn't know squat about any of the things you list but has a knack for communicating with children, say, can make a phenomenal, lasting and valuable contribution to the species, to an individual, to the world at large.
...I had hoped to avoid stooping to citing obvious and trite examples, but I doubt very much whether Mohandas Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu or any of a countless number of wellknown contributors to the social whole. I know for certain that any number of people never written about in the history books, never trained in academic disciplines and never cited in peer-reviewed publications have made vast and hugely significant contributions in all sorts of areas.
...a person with an 80 IQ or whatever other packaged and quantified aspect of consciousness you care to name can act as teacher, mentor or inspiration.
...you obviously have a disciplined and well-ordered mind, why
do you feel the need to raise your amply demonstrated capacities above those of other people?

-psypher

> Forrest Gump might be a "good guy", but it's highly unlikely that a
> real gump (lacking gumption) would have such a life, or would
> develop the calculus (integral or differential), or relativity
theory
> (special or general), or complexity theory, or the uncertainty
> principle, or the undecideability theorems I or II, or fuzzy logic,
> or phenomenology, or structuralism, or genetic epistemology, or
> hermeneutics, or semiotics, or memetics, any of which contribute
> substantially more to the species as a whole than any chocolate
> box park bench "philosophizing" by a kind and good-natured nitwit.
> I mentioned my experience with the test to show that I knew
> whereof I spoke concerning it. Your need to engage in sour
> grapish reverse snobbery about it in your response speaks volumes.



http://fastmail.ca Fastmail's Free web based email for Canadians