Human society in modern history has been passing through a new type of evolution – indeed, devolution – at the macro level, and it is triggered by a new type of species called the ‘macro free radicals’(explained in later pages).
It is now clear that industrial civilization is the unique master splitter and isolator of everything wholesome, pristine and inherently paired in Nature, and the process has led to all kinds of micro and macro level degenerations. The degeneration of the highly divisive mechanism of various ideologies, morality, capitalist-communist politics and culture with their by-products like careerism, corruption, egoism, sex crisis, feminism, callousness, growing immaturity, psychopathy etc. have paved way for the market force gaining the upper hand in all sectors of life, and finally leading the corporate force becoming the leader builder of this civilization. Accordingly, the subject of discussion here is about the growing immaturity of this culture, its off-shoot psychopathy and about the IMMATURE CIVILIZATION BUILDERS.
Immaturity is not confined to individuals alone. Sometimes, groups of people or even nations act quite immaturely, resulting in great misery and suffering to millions of people. Some of these abnormal individuals and groups – as the literal MACRO FREE RADICALS in the macroevolution — rise to the level of civilization/culture builders. In the ensuing massive macro-degeneration, scores of macro free radicals’ (Radicals) are generated in the forms of psychopaths and sociopaths.
“I make the effort to share this information because it gives me, at last, a plausible answer to a long-unanswered question: Why, no matter how much intelligent goodwill exists in the world, is there so much war, suffering and injustice? It doesn’t seem to matter what creative plan, ideology, religion, or philosophy great minds come up with, nothing seems to improve our lot….
The answer is that civilization, as we know it today, is largely the creation of psychopaths. Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, cheat, steal, torture, manipulate, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse, in order to establish their own sense of security through domination.” ~ Clinton Callahan
(in the article ‘Beware the Psychopath, My Son’)
“We see people exhibiting immature behavior in sports and competitions, in public, media and many major national and international forums and institutions, in legislative and government bodies and even the UN Security Council and general assembly. Frankly many of our leaders and celebrity figures, the icons and role models of our society, are immature. They hide it behind a façade of pomp and power, but betray themselves often through their actions and decisions….Truly speaking, on a cosmic scale, ours is still an immature civilization and we may require a few more centuries to be able to look at ourselves and our actions with complete objectivity and maturity”. ~ Jayaram V
(author of the book ‘Think Success’)
In America, there are an estimated 6–8 million homeless animals entering animal shelters every year. These are not the offspring of homeless “street” animals—they are the puppies and kittens of cherished family pets and even purebreds. Many people are surprised to learn that nationwide more than 3 million of these kinds of cats and dogs are euthanized in shelters.
About half of these 6–8 million homeless animals are adopted and most of them kept spayed or neutered to avoid overpopulation and other inconveniences. Tragically, the other half is euthanized. These are ‘healthy’, ‘sweet’ pets (compared to the original natural animals of their respective species, they are highly degenerated and immature lots) that would have made great companions to modern man.
By and by, we can see a clear comparison between these highly degenerated American pets and the latest generation of postmodern humans. Today, almost 90% of the present 7 billion modern humans are immature or are lingering in their pre-adulthood stage even in their 30s and 40s – much like the highly degenerate (obese) American pets. Modern immature humans, like their pets, are rendered shivering and homeless suddenly when some sorts of societal meltdown starts and the technosphere – a la the animal shelters that modern man builds for his pets — becomes obsolete. The American Psychological Association observed that when suddenly the world economy headed by the US went into a tailspin burst in the third week of September 2008, more than 80 percent of Americans started running helter-shelter for cover and reportedly said the economy is causing them significant stress. About these pitiable people, Photodisc Green writes in askmen.com:
“Today a specter is haunting men of the 21st century; the specter of feminization and metrosexuality. It is a shadow that is creeping over an entire generation of men with soft hands, fine cuticles, smooth faces, and trimmed necklines. Hardly a speck of manliness can be found in these men’s condos and townhouses. These are accommodations that have not been built, wired or plumbed by the men living inside them. What good are men today if they can only shop for coffee beans and scruffing lotions, and cannot fix the toilet lever or install a wood fireplace?…. No, these are not men but whimpering sacks — the same kind that will ask for directions when lost while driving. These boys have progressed very little from the early days of their lives when they wailed for their mothers to change their soggy diapers.”
In reality, no other time in human history has life turned increasingly as unstable, unpredictable, self-destructive and, therefore, as crises-ridden and insecure as we experience life today. The chronic inability of the present world to make important and vital decisions on human life renders it the most irresponsible and pathetic in history. One may suddenly come out with many immediate and superficial rationales to deny this suicidal fall. Well, what is discussed here, as the fundamental aspect of this motorized civilization, is the basic cause of this standoff, namely IMMATURITY along with its off-shoot PSYCHOPATHY.
In many healthy societies, we see their civilization-builders are the most mature and wise humans who are able to plan for the future by building safety nets and structures to carry their society through tough times by borrowing from the prosperous epochs.
But, what if the civilization-builders turn out to be highly immature and are psychopaths? Without doubt, their society/culture/civilization too becomes immature and psychopathic. Well, that exactly happened with modern and postmodern civilization. Most of the basic builders of the present civilization (largely Western) happen to be not only highly immature but also many of them psychopaths too. Here I am not referring to their latest incarnations like the market-propped up Nobel laureates, film and other TV channel heroes and other celebrities (geniuses) but the basic initial modern civilization builders.
For example, almost all basic theories of modern science and modern philosophy were propounded by those “giant” geniuses during their early twenties or at their adolescent stage. By becoming an ambassador at the age of 16, Sir Francis Bacon became an important personality during his adolescence. Queen Elizabeth I, who was largely instrumental to produce a wayward culture — Elizabethan Culture — became the Queen of England (1558-1603) at the age of 24. No different are the cases of René Descartes (1596-1650), Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and the rest, and most of them also exhibited psychopathic traits. (This topic is discussed in more details in later pages.)
Another basic root of the growing immaturity and psychopathy of our civilization, this study finds, is its highly immature voters who are supposed to elect their leaders. The present practice of giving voting rights to young adults of 21 years of age — let alone 18 in many nations — is indeed entrusting the fate of humanity to the immature people. Another immaturity promoting societal practice is the split voting rights for men and woman and to the singles who, by the way, are swelling in greater numbers in our society. In giving separate voting rights to man and woman that split up their humanhood – their inherent unity in duality – the practice only promotes their singleness and the resultant split ideas and visions. A mature human is a wholesome person who is a joint male-female entity — the family. Only human family is the mature and wise voter. (This topic is discussed in more details in chapter 19: Sustainable Democracy).
Now the question is as to who/which was immature first: civilization or humans? When the answer is humans, the question again is as to which human was the first immature: scientific humans or pre-science humans? And again, if the answer is pre-science humans, the question again is whether it were religious humans or pre-religion humans who were first immature. These questions are answered, with more clarity, in the later chapter 13: Degeneration of Spiritual Faculties.
Now let us consider the present society and its highly immature and psychopathic traits. Blogger John Galt writes about its present condition in his blog Canada’s John Galt:
Not so long ago, the average mid-twenty-something had achieved most of adulthood’s milestones—high school degree, financial independence, marriage, and children. These days, he lingers—happily—in a new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. Decades in unfolding, this limbo may not seem like news to many, but in fact it is to the early twenty-first century what adolescence was to the early twentieth: a momentous sociological development of profound economic and cultural import. Some call this new period “emerging adulthood,” others “extended adolescence”; David Brooks recently took a stab with the “Odyssey Years,” a “decade of wandering.”
But while we grapple with the name, it’s time to state what is now obvious to legions of frustrated young women: the limbo doesn’t bring out the best in young men. With women, you could argue that adulthood is in fact emergent. Single women in their twenties and early thirties are joining an international New Girl Order, hyper-achieving in both school and an increasingly female-friendly workplace, while packing leisure hours with shopping, traveling, and dining with friends [see “The New Girl Order,” Autumn 2007]. Single Young Males, or SYMs, by contrast, often seem to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3, and, in many cases, underachieving. With them, ADULTHOOD looks as though it’s receding.
Between his lack of responsibilities and an entertainment media devoted to his every pleasure, today’s young man has no reason to grow up, says author Kay Hymowitz. She discusses this topic in her book, Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys.
But for all its familiarity, pre-adulthood represents a momentous sociological development. It’s no exaggeration to say that having large numbers of single young men and women living independently, while also having enough disposable income to avoid ever messing up their kitchens, is something entirely new in human experience.
What also makes pre-adulthood something new is its radical reversal of the sexual hierarchy. Among pre-adults, women are the first sex. They graduate from college in greater numbers (among Americans ages 25 to 34, 34% of women now have a bachelor’s degree but just 27% of men), and they have higher GPAs. As most professors tell it, they also have more confidence and drive. These strengths carry women through their 20s, when they are more likely than men to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace. In a number of cities, they are even out-earning their brothers and boyfriends.
Still, for these women, one key question won’t go away: Where have the good men gone? Their male peers often come across as aging frat boys, maladroit geeks or grubby slackers—a gender gap neatly crystallized by the director Judd Apatow in his hit 2007 movie “Knocked Up.” The story’s hero is 23-year-old Ben Stone (Seth Rogen), who has a drunken fling with Allison Scott (Katherine Heigl) and gets her pregnant. Ben lives in a Los Angeles crash pad with a group of grubby friends who spend their days playing videogames, smoking pot and unsuccessfully planning to launch a porn website. Allison, by contrast, is on her way up as a television reporter and lives in a neatly kept apartment with what appear to be clean sheets and towels. Once she decides to have the baby, she figures out what needs to be done and does it. Ben can only stumble his way toward being a responsible grownup.
So where did these pre-adults come from? Pre-adulthood can be compared to adolescence, an idea invented in the mid-20th century as American teenagers were herded away from the fields and the workplace and into that new institution, the high school. For a long time, the poor and recent immigrants were not part of adolescent life; they went straight to work, since their families couldn’t afford the lost labor and income. But the country had grown rich enough to carve out space and time to create a more highly educated citizenry and work force. Teenagers quickly became a marketing and cultural phenomenon. They also earned their own psychological profile. Like adolescents in the 20th century, today’s pre-adults have been wait-listed for adulthood. Today marketers and culture creators help to promote pre-adulthood as a lifestyle. One of the most influential of the psychologists of adolescence was Erik Erikson, who described the stage as a “moratorium,” a limbo between childhood and adulthood characterized by role confusion, emotional turmoil and identity conflict.
But single men have never been civilization’s most responsible actors; they continue to be more troubled and less successful than men who deliberately choose to become husbands and fathers. Now, with their much reduced competence to become the traditional protectors and providers, the question is: why should they grow up? As human beings, there’s nothing they have to do.
What is Maturity? Maturity has different definitions across legal, social, sexual, emotional, and intellectual contexts. In psychology, maturity is the ability to respond to environment in an appropriate manner. This response is generally learned rather than instinctive, and is not determined by one’s age. Maturity also encompasses being aware of the correct time and place to behave and knowing when to act appropriately, according to the circumstances and the culture of society one lives in. Adult development and maturity theories include the purpose in life concept, in which maturity emphasizes a clear comprehension of life’s purpose, directedness, and intentionality which, contributes to the feeling that life is meaningful. The status of maturity is distinguished by the shift away from reliance on guardianship and the oversight of an adult in decision-making acts. The age or qualities assigned for each of these contexts are tied to culturally-significant indicators of independence.
Physical and mental growths are two different developments: We know, more or less, what physical growth means and we know from appearance, when a person reaches adulthood. It is easy to understand and recognize physical growth, because it is visible, measurable and does not continue beyond a particular age, except in certain ways, such as gaining body weight or the changes that come with aging. Almost every normal individual attains physical maturity after a certain age. Only and rarely, a few unfortunate individuals fail to grow normally, because of a rare disease or abnormal situation.
Mental growth, however, does not proceed along the same lines as physical growth. The brain cells do stop multiplying after a certain age, but mentally we continue to grow in awareness and understanding till old age. It is difficult to say when an individual actually stops growing mentally and whether he stops growing mentally at all till the end. People also differ in their ability to grow mentally because a number of factors influence mental growth.
Emotional/mental stability is one of the important indicators of mental health. It simply means being grown up so that one may be able to personally manage his/her desires and feelings and may be better able to cope up the adverse life situations in a most benefiting and socially approved manner. The most outstanding mark of emotional maturity is ability to bear tension. The emotionally mature is not one who necessarily has resolved all conditions that aroused anxiety and hospitability but it is continuously in process of seeing himself/herself in clearer perspective, continually involved in a struggle to gain healthy integration of feeling and thinking action.
Age at mental/emotional maturity: Most cats become adults at a year old, but on very generic rule on sexual maturity, males usually mature between 5-7 months old, and females usually 6-8 months. As far as cat’s mental maturity is concerned, that fluctuates between 2 and 4 years old depending upon the breed/mix and genetics. Here is an approximate scale for their physical/mental maturity level compared to human years.
Cat-years Equivalent human years
1 17
2-3 26
4 38
6 46
8-9 53
10 60
11 66
13 70
15 74
17 78
20 86
25+ 108
As the cats mentally mature, their personalities do change a bit, usually a bit mellower, between 2 and 4 years old. So even if you have a playful, dominant cat, they will mature and get sweeter and mellower as they grow to mental age, as a general rule. In the case of modern domestic horse, it has a life expectancy of 25 to 30 years. A horse at age 2 to3 has a sexual and physical maturity level that matches that of a 17 year old human. However, most horses reach emotional maturity at around seven years of age that matches that of a 40 year old human.
By the age 17-18, a human may be a young adult and also be sexually mature, but will always be highly immature — mentally and emotionally. Even though emotional maturity has much less to do with age, by comparing to the corresponding mental/emotional maturity attaining periods of animals and even pre-modern humans, humans cannot become emotionally mature before an average age of 35-40 years. It is during their 30s and 40s the majority of individuals, even with this mental instability, attain greater emotional stability. No wonder we see less emotional instability in older group as compared to younger ones.
Science and psychology have also proved that people under 40 are less mature and tend to make more irresponsible decisions. Further, family people are emotionally more stable compared to the unmarried. Joint family system has a positive impact on emotionality. Joint family system plays a significant role in emotional maturity and stability of adolescent girls. Ideal age to oversee children and the fellow beings is 40 plus. In his essay on ‘What Does It Mean to be an American Today?’, Steve Heminger, the famous educator and thinker, wrote on November 22, 2012:
“The United States is, in comparison to the majority of nations, very powerful and also very immature nation. This combination is a very dangerous one and can be likened to a teenager with the keys to their parent’s car; a whole lot of power and no set direction to go. This means the people who call themselves Americans today, don’t really know who they are, where they stand, or what to believe.
Because of this we Americans tend to want someone to tell them what to believe, buy, feel, cherish, celebrate, and live. Oh, we still brag about the individualism of the American past, but for the most part that’s what it is, the past. My generation, the Baby Boomers, inherited a nation that had just survived a depression and a World War. Our parents knew what sacrifice was and is. They had a sense of pride in themselves and our country for what they and the country had accomplished. They are known as the “Greatest Generation”. Their children, the Boomers, enjoyed the rewards of their parent’s labors and thereby became complacent, to a degree spoiled, and unfortunately generally ignorant of what their parents had accomplished.”
An equally sensible commentator responded to this article thus: “Sadly, most people under the age of 40 wouldn’t even be able to get through this essay without an associated video or background music…and if a tweet came through, then forget it! You’ve made me stop, read, and think.” (http://www.storyofamerica.org/veteran_educator_thinker)
Physical and mental maturity: Intelligence and wisdom are two words that people struggle with a lot. And many people have confused intelligence with wisdom and insight. We get ourselves into all kinds of problems by saying immature things, by making immature decisions, by acting in immature ways.
Physical growth — one-track growth — is misconstrued to be maturity. Even over-grown fruits (over-sized or hybrids) do not really taste that good. We have country eggs, which are supposed to taste better and more nutritious than those table eggs or the eggs of the broiler chicken.
I believe intelligence to be a physical attribute (of the body, brain, our animal side, whatever you call it) while wisdom is a more metaphysical property of the conscious mind/spirit. Sometimes they don’t go along together, sometimes they do. Many people who are street smarts, hyper intelligent or possessing high IQ, yet lack wisdom. Intelligence can be put to all sorts of means, not necessarily positive. The best example is defense lawyers, sometimes the Devil’s advocate can be the smartest person in the room, though it doesn’t make their position any less wrong.
Intelligence indicates knowledge, not wisdom. Intelligence is a high-minded concept that denotes one mind being smarter than the next. Indeed, a person may be intelligent, what we may call “book smart”, yet display little to no common sense at all. A person may have a lot of knowledge but what use if he is unable to use it properly and with common sense.
Wisdom, on the other hand, denotes life-experience: having common sense to share with others. A wise man knows how to use his knowledge to make a good decision; he can be someone with a lifetime of experiences to share. They can be personal experiences unique unto him, or more worldly; a generalized version of the same truths.
Physical maturity normally does happen without much of efforts or concern, while mental maturity needs a little effort and concern and will unfold as we age and gain experience. However, mechanization – especially the mechanization of the knowledge process – of the present human society obstructs, confuses and delays emotional, mental and spiritual maturity. It’s because everything in our world is pre-programmed – mechanically.
During the past few years there has been an increasing recognition that mental growth is a product of integrated development. Knowledge when contemplated upon produces wisdom. Knowledge can make a seeker well informed but it is wisdom that makes him spiritually matured. Some say “Knowledge and ego are inversely proportional the more the knowledge less the ego and less the knowledge more the ego.” But at times knowledge can also inflate ego. Amazingly the best feed as well as best antidote for ego is knowledge. Knowledge when contemplated and put into use will make ego disappear and gives way for wisdom. Annihilation of ego is blossoming of wisdom.
Just what is emotional maturity? One author defines it this way: development from a state of taking to a state of giving and sharing. Emotional maturity is one of the toughest mile stones to reach in life. For some, it never comes. For most, it arrives late in life. For a small few, it arrives early. With that maturity comes the realization that it’s not stuff that fulfills that deep black empty hole inside. What’s going to fulfill it is an acceptance of who we are with all our ups and downs, failings and talents, and a realization that we can’t have everything we want.
However, many political parties and some religious sects attract deliberately the overly emotional. In religious meetings their preachers work on the emotions of their congregations, encouraging uncontrolled outbursts of emotional response. They work it up – they generate increasingly energetic and noisy displays of out-of-control emotion.
Then there are those who go to the opposite extreme. Often these are the intellectuals and the highly educated – though usually mis-educated. They have controlled emotions with their minds to the extent that their emotions have been stifled and put to death. They no longer feel deeply about anything. They are utterly devoid of real sincerity, any depth of gratitude, any feeling of compassion or real sympathy. Their emotions never grew up to maturity – their emotions died in infancy. This is the pathetic state of unending immaturity at its chronic decay.
Immaturity is not confined to individuals alone. Sometimes, groups or even nations act quite immaturely, resulting in great misery and suffering to millions of people. Frankly many of our leaders and celebrity figures, the icons and role models of our society, are immature. They hide it behind a façade of pomp and power, but betray themselves often through their actions and decisions. Actually, on a cosmic scale, ours is a HIGHLY IMMATURE CIVILIZATION.
Main traits of immature civilization
The following features are the main traits of this immature civilization and the features of each trait are discussed subsequently under each head. However, due to pressure on space, the detailed discussion on each of the following topics is truncated and may be read in the e-book edition of this book:
- Immature society is dependent on technologization
- Self-centeredness blossoms on an immature society
- Capitalism thrives on immature societies
- Parasitism and over-dependency thrive in immature societies
- Immature society breeds greedy behavior and militancy
- Immature society promotes collective stupidity
- Immature society is ridden in sex crisis
IMMATURE CIVILIZATION BUILDERS
In the ongoing macroevolution – indeed macro-devolution or macro degeneration – some deformed and immature civilization/culture builders function as the master ‘macro free radicals’
We have already seen that the free radicals of the micro world and the (free) radicals of the macro world have almost similar characteristics and functions in their respective micro and macro degeneration processes with similar characteristics. Apart from being in non-wholistic (unpaired) state, both these types of free radicals are highly reactive, unstable and capable of causing massive split up and degeneration of the subject in which they happen to exist. Their features may be essentially distinguished as PSYCHOPATHIC.
We usually know about PSYCHOPATHS only from Hollywood movies. We never expect them to enter our real life. But, the psychopath is closer than we think. Actually, that nice lady who chatted you up on the subway this morning could be one. So could your elementary school teacher, your grinning boss, or even your loving boyfriend. Experts believe their number to be as high as one in twenty five or even more. Most of them function incognito in high-powered professions…all the way to the very top in today’s world.
We live in a psychopathic world
Many experts say that the clearest proof of the pathology inherent in postmodern society is the absolutely undeniable fact that this society, in a totally schizophrenic fashion, is at “war” with itself – for example its “War on Drugs” and the “ War on Booze”. This particular psychosis, “The Drug War” is among the most harmful and totally unnecessary in any sane society. But then it is enough to show that postmodern society is not a “sane society”.
Many stories of wanton atrocities and genocides in African countries force one to think the majority, or at least a really significant percentage of people in Africa are psychopaths. Meanwhile, some livability surveys in Australia have portrayed Australia as the worst country to live and concluded that most people there were psychopaths. Again many recent pathological developments in India have proved the Indian society is no less psychopathic. The whole Indian society suddenly seemed sexually starved as the sudden explosions of many sex-related crises showed.
If one can take a global survey on this subject, one is sure to find the story surprisingly getting repeated, albeit on different grades of psychopathy, everywhere in the world today.
What is with us, the post-modern humans? We all seem to be the captives of a culture trapped in pseudo morality, crawling along in hypocrisy.
The pyramidal order: The corporate force leads the world today. Most political leaders in almost all nations are either their ‘appointees’ (through ‘democracy’ games) or victims. It is a well-known fact that our highly globalized society is structured like a pyramid. The very few people at the top create conditions for the majority below. Who are these people? Can we blame them for the problems our society faces today? Guided by the saying ”A fish rots from the head” we set out to follow that fishy odor. What is generally found out is that people at the top are more likely to be psychopaths than the rest of us.
We’ve seen psychopaths in wealthy professions, such as lawyer, CEO, or politician. Those are professions that will attract psychopaths because of the opportunities for money and power for the psychopath; where’s the evidence that psychopaths help others?
A corporate executive is superficially charming; psychopaths tend to make a good first impression on others and often strike observers as remarkably normal. Yet they are self-centered, dishonest and undependable, and at times they engage in irresponsible behavior for no apparent reason other than the sheer fun of it. Largely devoid of guilt, empathy and love, they have casual and callous interpersonal and romantic relationships. Psychopaths routinely offer excuses for their reckless and often outrageous actions, placing blame on others instead. They rarely learn from their mistakes or benefit from negative feedback, and they have difficulty inhibiting their impulses.
If a corporation could be a person – corporations have gained legal personhood in America — it would be a psychopath. With no empathy, no remorse and being callous and arrogant, it is all about single-mindedly maximizing profits for its shareholders. Without a trace of humanity it uses and then discards people for it’s own selfish interests. The bottom line, growth, and survival are the driving force. Unfettered, it may easily transform itself into a malevolent entity.
If an executive does not have some of these traits to begin with they may become necessary to in order to become and remain successful. This is the dark side of laissez faire capitalism. Everyone knows to get ahead in the corporate world where you have to engage daily in a dog-eat-dog environment where you make alliances with fellow workers one day and step on their head the next to get one step closer to the top.
Society thus, led by the corporate forces, encourages psychopaths. In our culture, we not only praise psychopaths in the highest positions of power, but in many cases, they became our role models. Our whole system leans toward rewarding the psychopathic personality traits. Psychopaths succeed because we live in a psychopathic society. In a society where we let psychopaths take positions of power they have created a society that is “ruthlessly competitive and selfish”, which of course requires us to let psychopaths run loose. No wonder the world today is based on competition rather than on cooperation.
Who or what is a psychopath? A different type of beings live among us. They look human and act human, but they lack the essential qualities that make them truly human. They have neither conscience nor the possibility of developing one. They have no creative capacity or the ability to love. Some call them the inter-species predator. Their manipulative capacity characteristics make an almost hypnotic mask of sanity which allows them to pass as flawlessly normal. They experience no doubt and have no qualm in destroying another to get what they want. They relish the opportunity and many are not overtly violent. For all these they rise to positions of power and influence. That many mechanized social systems (politics, media, science, religion) have long been corrupted and molded by their pathological influence makes their dominance a continual inevitability. They are psychopaths and they rule the world.
And then there is a social type of psychopath: the sociopath. If the psychopath is completely lacking in remorse or empathy, the sociopath, however, is capable of guilt, caring, building relationships, etc., but only within a certain context. He or she will have loyalties to a specific group but not to society at large. They care nothing for social norms and will break them with impunity if it serves their purpose. So, on the surface, they may resemble psychopaths. However, they might genuinely feel remorse over harming someone within their group or family. They will have a moral code specific to that context: they might not lie, exploit, or manipulate within the group. Thus, they exhibit psychopathic behaviors in certain contexts but not all.
The medical definition of a psychopath is simple: A psychopath is a person who lacks empathy and conscience, the quality which guides us when we choose between good and evil, moral or not. Most of us are conditioned to do good things. Psychopaths are not. As many of them possessing high IQ, their impact on society is staggering, yet altogether psychopaths barely make up three or four percent of the population. According to Scientific American, they’re typically charming and make great first impression, but once you get to know them, you discover they’re:
self-centered
dishonest
undependable
impulsive
prone to irresponsible behavior for no reason
largely devoid of guilt, empathy and love
prone to casual and callous interpersonal and romantic relationships
quick to make excuses for their actions, blaming others
unfazed by mistakes or negative feedback
Today’s society is a fertile breeding ground for psychopathic behaviour, says Dr. Robert Hare, an international expert in the field. Dr. Hare, professor emeritus at the University of B.C., says that shifting ethical standards, reflected in television crime shows that glamorize the abnormal, allow psychopaths to flourish. “What is clear is that society is making it a lot easier for psychopathy or psychopathic behaviour to flourish…..The moral ethical standards that we have now are shifting. What is acceptable now would not have been acceptable 10 or 20 years ago”, Hare said.
Hare said research indicates that about 15 per cent of the prison population in Canada is psychopathic, compared to a guess of about one or two per cent of the general population. He said it is hard to know if the numbers are increasing overall because studies are generally limited to people in jail and not society at large. But he said changing social values — reflected in popular TV hits like Dexter, which is about a heroic serial killer — have made things worse. “My argument is that they know the difference between right and wrong. They know the rules of the game. They are perfectly aware of what society expects of them, but they have chosen for whatever reason not to follow these rules…..If it is to their advantage to engage in pro-social good behaviour, they are going to do so; if it is to their advantage to engage in anti-social behaviour, they are going to do so”, he said of psychopaths.
Sadly, there are few material rewards in this world for good behavior. Quite the opposite exists and dominates. Only when you rise above the material world and seek the rewards from within you, can you then see that we are all connected. There are too many blind children, following blind leaders. And it has been that way for long in modern society. People have looked outward for leaders instead of inward, and it’s because there are so few leaders that are enlightened enough to teach. Instead of growing, we have stagnated as a whole and continue to repeat our selfish, shameful and bloody past. We all have given the power to the corporate world to dictate and rule our thoughts. We’ve been sold the idea that to be different is admirable, and our individuality prevents us from seeing that we are all connected. We are self destructing the fabric that holds us together.
Extensive mechanization renders humans as soulless/mindless creatures: It is a fact that many recent studies have come to the conclusion that today we live in a psychopathic world. Here many may wonder as to what is it that makes our world and many of its human inhabitants psychopathic! The primary trait of a psychopath is his/her soullessness or mindlessness. And the fact is that the industrial/machine age that we live in today has no soul or mind. Most conventional scientists believe human beings are mere “biological robots” with no mind, no soul, no free will and no consciousness. Further, by long living under a strong spell of collective stupidity and sphereheaded by rampant mechanization, the soulless state only got boosted.
In his prophetic novel 1984, George Orwell has portrayed a society that has lost all trace of individuality, love, and critical thought and visualized humanity turning into soulless machines devoid of thought. Orwell further warned that if people cannot change the way things are going, our society will lose their human qualities. They will become soulless machines and not have a clue as to their new world they created. In Brave New World of Aldous Huxley portrayed modern people as mindless and soulless. They had no minds of their own. Throughout their childhood, they were essentially brainwashed. Everything they knew was copied into their brains from somewhere else, almost like robots. Each social class thought that they were the best, but this was all due to the brainwashing. Society actually treated themselves unethically and unfairly, so it was they were really only hurting themselves.
Massive growth of free radical sort of macro beings or macro organisms: Now if we closely examine the inhabitants of a fully mechanized society we can unmistakably observe, in their features, many characteristics generally found in psychopaths. In the micro world of atoms or particles, we know that the features of the micro free radicals include high instability, parasitism, and highly reactive behavior, and that their presence in any environment contaminates and degenerates the whole organic benign matter on a cascading type of reactions, apart from converting other wholistic paired micro organisms into unpaired free radicals by snatching one electron from each of their paired state of existence. The same thing happens in the macroevolution or macro-degeneration process in any mechanized society where certain high IQ possessing immature humans or psychopaths do the works of free radicals – as the literal macro free radicals. No wonder, due to the massively cascading macro ‘free radicalization’ of the modern society, many studies today find the post-modern humans generally have become psychopathic, albeit they be in various grades and types of psychopathy.
High IQ and psychopathy: Only recently, on March 5, 2013, Huffington Post reported about one young girl Ramu, 12, having achieved the highest possible score of 162 on the Mensa IQ test which it put as higher IQ than Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking, who are all believed to have a score around 160.
The high score places Ramu, the daughter of an Indian eye specialist in London, in the top 1 percent of intelligence ratings among people in the United Kingdom, according to Asian News International. Ramu’s parents told the Telegraph they didn’t realize their daughter was so ‘gifted’ until she scored 280/280 on an entrance exam for Tiffin Girls, a high-achieving grammar school. Even though Ramu is only 12, she’s already besting American college-bound students. The Telegraph reported Ramu scored 740 out of 800 on a section of the SAT. Comparing her score to data from the National Center for Educational Statistics, it places her among the top students at Ivy League universities.
However, according to a report in an India magazine ,The Week, Ramu isn’t the first young girl to best Albert Einstein in IQ scores. Hankins Heidi, 4, recently nailed a 159 on the Mensa IQ test. Another girl Lauren Marbe, 16, got a 161 last month. Six-year-old Pranav Veera, 12-year-olds Jacob Barnett and Olivia Manning, 11-year-old Victoria Cowie and 15-year-old Fabiola Mann all have IQs of 162 or higher, according to The Week.
There’s a growing realization that psychopaths are thriving in today’s world — in fact they have been thriving since the beginning of the era of modern science and modern arts. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why super high IQ scores are being considered as rare “gift” in our societies that the people suffer so much from psychopathic individuals these days.
Suddenly some people become famous and even celebrity, in their immature/adolescent age because of their certain high intelligent feat which, on the other hand, unfortunately prevents them to gain mental/emotional maturity even after they grow old. And this exactly is what has happened to most of our famous modern scientists and other one-track minded artists. Instead of growing to their normal mental/emotional maturity, they grow single-mindedly and get stagnated and degenerated in other faculties which, sorry to say, is portrayed by the psychopathic post-modern world, as yet another ‘intelligent accomplishment’.
Intelligence gains always have ‘trade-offs’. Tradeoffs are common in evolution. There are people who are both highly intelligent and incredibly stupid at the same time. “The man we call a specialist today was formerly called a man with a one-track mind”, wrote Endre Balogh. Today all know and agree the fact that the modern expert is a stupid who is growing only in a narrow groove and who “knows more and more about the less and less”.
Mechanical logic and mathematics are the basic ingredients for high-tech professional skills and the very young and immature age is the prime time to train and sharpen them. This is a linear, one-sided development and an impediment for any balanced wholistic growth. Most specialists and hi-tech professionals are produced by selectively grooming only certain selected inborn and desired traits. These abnormal humans exist as safe havens and harmless creatures for the mechanized professional institutions and establishments. They are always expected to use their brain, never their mind; their talents are welcome, but having compassion is taboo. The logic behind the widespread ragging in almost all professional colleges is based on the principle of purging the finer, emotional or conscious sentiments from the incumbent trainees. It is this sophisticated linear grooming that enabled the former Soviet athletes to come out with nearly hundred Olympic gold medals and leaving behind India, with five times the population of former Soviet Union, to content with just one bronze medal and no gold medal. Some achieve ‘genius’ status – “giftedness” — by the help of drugs.
A lot of people are interested in drugs that can enhance their physical or mental prowess. We put a lot of energy into improving our memory, intelligence, and attention. There are even drugs that make us sharper, such as Ritalin and caffeine. That is how many exhibit better heroics through elective chemistry. It is about people who gain superpowers from taking chemical substances they’re addicted to. Drugs enhance or enable this character’s creative genius, super-strength, or other unusual abilities. Whether the ability is “mundane” or “fantastic” doesn’t matter, only that it is enhanced by recreational drugs is a ‘scientific’ fact.
Any new drug or technology or even cultural practice that ‘raised’ human intelligence permanently could be dangerous. Higher IQs may be linked to nervous system disease. ‘Enhancers’ such as Ritalin make us smarter, briefly – but only help those who have problems concentrating.
Thus the highly one-sided developments of selected traits and talents are erroneous and dangerous practices, be it through rigorous training or by the helps of drugs like Ritalin. This situation produces minds in a groove. Each profession makes progress, but it is progress in its own groove. Now to be mentally in a groove is to live in contemplating a given set of abstractions. The groove prevents straying across country, and the abstraction abstracts from something to which no further attention is paid. But there is no groove of abstractions which is adequate for the comprehension of human life. Thus in the modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts. Of course, no one is merely a mathematician, a scientist, or merely a lawyer. People have lives outside their professions or their businesses. But the point is the restraint of serious thought within a groove. The remainder of life is treated superficially, with the imperfect categories of thought derived from one profession. The leading intellectuals too lack balance.(More on this discussed in chapter 12: Professionalism).
Catching and emboldening them young: As for the young with high IQ, many developed nation catch them young and brand them as rare “gifts”. “Infants as young as five months can add and subtract,” says Dr. Karen Wynn at the University of Arizona in a report in Nature in 1992. Arithmetical and synthetic logical capacities appear to be innate in young age. Pre-maturely emboldened, they even shoot one another for such petty reason as snatching the attractive shoe of the victim, as has been reported from American schools, for example. The report that the fast surging teen spirit growing to much pathological proportion all over the developed nations, especially America, and, of late, Japan, is a pointer in this direction of over-mechanization. Widely acclaimed Dr. Balamurali Krishna, who rose to become the media celebrity as the world’s youngest doctor at the age of 17 from a famous American University in May 1995 was however, arrested at Visakapatanam, his native place in India, in November 1995 on charge of cruelty towards his wife. And the reason was surprisingly silly, quite immaterial to the youth culture – for bringing less money in marriage as dowry. (He was then in India to receive an award for his distinction as the world’s youngest doctor after winning many awards from America).
High IQ is welcome but it makes up for only a fraction of intelligence. They have higher IQs on average than the general population. Higher IQs for children are natural and not as harmful as when they grow in age with high IQ which is then a type of mental illness.
IQ is only potential intelligence which needs long-term and overall intellectual nurturing to attain balanced maturity at their 30s and 40s for any meaningful life functions , like the ability for critical thinking. But the present world spoils this chance of high IQ prodigies by prematurely meddling with their abilities, for example, by showering all the praises, awards, honors, celebrity/genius status etc., thereby stabilizing and showcasing the initial high IQ as some rare ‘gift’ to be continuously sharpend through rigorous training, only to be celebrated – and marketed.
Here is a typical case: His name was William James Sidis, and his IQ was estimated at between 250 and 300. At eighteen months he could read The New York Times, at two he taught himself Latin, at three he learned Greek. By the time he was an adult he could speak more than forty languages and dialects. He gained entrance to Harvard at eleven, and gave a lecture on four-dimensional bodies to the Harvard Mathematical Club his first year. He graduated at sixteen, and became the youngest professor in history. He deduced the possibility of black holes more than twenty years before Subramanian Chandrasekhar published An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure. His life held possibilities for achievement that few people can imagine. Of all the prodigies for which there are records, his was probably the most powerful intellect of all. And yet it all came to nothing. He soon gave up his position as a professor, and for the rest of his life wandered from one menial job to another. His experiences as a child prodigy had proven so painful that he decided for the rest of his life to shun public exposure at all costs. Henceforth, he denied his gifts, refused to think about mathematics, and above all refused to perform as he had been made to do as a child. Instead, he devoted his intellect almost exclusively to the collection of streetcar transfers, and to the study of the history of his native Boston. He worked hard at becoming a normal human being, but never entirely succeeded. He found the concept of beauty, for example, to be completely incomprehensible, and the idea of sex repelled him. At fifteen he took a vow of celibacy, which he apparently kept for the remainder of his life, dying a virgin at the age of 46. He wore a vest summer and winter, and never learned to bathe regularly. A comment that Aldous Huxley once made about Sir Isaac Newton might equally have been said of Sidis: “For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb”
Scientists have wondered for a long time why madness and creativity seem linked. It has been generally found that more creative people generally have higher psychoticism scores than people with a lower creativity.
The topics of genius and degeneration are only special cases of the more general problem involved in the evaluation of human conditions today. If the exceptionally gifted adult with an IQ of 150, or 160, or 170 has problems in adapting to his world (even if we can ignore the case of William James Sidis whose IQ was above 250), consider, on the other hand, the condition/fate of a world/society that got adapted and changed to the whims of these types of genius/psychopaths. And the world/society that happened to suffer this fate – MACRO DEGENERATION — is none other than our own MODERN SOCIETY. And some of these typical GENIUSES – macro ‘free radicals’ – who ‘helped’ to drastically change and degenerate us – MODERN MANKIND — are discussed below.
Geniuses in history and their psychiatric conditions
Researchers on creativity and psychology have long been fascinated with the high incidence of psychotic behavior amongst geniuses and individuals of exceptional creativity. Many great artists and scientists appear to have gone slightly mad following their lofty achievements or their ‘madness’ leading to their rare achievements. Many great poets, playwrights, artists and composers suffered from depression, alcoholism, obsessionality, bipolar or psychotic disorders at some time in their lives. Isaac Newton was arguably the greatest physicist of all time, introducing the concept of gravity and making major advances in optics, mechanics and mathematics. He was also intensely suspicious and distrustful of others and in later life dabbled in alchemy and sought hidden messages in the Bible. Beethoven and Van Gogh are also said to have gone progressively mad, though the reasons are equally debatable.
For others, the genius and madness appear in parallel. Nikola Tesla was a brilliant applied scientist whose inventions rivaled those of Edison. He obtained around 300 patents in radio and electricity technologies, pioneering alternating current and hydroelectric power. However, he claimed to be in communication with other planets, to have invented “death rays” and suffered from bizarre compulsions.
Sometimes it is a matter of chance or social milieu that determines whether an individual is deemed brilliant or crazy. Further, could environment also be involved? Traumatic events in childhood and orphan status seem more common in those who make outstanding contributions to art and science (Simonton, 1999). In a study of 700 high achievers, Goetzel et al (2004) found that three-quarters had troubled childhoods, especially loss of a parent. The “school of hard knocks” could provide motivation and inspiration (Dickens and Chaplin come to mind here) while at the same time generating psychological disorder. However, this idea is opposite to the common-sense view that parental support and encouragement is beneficial to achievement, rather than maltreatment and deprivation. Indeed, the Goetzels found that wealth was more common in the backgrounds of famous people than poverty. And of course, pathology in the parents may be genetically transmitted to their children, thus accounting for some of the associations reported.
Another mental “illness” linked with creativity is bipolar mood disorder (previously called “manic-depressive psychosis”). This is characterised by extreme mood swings, occurring over a period of months, and it seems particularly to afflict artists, writers, musicians and comedians. Among highly talented people who appear to have suffered mood disorder are Peter Tchaikovsky, Robert Schumann, Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Spike Milligan, Paul Merton and Stephen Fry (who presented a TV documentary on bipolar disorder detailing his experiences). Sufferers are often tortured souls, particularly when the “Black Dog” afflicts them, and their feelings may be tapped to give greater depth and sensitivity to their art. On the other hand, the “flight of ideas” experienced in the “manic” phase of the mood cycle can result in exceptional productivity (Jamison, 1993). As with the trade-off between schizophrenia and genius, bipolar disorder balances short intervals with peaks in a way that might account for its evolutionary survival. Treatments are available for bipolar disorder but there is a danger that, by smoothing mood, they could impede the creative forces.
Was Michelangelo autistic? You might have wondered in the past just how someone could paint something as huge as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. According to a paper published in the Journal of Medical Biography in 2004, Michelangelo’s single-minded routine may have been due to the disorder. According to descriptions by his contemporaries, the painter was “preoccupied with his own reality.” Most of the male members of his family are recorded to have exhibited similar symptoms. Michelangelo also seems to have had difficulty forming relationships with people; he had few friends and didn’t even attend his brother’s funeral. All of this, combined with his obvious genius in math and art, led the researchers to believe that today Michelangelo would be considered high functioning on the autism spectrum.
THE FIRST WAVE OF MAJOR CIVILIZATION BUILDERS: MASTER ‘MACRO FREE RADICALS’ OF THE MACROEVOLUTION
Discussed below are some of the typical ‘macro free radicals’ (see chapter 4 on Free Radical)or their godfather-like figures whose single-minded or one-track mind sort of radical works, ideas or visions were so much world-shattering, reactive and unstable that they were capable of causing massive split up and degeneration of masses of people and building, changing or marring culture in which they happen to exist. As the literal civilization and culture builders during the infancy of modern civilization, these macro free radicals along with their radical ideas and mechanized systems – like modern science, modern art, Marxism, consumer capitalism etc. — were the societal free radicals in modern history and therefore are cases of certain mental sickness.
Evolution of modern science, it can thus be found, was the end result of clear perversions. How the societal perversion has given birth to a wayward child called modern science in an equally wayward culture (Elizabethan Culture) under the regime of a pervert woman ruler called Queen Elizabeth I, has been discussed in chapter 6, under the subtitle, The Freaks and the Psychopaths Developed Modern Science. Among the worst offenders of all Eurocentrists, including the initial builders of modern science who ere also Eurocentrists, are Western economic (capitalist) historians, Marxists, and fortiori Marxist economic historians. The vast majority of these self-styled ‘economic historians’ totally neglected the history of most of the world, and the remaining minority distorted it altogether. The Study of Economic History: Collected Inaugural Lectures 1893-1970 (Edited by N.B Harte 1971) collects 21 such lectures by the most eminent English speaking economic historians. They in turn review and comment on the ‘economic history’ written by their colleagues in the profession over most of the preceding century: Almost every word is about Europe and the United States and their ‘Atlantic economy,’ which hardly even includes Africa. The rest of the world does not even exist for them.
Descartes’s demon and the madness
The manifestation of genius is evident in the creative endeavors of those who endorse a more radical worldview, often placing themselves at odds. Madness, for Rene Descartes, consists in a lack of control over his own faculties.
Steven M. Nadler in Descartes’s Demon and the Madness of Don Quixote, wrote: “It is not surprising that the philosophical/theological error that we refer to as ‘modernism’ should begin with a dream….The young Descartes, some 23 years old when he found himself on that cold November’s night ‘shut up alone in a stove-heated room (poele),’ had been quite an eccentric in his early years. Indeed, there appears to be some controversy amongst English-speaking commentators as to whether poele indicates that Descartes was ‘shut up in a stove-heated room’ or that he was ‘shut up in a stove”. (Journal of the History of Ideas 58:1)
Descartes’ general restlessness of spirit had manifested itself during his adolescent years when he left behind his Jesuit schooling, of which he had a decidedly mixed impression, and ‘took up the book of the world.’ Tired of what he felt to be the endless intellectual discussions and controversies that taxed and left dubious the minds of so many, he put aside the reading of books and took up the practical matter of war, which the Central Europe of the early seventeenth century had made available to him in the form of the 30 Years War between the forces of the Habsburg Catholic Holy Roman Emperor and those of the Protestant Princes of Northern Europe. It was as a ‘fighting man’ of the army of the Duke of Bavaria (even though there is no real historical evidence that Descartes himself did any actual fighting) that he found himself on that November day, holed up in a stove-heated room, wintering with the army in the German city of Ulm.
On this particular day, Descartes was meditating on the ‘disunity and uncertainty’ of his knowledge. Since his days at the Jesuit lycee [i.e., high-school/college] at La Fleche, he had marveled at mathematics, especially geometry, a science in which he found certainty, necessity, and precision. How could he find a basis for all knowledge so that it might have the same unity and certainty as mathematics? Having in mind, for a number of years, a project and method to bring all the sciences together within the context of a new universal philosophical ‘wisdom,’ Descartes interpreted the vivid dreams that he had on the night of the Vigil of the Feast of St. Martin as a sign from God Himself. From that moment on, Descartes would believe that he had a divine mandate to establish an all-encompassing science of human wisdom. He himself was so convinced of this divine endorsement of his ‘mission,’ that he would make a pilgrimage to the Holy House of Loreto in thanksgiving for this ‘favor.’
Descartes never got married. He remained single throughout his life.
Organic/wholesome human is an inseparable union of body and soul/mind. Mankind cannot act with its body alone without acting with its soul, nor vice versa. We are whole, made in the union of body and soul/mind, and we have no more need to deny the body or deny the mind than to deny our own existence. But Descartes ruined sex through his advocacy of body-soul dualism. For Descartes there was little distinction between a mind and a soul. So, according to him, a body can exist without the soul and the soul without the body. In common terms, what is a body without a soul? A corpse. What is a soul without a body? A ghost. All separations and splits of the body and the soul are just that, separations and splits, wounds that won’t lead to happiness but to problems and degeneration – sure causes for developing mental disorder.
The British angle to the birth of reductionist science
Now it is interesting to know how the idea of body-mind dualism (later advocated by Descartes) originated from the inventiveness of the genius who later emerged as the ‘Father of Modern Science’, namely, Sir Francis Bacon through his advocacy of Reductionism – INDUCTION. The symptom of his dualist or reductionist approach is much visible not only in most of his writings but also in his personal life. He is understood to have had a weird sex life and remained as single for most of his life. He wrote in his famous essay On Marriage and Single Life:
“He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public…. A single life is liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and humorous minds, which are so sensible of every restraint as they will go near to think their girdles and garters to be bonds and shackles. Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants, but not always best subjects, for they are light to run away, and almost all fugitives are of that condition”.
~ Francis Bacon (On Marriage and Single Life)
We now face a choice between two opposite views of life, one natural, the other artificial. We all know that the destruction of life in Nature has been wrought by the ‘pure logics’ of human knowledge and action. Now let us see how the 16th century England provided the ideal ground for this historical reversion or perversion of the millions years long human evolutionary process, from wholesome or unity in duality mode of existence to dualist or reductionist mode of existence – from deduction to induction.
Human artifice of the world separates human existence from the animal environment. But life itself is outside this artificial world, and through life man remains related to all other living organisms. However, for some time now, a great many scientific endeavors have been directed towards making life also artificial.
Francis Bacon’s imaginary story is of a society ruled by scientists dedicated to the technological conquest of Nature. For those who share Bacon’s vision of scientific progress, it is an inspiring vision of how modern science and technology could promote a ‘good society’. For those who disagree with Bacon, it is a disturbing depiction of how a scientific elite could use manipulation and secrecy to rule over a docile people.
Throughout his life, Bacon had tried unsuccessfully to persuade the British monarch to sponsor scientific research, just as Bensalem supports the work of Salomon’s House. After his death, many people were inspired by New Atlantis to devise plans to set up publicly supported scientific institutions for promoting experimental studies of Nature and useful inventions. The establishment of the Royal Society of London in 1682, with a royal charter from Charles II, was one of the most successful outcomes. Contemporary institutions for collaborative scientific research dedicated to new discoveries and inventions such as the U.S. National Science Foundation also seem to follow the model first depicted in New Atlantis.
Yet Defenders of Baconian science point out the practical usefulness that this science has produced. By executing Bacon’s project, human beings have both a greater knowledge of Nature and a greater power over Nature than ever before. Some economic historians argue that economic growth in the Western world since the eighteenth century has been driven largely by a Baconian view of knowledge that connects science, technology, and industrial production. Since the late twentieth century, Baconian principles are evident in biotechnological research for enhancing physical and mental health. People are moving toward “the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible” (Bacon 1989, p. 71). In many respects, human beings are now living in ‘Bensalem’.
It is now interesting to note certain quotations on Francis Bacon in the Story of Philosophy by the 20th century American philosopher Will Durant almost all of which put him in bad light and low in morality and which are characteristics of mostly evil. The three main characters or factors that led to the conception and birth of modern science are (1) the sixteenth century Elizabethan Culture (2) Sir Francis Bacon (he is known as the father of modern philosophy of rationalism) (3) Mercantilism (of the sea-going merchants, Britain then was known as a nation of ‘Shop-keepers’). All these are, however, part of the so-called modern history.
It can be reasonably argued that the germ of vitiation of modern society was jointly fathered by Francis Bacon, Descartes and William Shakespeare (responsible for its philosophical, scientific and artistic parts, respectively) and under the most favorable patronage of then sea-going mercantile community (‘nation of shop-keepers’) and was born and nurtured in the barren womb of Queen Elizabeth I. Individual features of these modern civilization builders are discussed through the following pages.
King Richard III (1483-1485) and masochistic pleasure
It has already been discussed in chapter 2 that modern science, in its unending immaturity, is masculine and that the long patriarchal domination of early modern civilization had led the world to endless societal split. Now, before we discuss the reductionist, competing, and other purely rationalist ideas and spirit of Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, William Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I, and the then prevailing highly patriarchal social environment in Britain (Britain was then known as a ‘nation of shop-keepers’, thanks to the strong influence of then sea-going mercantile community), it is worthwhile to give a short introduction to the highly patriarchal British monarchy that had reached its zenith under King Richard III during 1483-1485. By equating power with patriarchy, the seed of domination of Mother Nature was actually sowed by the highly warring, shrewd, purely mechanical and other conscious-chopping regime of Richard III. Many historians attribute the waywardness of his behaviour to certain physical deformities Richard allegedly had.
Homosexual sex was widespread in the Middle Ages and there is abundant information on what church writers and secular legislators thought about it. Shoddy or partisan scholarship and a distinctly modern disdain of homosexuals by scholars until recently marked much of the discussion of the history of this medieval homosexuality. (The facts that masculinism, feminism, homosexuality are all sociopathic illness born out of some sort of sexual deformities, are being discussed in chapter 14: ‘Neutering of Mankind’)
Bacon also contends that, if the genitals do not function properly, erotic energy will circulate in other channels, and he cites eunuchs as an example of how “deformity is an advantage to rising [in social standing].” That which is unable to raise itself physically may rise socially instead. Clearly this was said to be the social dynamic of deformity of King Richard III of England. In his article on Richard’s deformity author Ian Frederick Moulton explains as to why Richard’s deformity is considered aggressively masculine.
In his article Moulton explains as to why Richard’s deformity is considered masculine. He writes, “In the absence of strong masculine royal authority, English manhood, unruled and untamed, turns to devour itself. It is this unregulated, destructive masculine force that is personified in the twisted and deformed body of Richard III. Richard is all masculine because he chooses to be. He chooses to work towards personal power rather than love or honor. He is selfish to no end and will kill his own family to achieve his goals. Also in his opening soliloquy he brags about setting up his own brother to be jailed so that the list of men between him and the throne is shorter. Richard does evil and manipulative things to move his way up the political hierarchy. What motivates make him to make these decisions, makes him the epitome of masculinity” (Moulton, 258).
Richard endeavors to triumph over the discourses of erotic pleasure by subordinating them entirely to his desire for power. In his incredible seduction of Lady Anne, he skillfully employs the language of affection, sexual desire, and physical obsession (a language he despises as an indication of effeminate weakness) to achieve specific political ends. By offering Anne his sword, he stages a calculated (and illusory) gender reversal, offering her an opportunity to exercise phallic power which he assumes in advance she will be incapable of accepting. Anne succumbs because she allows her political quarrel with Richard to be expressed in a discourse of erotic seduction which, while it gives her the illusion of power over her helpless “effeminate” suitor, actually constructs her as feminine and passive, Richard as masculine and active. As Linda Charnes suggests, once Anne has accepted the gender binaries inherent in Richard’s conventional discourse of seduction, her failure to accept the role of masculine avenger which Richard mockingly offers her leaves her with no recourse but submission.
Richard’s villainous reputation was sealed by William Shakespeare in his historic play, depicting a power-hungry hunchback king who remains the prime suspect for the death of his nephews, the Princes in the Tower. This can be realized in Richard’s opening soliloquy, and by reading Moulton’s article.
(Ian Frederick Moulton’ s article on Richard is largely based on Shakespeare’s plays and some history documents. It is said that it will be easier to rewrite history than to rewrite Shakespeare. It was in writing history plays that Shakespeare made great advances. This great breakthrough in Shakespeare’s achievement actually began with a group of four history plays, of which Richard III is the final element. History was not the carefully researched study of the past. It was a way of using the story of the past to make a moral or political point about the present. What mattered was not the accuracy of the history but the relevancy of the lesson, so people who called themselves historians, or “chroniclers,” did not feel much compunction about altering or making up the story of the past. The history Shakespeare began with was only a rough approximation of the past.)
Queen Elizabeth I
In many world history books, Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) is described as an amoral, materialist and distorted woman. The very word ‘modern’ itself was born in the Elizabethan court in 1589 according to Webster’s. The University History of the World (1985) of Columbia University describes the first queen who ruled England as follows:
“Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) rode the crest of this wave of religious and secular patriotism. The queen could be perverse, mean, and petulant; she could procrastinate almost endlessly; her appetite for flattery was unceasing; and her involvements with favourites like the Earls of Leicester and Essex were embarrassing or even dangerous. She was at times the despair of her ministers. Yet she was intelligent and rough-minded, courageous, and (perhaps even in her apparent follies) capable of playing a role brilliantly. She was a consummate politician, able to manage her ministers and to dominate an increasingly rebellious Parliament, now by scolding them like an outraged governess in a nursery, now by giving in graciously to their complaints.”
The first British female ruler, Queen Elizabeth hobnobbed with handsome street-smart, court-smart and aristocratic gentlemen to aid and abet her power as well as the power of her regime. She remained without even a formal husband throughout her life. She was excommunicated by Pope Pius V. She executed her own cousin Queen Mary of Scot on inter-religious feud. She also executed the handsome Earl of Essex for refusing to return the love she had for him. And Francis Bacon siding with the queen became a party to the killing of this very man who was not only his friend but also his benefactor. The Earl of Essex had gifted Bacon a whole estate when he was penniless, according to a narration by Will Durant in Story of philosophy.
Elizabeth is accused of deliberately encouraging Scottish factions in order to keep the northern kingdom weak. She certainly supported Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, a turbulent and unprincipled man, while he was the antagonist of the Catholic nobles.
If we turn from her public to her private life, what situation could be more profoundly pitiable? Honor and obedience, indeed, still surrounded her. But that which also should accompany old age, love and troops of friends, she might not look to have. Near relations she had none. Alone she had chosen to live, and alone she must die.
She is a woman who has passed through life without knowing what it is to love or be loved, who has no memory of even an unrequited affection to feed on, who has never shared a husband’s joys and sorrows, never borne the sweet burden of maternity, never suckled babe or rocked cradle, who must finish her journey alone, sitting in the solemn twilight before the last dark hour uncared for and uncaring, without the cheer of children or the varied interests that gather round the family. There are writers who have made the discovery that Elizabeth was a very poor ruler who was selfish and wayward, shortsighted, easily duped, fainthearted, rash, miserly, wasteful, and swayed by the pettiest impulses of vanity, spite, and personal inclination and who however ruled England for 44 years. (It is presumed that it was during this very period that the idea of INDUCTION — modern analytical science — was conceived in the brain of her right-hand man, namely Sir Francis Bacon.)
Elizabeth made large use of the courage and fidelity of her kinsmen like Hunsdon on the Boleyn side. Hunsdon had set his heart on regaining the Boleyn Earldom of Wiltshire. When he was dying, Elizabeth brought the patent and robes of an earl, and laid them on his bed; but the choleric old man replied, “Madam, seeing you counted me not worthy of this honour while I was living, I count myself unworthy of it now I am dying.”
Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and the onset of Modern Civilization of Induction
Francis Bacon held the view that the goal of science was to bring Nature under control. Nature, he said, has to be ‘hounded in her wanderings,’ ‘bound into service,’ and made a ‘slave’. The job of a scientist was to ‘torture Nature’s secrets from her.’ Nature was a ‘common harlot’, and he urged future generations to ‘tame’, ‘squeeze’, ‘mold’ and ‘shape’ ‘her’. Even as he spoke, women were being hounded, bound, enslaved and tortured for their secrets during the witch trials of early modern Europe. Thus Bacon’s ideas reflected the connection of women with Nature, and men as the dominators of Nature, that violent patriarchy has permeated Western thought.
Francis Bacon, is being portrayed in Vindice’s drama The Revenger’s Tragedy as a faithless friend to a generous benefactor in the hour of his trial, and, upon being raised to one of the highest positions of honour and influence in the state.
In the opening act of The Revenger’s Tragedy, Vindice presents him as a disempowered, that is, a subordinated and neutered male. He locates the source of his predicament in the licentious and politically corrupt Duke who poisoned Vindice’s betrothed and has denied Vindice his proper social place. This doubled loss catalyzes his desire for revenge.
The whole 16th century British intellectual picture dramatically changed once Francis Bacon started equating power with intelligence. ‘Knowledge is power’, he said and the concept of power and science got an unprecedented pride of place and push in social affairs of man. And Bacon who went on giving birth to what we call the modern science, the sole locomotive of this synthetic power – the scientific (mechanical) power. With his conviction that knowledge unapplied in action was a ‘pale academic vanity’ and that the purpose of learning was to increase man’s power over Nature, Bacon conceived of science as a massive communal effort of induction. The magical methodology, which worked the gigantic change and reversal, evolved as INDUCTION.
Bacon’s father was a keeper of the Great Seal during the first 20 years of Elizabethan era. His mother, being herself a genius was a nurse to Bacon. But the real nurse to Bacon’s greatness was the Elizabethan England, which is described in history as the greatest era of the most powerful nation of that time – the ‘nation of shop-keepers’. Wise at the age of 16 and a sharp tongued orator and writer, Bacon was appointed as an ambassador at such a young age – an age more in tune with high IQ intelligence or machination than intellect or wisdom.
So Bacon, like Plato, exalted his hobby, and offered science as the salvation of man. But he recognized much more than Plato, the necessity of specialist science, and of soldiers and armies of ‘specialist research’. His great dream is the socialization of science for conquest of Nature and the enlargement of the power of man.
And so he appealed to King James I, showering upon him the flattery which he knew his Royal Highness loved to sip. And if Alexander placed so large a treasure at Aristotle’s command for the support of hunters, foulers, fishers, and the like, in much more need do they stand of this beneficence who unfold the labyrinths of Nature. Will Durant, after a painstaking study of the morals prevalent at Elizabeth’s Court and concluded that all the leading figures, male and female (Bacon and Shakespeare included) were ‘disciples of Machiavelli.’ Durant wrote in Story of Philosophy:
What is refreshingly new in Bacon is the magnificent assurance with which he predicts the conquest of Nature by man. ‘I stake all on the victory of art over Nature in the race and modern science proves to be more art trick than reality. Had not men been seeking truth, and exploring the path of science, these two thousand years? Why should one hope now for such great success where so long a time had given so modest a result?’ Bacon answers; but what if the methods men have used (deduction, nature’s logic), have been wrong and useless? What if the road has been lost and the research has gone into irrelevant paths? We need a ruthless revolution in our methods of research and thought, in our system of science and logic, we need a new organo, better than Aristotle’s, fit for this larger world.
And so Bacon offers us his supreme book, the Novum Organum, the book of logic on induction. Never did a man put more life into logic, making induction an epic adventure and a conquest. To perfect science so, and then to perfect social order by putting science in control, would be like a utopia. Such is the world described for us in Bacon’s brief fragment and last work, The New Atlantis, published two years before his death. It is a government of the people and for the people by the selected best of the people – a government by technicians, architects, astronomer, geologists, biologists, physicians, chemists, economists, psychologists and sociologists.
Even a lover of the Baconian spirit must concede too, that the great Chancellor, while laying down the law for science, failed to keep abreast of the science of his time. He rejected Copernicus and ignored Kepler and Tycho Brade; he depreciated Gilbert and seemed unaware of Harvey. In truth, he loved discourse better than research?
Men in great places are servants: servants to the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business, so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons nor in their action, nor in their time. What a wistful summary of Bacon’s epilogue!
~ Will Durant in Story of Philosophy.
Roger Ascham, the English scholar (1515-1568), described the four cardinal virtues in demand at the court of the Queen.
“Cog, lie, flaber and face
Four ways in court to win men grace.
If thou be thrall to none of these
Away, good Piers Home, John Chase”
It was one of the customs of those lively days for judges to take ‘present’ from persons trying cases in their courts. Bacon was not above the practice in this matter and his tendency to keep his expenditure several years in advance of his income forbade him the luxury of scruples. In 1621 a suitor charged him with taking money (bribe) for the dispatch of a suit. Yielding to pressure from the Parliament which clamored for his dismissal King James I sent him to the Tower with a heavy fine which the king himself remitted later.
Considering many of the historical facts about Bacon it can safely be concluded that he was more Machiavellian than the original Italian counterpart. Francis Bacon was a party to the execution of the handsome Earl of Essex by Queen Elizabeth I for refusing to return the love queen Elizabeth I had for the Earl and Earl of Essex was not only Bacon’s unstinting friend but also a benefactor by gifting him a whole estate when Bacon was penniless.
According to a historical account by Will Durant, King James I refused to accept Bacon’s suggestions for the support of science. But leaders of mercantilism and the gentry helped to found Royal Society, which was later to become the greatest association of scientists in the world. It named Bacon as their model and inspiration. “They hoped that this organization of English research would lead the way towards the Europe wide association. . . . the whole tenor and career of British thought have followed the philosophy of Bacon”, wrote Will Durant. But the fact that the modern world too followed Bacon as its philosopher and trend-setter has become quite unsettling today.
Thus it is seen that modern science and art were born as wayward children to perverted parents in a vitiated environment of an age high in societal decay – a world with no moral authority – the Church at that time was in steady decline on all fronts. Colonialism was thus the success of a smarter mechanical and mercantile system over a natural system in utter confusion – induction over deduction – man became the first victim and has remained as such ever since. Wrote Bacon in his later years, “man in great place is thrice servant: servant of the sovereign or state; servant of fame; and servant of business. It is strange to seek power and lose liberty.”
Mechanization of Art and the Development of Fictions
We all experience the world through our own eyes, perceptions, and experiences. One of the beauties of art is that it creates a scenario wherein the artist can pull you out of your version of reality and into his or hers. In the February 18, 2014 issue of Psychological Science, Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino and University of Southern California business school professor Scott S. Wiltermuth published their article titled “Evil Genius? How Dishonesty Can Lead to Greater Creativity.” You can click on the link to read the full details of their experiments, but they basically tested how people put in situations involving deceit or rule breaking were then able to perform creative tasks. “We propose that dishonest and creative behavior have something in common: They both involve breaking rules,” Gino and Wiltermuth write. “Because of this shared feature, creativity may lead to dishonesty (as shown in prior work), and dishonesty may lead to creativity (the hypothesis we tested in this research).”
At its worst, this idea ends with humanity in a creativity-fueled downward spiral into a chaos in which cheaters prosper more and more often because they learn how to prosper even more creatively. This study was the subject of an article written by Bob Duggan in the portal Big Think on February 25, 2014.
The idea that being a good liar helps one be a better actor, novelist, or painter isn’t a new one, but a group of business school professors recently put the idea to an empirical test and came up with some interesting conclusions about the connection between deceit and creativity. Not only might artists be better at lying, cheating, and general rule breaking, but it’s also possible that such behaviors might actually add to one’s creativity. At the risk of plunging the art world and the world in general into chaos, we cannot ignore the fact that liars and swindlers make better artists.
Development of arts and fictions is largely a modern age trend. It was towards the end of Middle Ages that human communication began to take the shape of art through glorified symbols (drawings), stylish languages and poems using similarities, inferences and suppositions. The tragedy of this deductive communication method occurs when induction impulse grips the “geniuses” in arts and philosophy in modern history.
Let us first examine the very concept of art and its development in history. When ground realities and raw truths become more and more uncomfortable and inconvenient to the elite and the ruling class, they start to apply or sponsor some sort of domestication of truth. May be it was man’s effort to reminisce his past, that his memories and sense of beauty began to come out as paintings and sculptures. It is like a smart photographer producing a ‘wonderful’ picture as he visualizes the event with added highlights and avoiding the inconvenient scenes that actually form part of the real event, and thus artificially creating added scenes and background to create special effects to his picture. Here we may say the picture looks ‘better’ than the original. Likewise, novelists and the ‘scholars’ make every effort to present their ‘picture’ of the story with ‘convenient’ omission and new mechanical additions – in a way to view the new ‘fact’ or ‘reality’ ending up far removed from its natural environment, and the product becomes fictions. And fiction or art becomes more effective and interesting than the natural the organic realities and truth.
But fiction is made up stories and all imaginations and crap (novels, story books, comics and so forth, movies). And truth is in fact sometimes out of this world, so strange that it is even stranger than fiction. It basically means real world is stranger than fiction. Thus many of these artistic ‘truths’ and fictions are given celebrity status and popular trademarks by the elite. Thus art becomes marketable ‘truth’. It is wrong to say that there is originality in art, for the very concept of art itself is the artificial depiction of naturality, some sort of domesticated reality that is far removed from its original/natural context, content or position. Hence art, like modern science, is also a cemetery of dead facts or arrested and linear life process.
Francis Bacon, as an influential English essayist and statesman, articulated a philosophy of science and technology that drew upon earlier Christian thought that substantially molded the work ethic and the Puritan worldview. In Advancement of Learning (1605), he wrote that scientific activity has as its appropriate end, the glory of the Creator and the improvement of man’s estate. In his Novum Organum (1620), he foresaw technological knowledge, especially as embodied in machines, as a way to recover from the Edenic Fall and to regain a paradise characterized as within the reach of all men.
Bacon urged elite men of philosophy to converse with craftsmen in order to unite natural philosophy and the mechanical arts. Philosophers could rationalize craft practice, and craftsmen could bring the philosophers face-to-face with the physical world that they sought to understand. In his essay New Atlantis (1627), Bacon imagined wise men in a house of philosophy (Solomon’s House) applying philosophy to the mechanical arts. They and other Puritans of a ‘New Jerusalem’ would have dominion over Nature.
Poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost (1667), stressed Nature-domination theme, too. Humans armed with the mechanical arts and science would have dominion over Earth, seas, and heaven. Mother Nature would surrender to man. Characterization of Nature as feminine became an oft-sounded theme among the second creators who were largely blunt patriarchs and masochists in the Old and New Worlds.
The very concept of mechanization of art is unnatural and anti-evolutionary in that it destroys or negates the inherent diversity and the perpetual newness or originality of natural development which is living every moment as new life and new reality. Thus art, like modern science, only helped to arrest and obstruct the real development and real progress from even human visions and perceptions by filling the mechanized world with images, duplications and copies, by the millions.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and the revolution in fictions: When art turns fiction, which it has always been, we create the Romans, the Brutes’ and the Mark Antonys’ among ourselves; we only tend to recreate history and live in the past. Shakespeare got so much worked up with the imagery of English language – in which the artist par excellence reveled – that the very Shakespearean English became the real English. Industrial Revolution can also be described as an English language revolution.
There is no other literary work that has come to pioneer the artistic fiction as the works of William Shakespeare. So much influential and alluring have these works become with modern literature, art and fiction that the most successful of the later works are being branded as ‘Shakespearean.’ No wonder for the British patronage of William Shakespeare and thus he still remains the longest quoted in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
Shakespeare was born as the son of a trader. He wrote drama and plays based on certain facts he found in ‘Chronicles’ of England, Scotland and Ireland (1577) by Raphael Holinshed, the 16th century historian. They include Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Cleopatra, Merchant of Venice etc., in a manner to please the gallery who relished cog, lie and flattery in the depicting of which Shakespeare was a street-smart. Shakespeare, like most of his contemporaries, was a plagiarist and a hack by today’s standards — he stole and sampled, he wrote for money and he earned it. Indeed, if today’s standards of “intellectual property” and copyright existed in Shakespeare’s day, he’d have been writing sonnets from the Tower of London.
Shakespeare earned money as an actor and playwright. He was in the good books of Queen Elizabeth I in whose court he often enacted plays and reveled.He was so successful that he owned the biggest drama company ‘Chamberlin’s Men,’ and was able to buy one of the finest houses in Stratford, New Pace. A perfect professional and street-smart, he changed to the ‘King’s Men’ after James I succeeded Elizabeth in 1603.
The latest revelation that most of the ‘Shakespearean plays’ that we have today are not actually written by William Shakespeare but by some intelligent enthusiast in his famous Globe Theatre is still a controversy.
Later-on ‘macro free radicals’ as civilization builders with autism/Asperger’s syndrome
Most famous and key geniuses of modern science are reported to have suffered from Asperger’s syndrome and other behavioral problems. Asperger’s syndrome is one of the most missed diagnosis in adult psychiatry. It is characterized by avoidance of eye contact, problems reading non-verbal behaviour, being a loner with a lack of social know-how, having problems sharing thoughts, and problems with empathy. They generally speak with a high pitched or unusual tone of voice and repeat phrases. As children they often line things up, flap their hands, and are fussy eaters. They often have narrow obsessive interests in engineering, mechanics, astronomy, science, palaeontology, etc.
The features of autism/Asperger’s syndrome that would enhance creativity would include intense focus on narrow interests. It is rarely possible to make major advances in modern science without this narrow intense focus on compartmentalization and specialization. Among other behavioral problems, the following famous geniuses of modern science are reported to have suffered from Asperger’s syndrome.
Sir Isaac Newton(1642-1727): At the adolescent age 23, Newton invented and developed a kind of mathematics that is now known as calculus. Calculus was a new and powerful method that carried modern mathematics above the level of Greek Geometry.
One of the greatest scientists of all time is also the hardest genius to diagnose, but historians agree he had a lot going on. Newton suffered from huge ups and downs in his moods, indicating bipolar disorder, combined with psychotic tendencies. His inability to connect with people could place him on the autism spectrum. He also had a tendency to write letters filled with mad delusions, which some medical historians feel strongly indicates schizophrenia. In addition to the ill-treatment of his scientific colleagues, Newton was rumored to have had a homosexual relationship with one John Wickins, a friend with whom he had lived for twenty years; and a later liaison with Nicholas Fatio De Duillier, a man twenty years his junior and with whom he exchanged intimate letters, many of which were later censored by Newton or a confidant.
Unknown to most, Newton spent most of his time interpreting biblical prophecy, writing over a million words on the subject. One of his more intriguing predictions is the date of 2060 AD as the end of the world, but that date surfaces only because Newton decided that the Roman Catholic Church was the Antichrist. As Westfall says, Newton “hated and feared popery,” and as Koestler concludes, Newton was “a crank theologian like Kepler…and held that the tenth horn of the fourth beast of the Apocalypse represented the Roman Catholic Church.”
Whether he suffered from one or a combination of these serious illnesses, they did not stop him, as a gifted mathematician, from inventing calculus, explaining gravity, and building telescopes, among his other great scientific achievements. “For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb”, Aldous Huxley thus commented about Sir Isaac Newton.
Wildly crazy, cruel and inconsiderate to his peers, Newton actually was so arrogant that he seemed not to have regarded anyone as his peer. He documented in excruciating and obsessive details the behavior of falling objects, which includes the falling of living, breathing, caring people. He plotted mathematically and with complex formulae the rates that objects, including people, would fall, and the force with which they would strike the ground — it’s hard not to imagine him cackling with glee like a psychopathic child pulling the wings off flies as he calculated the trajectories of objects, like people, flying through space. Many describe him as a horrible man.
Look back over the worst tragedies of the twentieth century, this period of time when Newtonists have run amuck. We’ve been lofting people into the sky for well over a hundred years, and quite often, they’ve fallen down. How many have died due to the tyranny of the gravity Newton put into the hands of conscienceless materialist scientists? Examine Hitler’s record, for instance. He was an ardent Newtonist who put his Wehrmacht to evil purpose, building machines that used the wicked geometries of Newton to shatter Europe. Nazi artillery and tanks used Newton’s tools to strike at his righteous opponents.
If we can imagine some sort of polling taking place in university physics departments sometime, it is certain that we won’t find anyone of the faculty members questioning Newton at all. Gravity is over and done with those people, with nothing left to learn, and they won’t tolerate even the slightest deviation from Newtonist dogma. An open-minded physicist who suggests even the tiniest revision to the “theory” — for instance, suggesting that may be Newton got the exponent a little bit wrong, and gravity varies with the cube of the distance, and they laugh at you and refuse to give you tenure. Shouldn’t these questions be discussed? Are they so intolerant that they will allow no dissent at all?
Incapable of love and connecting to humans, Newton remained unmarried for life.
Albert Einstein(1879-1955): Like Newton, Albert Einstein is reported to have had high functioning autism/Asperger’s syndrome. Einstein who was called something a despot because of his chauvinistic behavior which reportedly exceeded the standard of his own time – particularly his relation with his wife – also devised one of his first ‘thought experiment’ at an young age of 16 and this experiment was later to lead him to his stunning theories and thus to his celebrity status. The intuitive flash of the relativity theory appeared in his brain during his early twenties. Einstein was only 26 when his paper on special theory of relativity appeared in the German scientific journal in 1905. So much to describe these theories as immature.
Einstein’s private life was described by one biographer as ‘’a chaos of serious affairs, secret trysts and emotional tightrope acts that constantly threatened ruinous scandal’’. His indifference to his children, however, was outshone by the animosity he showed to his wife. (The Private Lives of Albert Einstein by Highfield and Carter, p. 211). Highfield and Carter remark: “Dukas, Einstein’s own biographer, became fiercely loyal to her employer: she was liable to attack as ‘dung’ for any biography detail that dared shed light on Einstein’s personal life, and she saw newsmen as her ‘natural enemies”.
In the information contained in his personal papers, Einstein fathered a daughter out of wedlock with Mileva Mari, although the couple eventually married. They named the child Lieserl, but that is all the affection she would ever receive from Einstein. He persuaded Mileva to give up the child to an orphanage so that he could avoid the social repercussions of having an illegitimate daughter. He handled it as a mere business transaction, for he never saw Lieserl face-to-face. As biographer Michele Zackheim puts it:
Einstein scholars have concluded from his September 19 [1903] letter that the couple had decided to put Lieserl up for adoption, based on Albert’s concern that the child’s registration (or lack thereof) not be a source of trouble for her – or her parents – in the years to come…Apparently, in the end, Albert and Mileva agreed it would be best to pretend that Lieserl had never existed. And so, with a deliberate hand, the short life of Lieserl Einstein-Mari was erased. (Einstein’s Daughter, pp. 52-53.).
Zackheim also concludes from her detailed research in Mileva’s hometown that Lieserl had a severe mental handicap which helped seal the Einsteins’ decision, and that she died at twenty-one months old, on September 21, 1903.
Regarding the reckless, immoral relationship Einstein kept with several women concurrently, which has later come to be known as ‘Einstein’s Theory of Special Promiscuity’, several papers are available. In one of his more audacious moves, Einstein had actually pleaded with Mileva to allow him to marry Elsa, using as his excuse that Elsa’s daughter “…had to suffer from rumors that have been circulating regarding my relationship with her mother. That weighs upon me and needs to be remedied through a formal marriage” (Einstein’s Daughter, p. 85.). If this had been the real motive for Einstein’s pleading, we might be tempted to conclude that he was a deranged individual who had lost touch with reality. The real truth is more sinister and shocking. The thirty-nine-year-old Einstein was actually in a debate with himself whether he should marry Elsa or Elsa’s twenty-year-old daughter, Ilse, while all along he had been shacking up with Elsa (for the four years prior), while still married to Mileva. As Zackheim puts it:
Albert was not being honest [with Milvea]. By May [1918], he had made it clear that he wanted to marry Elsa’s daughter Ilse. Ilse reported to a friend, Georg Nicolai: ‘Yesterday, suddenly the question was raised about whether A[lbert] wished to marry Mama or me…Albert himself is refusing to take any decision, he is prepared to marry either Mama or me. I know that A[lbert] loves me very much, perhaps more than any other man ever will, he also told me so himself yesterday…’ (Einstein’s Daughter, pp. 85-86).
As for his highly chauvinistic and masculine behavior, records made public in 1996 show that Einstein, in the waning months of his time with Mileva, gave her a list of conditions (given below) in order for her to remain under his ‘financial’ care:
A. You will see to it: (1) that my clothes and linen are kept in order; (2) that I am served three regular meals a day in my room; (3) that my bedroom and study are always kept in good order and that my desk is not touched by anyone other than me.
B. You will renounce all personal relationships with me, except when these are required to keep up social appearances. In particular, you will not request: (1) that I sit with you at home; (2) that I go out with you or travel with you.
C. You will promise explicitly to observe the following point in any contact with me:
(1) You will expect no affection from me and you will not reproach me for this; (2) You must answer me at once when I speak to you; (3) You must leave my bedroom or study at once without protesting when I ask you to go; (4) You will promise not to denigrate me in the eyes of the children, either by word or deed
(London Daily Telegraph, October 30, 1996; Einstein’s Daughter, p. 77.)
Henry Cavendish (1731– 1810): Henry Cavendish who was an enormously successful scientist, who discovered hydrogen, had high functioning autism/Asperger’s syndrome. He had enormous difficulties in interpersonal relationships. He was a man of enormous routines and regularities in his conduct of his life. He was very poor at speech making. Nevertheless he could be very precise in his use of language. He lacked empathy in interpersonal relationships and A.J. Berry notes Cavendish’s “striking deficiencies as a human being”. Indeed “his habitual profound withdrawal lead one contemporary to characterise him as ‘the coldest and most indifferent of mortals.’”
Charles Babbage (1792 – 1871): Charles Babbage, who is known as the father of the modern computer and an excellent mathematician, also had high functioning autism/Asperger’s syndrome. He was an autodidact. He spent a great deal of his life trying to build calculating machines. The first one was called a ‘difference engine’ and the second an ‘analytical engine’. According to Swade Babbage’s engine ‘gave new impetus to the notion of a “thinking machine” and stimulated the debate about the relationship between the mind and physical mechanism’. He had major problems in interpersonal relationships. He worked largely in isolation. He had a socially immature personality not uncommon in persons with high functioning autism/Asperger’s syndrome. He suffered from anxiety and depression. He was described as an eccentric and comic figure. He was naïve and showed a lack of commonsense.
Norbert Wiener (1894 – 1964): Norbert Wiener was another high ranking mathematician with high functioning autism/Asperger’s syndrome. He was an autodidact, a linguist, and a rather absent minded professor. He was a socially immature child. He lacked empathy and was tactless with people. He was rather a lone wolf and was uncertain about how to conduct conversations. He was a very poor teacher. He was very routine bound. He was a rather clumsy child which is not uncommon with HFA/ASP and indeed like many others he suffered from anxiety and depression. He was described as being very eccentric.
Nikola Tesla: Nikola Tesla was a famous electrical inventor who had high functioning autism/Asperger’s syndrome. He had a photographic memory. He was a linguist. He was an avid reader. He had an obsessive compulsive personality type. He was an autodictat. He had major difficulties in social relationships, was socially immature and naïve. He was extremely controlling and spoke with a high pitched voice. He was extremely naïve in dealing with people who would finance his inventions. He was very much a loner and remained unmarried and was extremely interested in pigeons. He had no capacity to manage money. His main interest was in inventions. He was the inventor of radio among many other things.
David Hilbert (1862 – 1943): David Hilbert was a great mathematician who had high functioning autism/Asperger’s syndrome. He showed eccentric interpersonal behaviour and was socially immature. His only interest was in discussing mathematical subjects. He showed extreme self control. Routines were extremely important to him. He tended to show repetitive language. Nevertheless he was very precise in his use of words. He showed lack of empathy. He believed no scientist should marry. He also suffered from anxiety and depression.
G. H. Hardy: The great English mathematician G. H. Hardy had high functioning autism/Asperger’s syndrome. He was a very eccentric man who never married. Routine was extremely important to him. His great interest in life was mathematics. He loved cats. He was extremely honest in his behaviour. Later he suffered from depression and attempted suicide.
Dimitri Mendeleyev: Dimitri Mendeleyev who developed the periodic table in chemistry had high functioning autism/Asperger’s syndrome. He had major difficulties in interpersonal relationships. He was most eccentric looking. He cut his hair once a year. He had tremendous focus on chemistry and on chemical elements and it was this intense focus that brought him success. Like so many successful people with HFA / ASP he performed poorly in school.
Edward Teller: The most classic person of all with Asperger’s syndrome was Edward Teller the father of the H Bomb and the subject of a recent book called Edward Teller – The Real Strangelove from Harvard University Press.
Radicalizing market systems: privatizing creativity and profiteering of mad genius traits by the corporate forces
By the 1800s, creativity was generally understood to be the private property of eccentric men who tended to drink themselves to death in Paris. By the mid-20th century, the strict social division of labour, where only a handful of gifted geniuses got to be “creative,” was held to be best for everyone.
The call to embrace creativity does not typically include a call for equality, decent and meaningful work, social care and compassion, and social justice. Here capitalism drastically began to alter what sorts of creativity we think are valuable and it focuses humanity’s creative energies towards earning ever greater profit for a few. The capitalist economy has little use for any artistic or cultural expression that doesn’t make someone a profit. Capitalism thus drastically alters what sorts of creativity we think are valuable and it focuses humanity’s creative energies towards earning ever greater profit for a few.
Today a new hype about creativity is the buzzword. For one, it’s become big business: as the globalized economy becomes more and more competitive, corporations are increasingly desperate to have their workers “create” new and different things to sell. As advertising media accelerate and slowly fill up public space, marketers are frantic to “creatively” (the people who come up with advertising ideas are actually called “creatives”) develop new ways of pitching products. And workplaces—from factories to hospitals to high tech firms to fast-food joints to schools—are all eager to “create” new products and forms of efficiency to keep the wolf at bay (usually at the expense of workers who must work longer, faster and leaner).
The problem with the new hype around creativity is that it presumes that the economic system we have, with all its gross injustices and horrifying effects (global warming, child poverty, unrewarding jobs, imperial warfare, the exploitation of the third world, and so on), is inevitable. It doesn’t really imagine that everyone will get to express their creativity and enjoy the life of the artist. In fact, the new hype over creativity actually (ironically) makes us less creative in how we think about social problems and solutions. It makes creativity an individualized thing, the “private property” of each isolated person.
But in reality, creativity is a social, socialized and socializing phenomenon: it’s something we do together as social animals. Every great creative genius was part of a community of peers and a society that supported her or him. Only when we recognize that creativity is a collaborative process (not an individual possession) can creativity help us transform our lives and our world creatively, and employ creativity for the good of everyone.
However, with market men (middlemen) emerging as the godfathers of the mad genius creatives, creativity soon started to be commoditized. The whole situation intensified near the turn of the 20th century and the birth of what cultural critic and historian Walter Benjamin called “The Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” With film, photography, cheaper inks and printing presses, industrial manufacturing and the phonograph, culture-as-commodity became the property of the rich. By the advent of radio and television, the idea of creativity as the special property of gifted individuals (rather than social groups) was being broadcast into every home. The idea of the genius was lionized in the figures of stars and celebrities whose glamorous, aristocratic lifestyles illustrated their semi-divine status. Public schooling valourized a list of upper-class creative geniuses all students were to look up to at the same time as they denigrated everyday and working class culture as crude, simplistic and “derivative” (i.e. not creative).
Part of the imperialist project was insisting all other cultures acknowledge the scientifically developed people as the most creative “race” and see creative accomplishments of other cultures (in the arts, sciences, theology, ecology and other fields) as childish imitations. Highly developed nations, for instance, established schools that taught the “canon” of great Western thinkers and artists as the pinnacles of human creative achievement, reaffirming a sense of superiority that justified their “enlightened” domination of other peoples. We still study this canon, to the exclusion of many of the great works of world literature, art and science (from India, Arabia, Persia, China, the indigenous Americas, etc.).
It was only with the rise of global, European capitalism, that the idea of the “creative genius” emerged in Europe, largely in the 1700s. As the feudal system fell apart a new class of merchants, financiers, factory owners and middlemen started to demand “culture.” This was not “culture” as an inclusive part of community and everyday life (the ways songs, dances, and even plays used to be, for rich and poor alike) but as distinct objects or experiences that could be purchased for exclusive, private use by individuals — commodities to be consumed. This new class demanded novels, paintings, objects d’art, opera tickets and other articles of “refinement” to prove to themselves (and everyone else) that they were distinct from (and better than) the other classes or races of people, despite having no ‘noble’ blood.
Real creativity is the ability to change the world together. Or, more accurately, the ability to see our collective creative efforts realized in reality. But today although we have more opportunities than ever to “be creative,” we have less and less of an ability to actually control our fates.
Professionalization of religions and the social free-radicalization of society
Professionals of religions are to spirituality in the macro world what free radicals are to materiality in the micro world. Fictions developed to magical level when religions started promising ‘after life’. And when this self deception became popular, almost all religions began to agree on joint deception and that is how we have many religions co-existing, harmoniously. Religion free radicalizes the social mind by separating spirituality from its natural environment which in turn free radicalizes the social body of society. The radicalized societies thus free radicalizes the state, the states in turn free radicalize the whole world. The newly free radicalized world is a highly unstable one with no independent stand unlike its existence for millions of years in the past when it was in a wholistic, natural, independent and thus stable state. (More on this topic discussed in chapter 13: Rape of Mind).
‘MACRO’ FREE RADICALS AVERT SOCIETAL DECAY
Sages, great humanists and thinkers are the ‘antioxidants’ type of macro free radicals that offset the societal degeneration
Just as there are free radicals in micro (atomic) world causing biological degeneration and a beneficial type of free radicals called antioxidants that prevents the degeneration, there are also similar macro free radicals (experts, scientists, and other professionals) in macro biological degeneration and a beneficial type of macro free radicals called ‘macro antioxidants’ (in the figures of sages, great humanists and thinkers) that prevent the macro degeneration.
Here, I am pointing out certain beneficial types of ‘free radicals’ in human social body that are the equivalents to a few beneficial types of free radicals (antioxidants ) in human physical body. These beneficial types of free radicals are naturally produced by some systems within the body and have many beneficial effects that cannot be overlooked. Sometimes the body’s immune system’s cells purposefully create free radicals to neutralize viruses and bacteria. Our bodies produce various antioxidant enzymes, including superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxides and catalyses that destroy many types of harmful free radicals produced through degeneration. Similarly, in the long macroevolution of human society, many pristine natural humans, sages, great reformers, great thinkers also emerge as the ‘antioxidant’ defenses in the societal body of mankind.
Intelligence is not everything. There must also be morality and wisdom, and these elements cannot be measured in a scale like IQ. However there are many with high IQ in power who suffer from a total lack of these two elements. We have seen that many genius high IQ people are indeed the destructive type of ‘macro free radicals’ in the macro societal degeneration in which certain type of macro free radicals are there that act as the macro antioxidants. These ‘macro antioxidccants’ are the geniuses who are having high morality and wisdom.
“Macro Free Radicals’ and People’s Revolutions: We know that the beneficial types of macro free radicals – ‘macro antioxidants’ — help to avert societal degeneration and disintegration in society. When this process happens in society on a hasty and very massive manner, we call the development as PEOPLE”S REVOLUTIONS. There are many prominent geniuses in modern human history who are having high morality and wisdom and who may be considered as the beneficial types of ‘macro free radicals’ – ‘macro antioxidants’ – who played leading roles in rescuing their respective society/nation from slavery, exploitation, degeneration and other social evils. French revolutionary philosopher Rousseau, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev and Pope Francis are just a few of them. Then there have now come to the fore certain People’s Movements, like Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, AAP (Layman Party) of India and the like that are spreading globally and have come a long way in averting corruption and other social evils societal degeneration and disintegration in society Here, apart from briefly profiling Rousseau, whom I consider as the father of all People’s Revolutions in modern history, I am referring to a few contemporary humanist leaders of the ongoing People’s Revolution and who otherwise are the prominent ‘macro antioxidants’ that greatly help to ward off societal decay, destruction and even the imminent extinction of mankind today. The more detailed discussion is given in the last chapter 19, on the following leaders and some outstanding People’s Movements:
Mikhail Gorbachev (1931 – ): The leader who drastically changed one half of then world (Communist world), rescued the world from cold war and thus provided the world a much required breathing space to think of real solutions.
Pope Francis (1936—): The Layman’s Pope who is out to launched nothing short of a revolution in the Catholic Church (of 1.5 billion people),much the same way Mikhail Gorbacheve cleansed the Soviet Party structure with Glasnost and Perestroika. This will certainly compel the world to change for the better.
People’s Revolutions: Movements like Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, AAP (Layman Party) of India and the like are spreading to most nations and cities of the world which shows the growing importance of common people taking up the real human issues through live humane dialogue, mainly via internet in politics.
(For more on the biographical data on Rousseau, Mikhail Gorbachev and Pope Francis, please see table 7: Macro Free Radicals and Macro Antioxidants.)
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
“How did it come about that a man born poor, losing his mother at birth and soon deserted by his father, afflicted with a painful and humiliating disease, left to wander for twelve years among alien cities and conflicting faiths,… suspected of crime and insanity, and seeing, in his last months, the apotheosis of his greatest enemy—how did it come about that this man, after his death, triumphed over Voltaire, revived religion, transformed education, elevated the morals of France, inspired the Romantic movement and the French Revolution, influenced the philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer, the plays of Schiller, the novels of Goethe, the poems of Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelly, the socialism of Marx, the ethics of Tolstoy, and, altogether, had more effect upon posterity than any other writer or thinker of that eighteenth century in which writers were more influential than they had ever been before? Here, if anywhere, the problem faces us: what is the role of genius in history…?”
Thus reads the celebrated first sentence of the book Rousseau and Revolution by the authors Will and Ariel Durant (1967) in which they pose also the psychological problem of the ‘genius’ community, its mysterious irrepressibility and its ability to arise from the most unpromising of lineages and its gift to flourish even in the meanest of circumstances. Here I am presenting Jean Jacques Rousseau as a key figure, as a striking ‘macro antioxidant’ (the antidote to counteract the societal degeneration) in the macro ‘free radicalization’ of the European society of his time.
In the writings of Rousseau, we can see a cultural perspective of Frankenstein, the technology monster unleashed by industrial revolution that paved the way for the massive DEGENERATION of human society through the massive generation of free radicals of both micro and macro verities. Rousseau’s theory of the natural man as a noble savage, born free but everywhere in chains and inevitably corrupted (degenerated) by society, focuses one of the minor concerns of the novel, its theory of education. In the great debate on the relative importance of nature versus nurture, on whether learning achievements should be attributed primarily to innate intelligence or to social environment, he wrote: “…..since learned men had appeared, honest men were nowhere to be found. I venture to declare that a state of reflection (mechanized education) is contrary to Nature; and a thinking man is a depraved animal.”
The arguments of Rousseau, who is known as the father of the romantic movement, and whose critique takes shape even before the inauguration of the Industrial Revolution itself, are strictly in response to ideas expressed by the philosophies of his time. In his 1750 Discourse on the Sciences and Arts Rousseau boldly argues that “as the commodities of life multiply, as the arts are perfected and luxury extended, true courage falls away, the militant virtues fade away.”
Rousseau sees that even scientific rationality, through the alienation of affection, can often weaken the determination and commitment needed for decisive action. Thus, in a paradox that will become a hallmark of romanticism, Rousseau turns against technology and criticized the historical embodiment of technology.
(This essay has been taken from the book, LIFE ON MELTDOWN)
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