[lit-ideas] Re: Richard Rorty, Nietzsche and Jungian Darwinism

  • From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:01:39 -0600

LH:
>>The Oversoul manipulates the general or collective actions of the individuals 
>>of a given species for its own good.  It takes responsibility for a specie's 
>>"survival strategy".... the Oversoul involves intentionality. <<

So you're bringing God back into the picture just when we thought we'd gotten 
rid of him, eh?  Even Heidegger didn't blame God for this mess and he was 
strict RC with German stridency.  You're an incorrigible Romantic, Lawrence.  
But a complex one, what with your love of no-nonsense Sparta.  You write: 

>>Jung's thesis would answer one of the objections to Darwinism, namely that 
>>there hasn't been enough time since life began on earth to account for the 
>>development of species with the randomness that Natural Selection involves.<<

I've never come across that objection.  Four billion years hasn't been enough 
time?  What did the Oversoul do to speed up the process?  Splice genes?  
Something that ten thousand biology labs are doing today?  Why the hell didn't 
he (or she) just splice up humans 4 million years ago?  Ones already wearing 
lab coats.  We could be on our way to Planet Newplacetopollute right now.  It 
is a long ride, you know.  Forget the Oversoul, Lawrence, except on Sunday.  


 >> those who see the Earth as all there is want to take us in a Luddite 
 >> direction: get rid of the machines.  Get rid of Technology, and we can 
 >> perhaps learn to bring ourselves back into harmony with nature. <<

Well, yes, as you mentioned, there's Ted Kaczynski.  And the other one??  I 
forget his name.  I think he's still on the loose, isn't he?  Technological 
World, take heed, a Luddite is out to get you.  Oh, and yes, let's not forget 
those damn Amish.  They're a clear and present danger to our technological 
world.  How will we ever get off this planet with them refusing to drive a car. 
 Heidegger wasn't opposed to technology per se, he just didn't like what it 
does to the position of the Catholic Church.  Technology makes us forget God by 
finding some other cause for this and that and we forget the Bingo of being 
there.  I don't know it means either.    


>>The Germans, some of them, seem to be worried about us.<< 

Yes, and some French and some Russians and some Canadians and some Mexicans and 
some Danes and some Swedes and some Italians and some Indonesians and some 
Venezuelans and some Israelis and some Jordanians and some Iranians and some 
Egyptians and some Syrians and some Texans and even some Argentines.  So what's 
your point?  Ah!  Here it is: "If there is a Jungian Oversoul, thinking 
logically from the Jungian assumption, it might well be stirring things up to 
hasten our departure from earth."

So, God is fomenting all this discord just so we'll get our shit together and 
get the hell out of Dodge before he/she starts  raining fire down on it.  Damn 
him/her!  Always with the destruction.  First the flooding, then the fires, 
then the locusts and frogs and rivers of blood.  He/she is a very dramatic God, 
I must say.  Some anger management issues though.

But your main point is, and I agree with you, we've got to stop the Luddites.  
Kill them if necessary.  It's shouldn't be so difficult, they only have their 
bare hands to fight with -- at least the true ones.  Kaczinski was a phony 
Luddite using technology to fight technology.  Not just phony, but unfair.  No 
more Neville Chamberlainism, from here on out it's war, war, war.  Level those 
goddamn mountains in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  We've got the technology.  
Won't take but a sec.  Then let's get busy making that rocket ship take'll us 
another solar system.  One with an eternal. 

I can hardly wait to move into my new home on Planet Newplacetopollute.  I'll 
buy a fixer-upper and sell it for ten times what I paid.  My career has just 
begun.  More plastic over here!

Mike Geary
obeying the Oversoul 
of Memphis


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Lawrence Helm 
  To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2009 11:32 PM
  Subject: [lit-ideas] Richard Rorty, Nietzsche and Jungian Darwinism


  On page 3 of Essays on Heidegger and Others, Richard Rorty writes, " . . . 
when you switch over from Deweyan talk of experience to Quinean-Davidsonian 
talk of sentences, it becomes easier to get the point of Nietzsche's famous 
remark, in 'Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,' that truth is a 'mobile 
army of metaphors.'

              "I interpret this remark along the lines of my treatment of 
Davidson's treatment of metaphor . . .  I take its point to be that sentences 
are only things that can be true or false, that our repertoire of sentences 
grows as history goes along, and that this growth is largely a matter of 
literalization of novel metaphors.  Thinking of truth in this way helps us 
switch over from a Cartesian-Kantian picture of intellectual progress (as a 
better and better fit between mind and world) to a Darwinian picture (as an 
increasing ability to shape the tools needed to help the species survive, 
multiply, and transform itself)."

   

              COMMENT:   When I read this, I immediately thought of Jung.  Jung 
hypothesized a sort of "Oversoul" for each species.  The Oversoul manipulates 
the general or collective actions of the individuals of a given species for its 
own good.  It takes responsibility for a specie's "survival strategy."     

              Jung's thesis seems consistent with the idea of "intellectual 
progress" involving an "increasing ability to shape the tools needed to help 
the species survive, multiply, and transform itself."   One might think of Jung 
as providing a more sophisticated form of Darwinism.  That is, whereas "Natural 
Selection" is a pragmatic use of chance, the Oversoul involves intentionality.  
Jung's thesis would answer one of the objections to Darwinism, namely that 
there hasn't been enough time since life began on earth to account for the 
development of species with the randomness that Natural Selection involves.  

              Then, in a tenuous intellectual leap I wondered whether this 
Oversoul, if it exists, is inspiring us to take our species off planet in order 
to survive, multiply and transform ourselves on other planets.   We in the US 
worry about the nature and danger represented by Islamism, but other 
nationalities worry about other things.  In the current issue of The Weekly 
Standard is an article by John Rosenthal entitled "America the Baleful, A 
German view of the nuclear threat . . . from the United States."  The Germans, 
some of them, seem to be worried about us.  Skipping whatever validity there is 
in the German fear, let us accept the idea that we spend a lot of time worrying 
about and mistrusting each other.  If there is a Jungian Oversoul, thinking 
logically from the Jungian assumption, it might well be stirring things up to 
hasten our departure from earth.

              This sounds like fanciful speculation, and perhaps it is, but 
those who see the Earth as all there is want to take us in a Luddite direction: 
get rid of the machines.  Get rid of Technology, and we can perhaps learn to 
bring ourselves back into harmony with nature.  Don't worry about the sun one 
day going nova and destroying the earth.  Our species will  have disappeared by 
then anyway.  That strikes me as rather "Neville Chamberlain" of them.  Are 
they really content to seek peace for our species during a limited life time 
rather than pursue our continuation off-planet?   I suppose they are.  The 
Luddite Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski seems to have been.

              In ancient days there were "portents in the skies" warning of 
coming disasters.  Nowadays we have disaster movies.  You can watch movies 
about comets, asteroids, tsunamis, 10.0 earthquakes, alien invasion, plagues 
and nuclear disasters.  As for myself, I've recently begun watching the series, 
Battlestar Galactica.  Yes the Cylons did come and destroy human life on the 
Twelve Colonies, but the Battlestar Galactica has escaped and hopes to find the 
mythical world, Earth.  Most think Earth never existed.  Even Commander Bill 
Adama believed it was a myth, but he lied to the small colony following 
Batttlestar Galactica, telling them he knew where Earth was, in order to give 
them hope.  Okay, I can accept that, but for now let's worry about getting to 
the Twelve Colonies.  We can worry about the Cylons and whether Earth really 
exists later.

   

  Lawrence

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