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A Review
of
Chapter V
of
Boris Sidis'
Philistine and Genius
by Doug Renselle

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Move to any Chapter of Boris Sidis' Philistine & Genius,
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says, "You are here!")


 
Chapter V
Recognize Evils & Evoke Natural Evolute Selection.
©Quantonics' contrived chapter title.

PAGE

QUOTEs
(Most quotes verbatim Boris Sidis, some paraphrased.)

COMMENTs
(Relevant to Pirsig, William James Sidis, and Quantonics Thinking Modes.)
29

"We press our children into the triumphant march of our industrial Juggernaut [Sidis' capitalization.]. Over 1,700,000 children under 15 years of age toil in fields, factories, mines and workshops. The slums and the factory cripple the energies of our young generation. The slaughter of the innocents and the sacrifice of our children to the insatiable Moloch of industry exclude us from the rank of civilized society and place us on the level of barbaric nations.

Our educators are narrow-minded pedants. They are occupied with the dry bones of text-books, the sawdust of pedagogics and the would-be scientific experiments of educational psychology; they"

(Our bold emphasis. Our bracketed notes.)








Ask yourself seriously, "Has this changed in last 100 years?"
30

"are ignorant of the real vital problems of human interests, a knowledge of which goes to make the truly educated man.

"About the middle of the nineteenth century, Buckle [1821-1862. Henry Thomas Buckle, English historian. PDR] made the prediction that no war was any more to occur among civilized nations. Henceforth peace was to reign supreme. 'The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. . . . Nations shall beat their swords into ploughshares [Boris' archaic spelling and concatenation. PDR] and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation nor shall they learn war any more.' This prophecy was rather hasty. We have had since the Civil war [1861-1865 PDR], the Franco-Prussian war [1870-1871 PDR], the Spanish-American war [1898 PDR], the Boer war [1899-1902 PDR], the Russo-Japanese war [1904-1905 PDR], not counting the ceaseless wars of extermination"

(Our bold emphasis. Our bracketed notes.)

I know, it is difficult, but try to just read through Boris' gender bias. (His thelogos affects me similarly. Doug.)










He speaks of anti-Semitism, and other race-selective pogroms and atrocities.
31

"carried on by civilized nations among the various semi-civilized nations and primitive tribes. Civilized nations do not as yet beat their swords into ploughshares, but keep on increasing the strength of their 'armed peace,' and are ready to fight bloody battles in the quest of new lands and the conquest of new markets.

"In spite of The Hague conference of peace convoked by the peace-loving Czar, no other age has had such large standing armies provided with such costly and efficient weapons of execution ready for instant use. The red spectre [Boris' spelling. PDR] still stalks abroad claiming its victims. We still believe in the baptism of fire and redemption by blood. The dogma of blood-redemption is still at the basis of our faith and, consciously or unconsciously, we brand that sacred creed on the minds of the young generation."

(Our bold emphasis. Our bracketed notes.)
32

"We are not educated to see and understand the wretchedness, the misery of our life, — the evil of the world falls on the blind spot of our eye. In the name of evolution and the survival of the fittest, we justify the grasping arm of the strong, and even glory in the extermination of the weak. The weak, we say, must be weeded out by the processes of natural selection. The strong are the best; it is right that they should survive and flourish like a green bay tree. The fact is that we are still dominated by the law of the jungle, the den and the cave. We are still wild at heart. We still [harken] [hearken PDR] to the call of the wild; we are ruled by the fist, the claw and the tooth.

"Love, justice, gentleness, peace,, reason, sympathy and pity, all humane feelings and promptings are with us sentiments of 'unnatural' or supernatural religion"

(Our bold emphasis.)





Juxtapose 'social' strength and 'intellectual' strength. Juxtapose social and intellectual weakness too. Metaphorically, which value pattern do you want as mast, and which do you want as keel? (We are really interested in your views on this! Please comment. Tell us which page you are referring or which review. Thanks in advance for efforts you exert responding!)

Jared's 17May2000 Comments
33

"which we profess in our churches, but in which we really have no faith as good for actual life. We mistake brutishness for courage, and by fight and by war we train the beast in man.

"All humane feelings are regarded as so many hindrances to progress; they favor, we claim, the survival of the weak. We are, of course, evolutionists, and believe most firmly in progress. We believe that the luxuries and vices of the strong are conducive to prosperity, and that the evils of life by the automatic grinding of that grind-organ known as the process of evolution somehow lead to a higher civilization.

"When in the beginning of the eighteenth century Bernard de Mandeville [1670-1733. Dutch born English author of satire, medicine and ethics. PDR] proclaimed the apparently paradoxical principle that Private Vices are Public Benefits, the academic moralists were shocked"

(Our bold emphasis. Our bracketed notes.)



Evolutionists, by their admission of incremental/quantal mutation of reality, are pluralists. Yet we see much monist fundamentalism in Boris. See our William James review, and read his chapters on "The One and the Many." See both Chapter VII and Chapter VIII. Quantum metaphors of these dilemmatic ISMs may be viewed thus:

monism:

pluralism:

quantum cohesion

many quantum islandic autonomies

From which we may provide quantum heuristics of quanton(cohesion,autonomy) and quanton(monism,pluralism) which corresponds roughly to quanton(DQ,SQ) where we view quantum monism as a proxy metaphor of quantum cohesion which is an isoflux/DQ real manifestation.

Also, see our very recent Pirsigean vis-à-vis Bergsonian Perspectives of Monism and Pluralism. Quantum realities' both-all/ands rear their omnipresence. Doug - 6Jun2001.

34 "at such profane brutality. Mandeville only proclaimed the leading, the guiding principle of the coming age of industrial prosperity. We now know better. Are we not evolutionists? Have we not learned that progress and evolution and the improvement of the race are brought about by the fierce struggle for existence, by the process of natural selection, by the merciless elimination of the weak, and by the triumph of the strong and the fit? What is the use of being sentimental? Like Brennus, the Gaul, we throw our sword on the scales of blinded justice and shout triumphantly 'Vœ victis!'" (Our bracketed notes.)


Clearly, Boris questions morality of absolute change. Here we see his monist fundamentalism in its classical, non-quantum role. Classically monism and pluralism are opposing ISMs. Classicists impose their either/or dogma on monism and pluralism. Classicists treat them as versus, pugilistic, warlike dichotomies. To show this, in Quantonics, we use dichon(monism, pluralism). We see this stance evident in Boris' words.
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Doug Renselle
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©Quantonics, Inc., 2000-2012 Rev. 26Aug2009  PDR Created: 5May2000  PDR
(18May2000 rev - Add Jared's comments on page 32.)
(6Jun2001 rev - Add to p. 33 comments.)
(17Jan2005 rev - Add p. 33 comments 'quantum cohesion' link to 'quantum coherence.')
(14Apr2006 rev - Adjust colors. Reset legacy red text. Release table constraints.)
(26Aug2009 rev - Make page current.)

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