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

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Chapter VII
Pseudagogue Pedants Promulgating Prosaic Plug-ins.
©Quantonics' contrived chapter title.

PAGE

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

COMMENTs
(Relevant to Pirsig, William James Sidis, and Quantonics Thinking Modes.)
39 "In the education of the young generation the purpose of the nation is to bring up the child as a good [man] [person], as a liberal-minded citizen, devoted soul and body to the interests of social welfare. This purpose in the education of the young citizen is of the utmost importance in every society, but it is a vital need in a democratic society. We do not want narrow-minded patriots devoted to party-factions [Boris' abundant hyphenation], nor bigoted sectarians, nor greedy entrepreneurs fastening in trusts, like so many barnacles, on the body-politic. We do not want ringleaders and mobs, unscrupulous bosses and easily led voters. What we need is men having at heart the welfare of their fellow-men."

(Our bold emphasis. Our bracketed notes.)


Boris shows us what our 'real' problem is. He shows us how he, too, is trapped in it. It is not "...the purpose of the nation!" It is our purpose as individuals, first.

Boris' statements belie classicism's inversion of Object over Subject, which Pirsig's MoQ corrects. Boris in his own words shows us what is wrong, but he apparently does not see it. Using SOMese, "Objects have precedence over Subjects." Using MoQese, "Subjects are more highly evolved than Objects and thus have privilege and precedence over Objects." Nation is society. Society is less highly evolved than intellect. Intellect has privilege and precedence over society.

This takes us back to Mae-wan Ho's "...both global cohesion, and individual autonomy." Mother nature provides Mae-wan's "cohesion," so we do not need society to do that for us in a most general sense.

Some non-general, very local (i.e., tribes, nations, and states) specifics are required for societal order, as long as we realize there is no such thing as "One society fits all."

Those who preach, one society fits all, are classicist SOMites who adhere and/or pretend One Global Context and its concomitant One Global Truth. OGC and OGT are antitheses of individual autonomy/freedom, and are harbingers of absolute hegemony by those who wish to rule. Quantum reality denies both OGC and OGT. As you may choose to perceive, those well-cultured in SOM are easy targets for these ruthless hegemonists.

Individuals naturally provide their own autonomy when they learn to both cohere globally and depend upon themselves and be locally responsible and autonomous.

40

"The purpose of the education provided by the nation for its young generation is the rearing of healthy, talented, broadminded citizens. We need, above all, good citizens, active and intelligent, with a knowledge of life and with a delicate sense of discrimination and detection of evil in all its protean forms; we need strong-minded citizens with grit and courage to resist oppression and root out evil wherever it is found. A strong sense of recognition of evil should be the social sense of every well-educated citizen as a safeguard of social and national life. The principle of recognition of evil under all its guises is at the basis of the true education of man.

"Is it not strange that this vital principle of education, the recognition of evil, — a fundamental principle with the great thinkers of humanity, — should remain so"

(Our bold emphasis.)

We can see that Boris, unfortunately, has become a well-cultured SOMite.






However, if Boris means 'evil' as Exclusive Static Quality, then we agree with this prescient statement. ESQ is one innate cultural means for absolute hegemony.

"...recognition of ESQ..."

41

"sadly neglected by our educators and public instructors? Our educators are owlwise [Boris' word. PDR], our teachers are pedants [I.e., rote conformists, manufacturers of human ESQ pseudoclones, makers of static, plug-in cogs for factory production. PDR] and all their ambition is the turning out of smooth, well-polished philistines. It is a sad case of the blind leading the blind.

"It is certainly unfortunate that the favored type of superintendent of our public education should be such a hopeless philistine, possessed of all the conceit of the mediocre business man. Routine is his ideal. Originality and genius are spurned and suppressed. Our school superintendent with his well-organized training-shop is proud of the fact that there is no place for genius in our schools.

"Unfortunate and degraded is the nation that has handed over its childhood and youth to guidance and control by hidebound mediocrity. Our school-managers are respected by the laity as great educators"

(Our bold emphasis. Our bracketed notes.)


Hegemonists desire cookie-cutter clone plug-ins who are easy to herd and corral. They hate change. They hate pioneers. They hate new ideas. They love ESQ!


But look at our public school system today. Cookie cutter par excellence! A huge cookie cutter creating "Politically (in)Correct" plug-in clones for use and re-use by hegemonists.

Sidises experienced our public school system in its most ESQ-template form. When you do not fit a template designed to fit all, then you are, as Pirsig says, "insane, outside the mythos." One template fits all creates misfits and crazies. Now is that because one template both does fit all and one template does not fit all?

Quantum reality rears its elegance again. It tells us Many Truths fit all, not One Truth fits all. It tells us One Truth cannot fit all without creating massive uncertainty and undecidability phages of conflict and war. No, Many Truths fit all. And those truths' included-middles commingle one another, quantum cohesively. Doug.

42

"and are looked up to by the teachers as able business men. Their merit is routine, discipline and the hiring of cheap teaching-employees.

"It is certainly a great misfortune to the nation that a good number of our would-be scientific pedagogues are such mediocrities, with so absurd an exaggeration of their importance that they are well satisfied if the mass of their pupils turn out exact reproductions of the silly pedagogue. What can be expected of a nation that entrusts the fate of its young generation to the care or carelessness of young girls, to the ire of old maids, and to pettifogging officials with their educational red tape, discipline and routine, — petty bureaucrats animated with a hatred towards talent and genius?

"The goody-goody schoolma'am [Boris' spelling], the mandarin-schoolmaster, the philistine-"

(Our bold emphasis. Our bracketed notes.)



We seek obvious tells of pedagogues' self-importance. Thelogos is one of many tells. Note Boris' own thelogos. It is extraordinarily high at >8.5% of text word count. There are many other tells. Try finding them. It is fun. Nearby, David Foulis uses a phrase "ex cathedra." It is another obvious tell. Interestingly, most 'the's' may simply be deleted. See our QQA on thelogos.
43

"pedagogue, the pedant-administrator with his business capacities, have proved themselves incompetent to deal with the education of the young. They stifle talent, they stupefy the intellect, they paralyze the will, they suppress genius, they benumb the faculties of our children. The educator, with his pseudo-scientific, pseudo-psychological pseudogogics [pseudagogics PDR], can only bring up a set of philistines with firm, set habits, — marionettes, — dolls.

"Business is put above learning, administration above education, discipline and order above cultivation of genius and talent. Our schools and colleges are controlled by business men. The school-boards, the boards of trustees of almost every school and college in the country consist mainly of manufacturers, storekeepers, tradesmen, bulls and bears of Wall street and the market-place. What"

(Our bold emphasis. Our bracketed notes.)

 

"Pseudagogue Pedants Promulgating Prosaic Plug-ins."

44

"wonder that they bring with them the ideals and methods of the factory, the store, the bank and the saloon. If the saloon controls politics, the shop controls education.

"Business men are no more competent to run schools and colleges than astronomers are fit to run hotels and theaters. Our whole educational system is vicious. A popular scientific journal entered a protest against the vulgarization of our colleges, the department-store trade methods of our universities, but to no avail. The popular hero, the administrative business superintendent still holds sway, and poisons the sources of our social life by debasing the very foundation of our national education."

(Our bold emphasis.)




As an ex-entrepreneur (for 15 years), I can attest to this. All US corporations model themselves as clones of US Government 'legal' structures. Every corporation has its shareholders (vested citizens), customers (constituents), CEO (president), departments (states), employees (taxpayer slaves/drones/clones), board of directors (congress), standard policy and procedures (laws), by-laws (founding papers), etc.

Without this ESQ, government could not retain its hegemony over corporations and individuals.

Any template outside this mythos is both "insane," and "illegal." Illegal?, you say? Yes, law too, is ESQ! Law is a lie! I.e., "...one Law fits all..." is a lie.

In our USA, attorneys are sophists (which we admire) who use ESQ 'laws' to exercise their hegemony (which we despise). Governments, corporations, institutions, organizations, and people adhere 'legal...One Law Fits All...' hegemony. Why? Because most of them are SOMites. They do not (yet) intuit sophisms' quantum reality its Many Isles of Law/Truth.

ESQ legal templates, sophistically interpreted, are attorneys' great esoterikos, their anti-exegeisthai. Attorneys' innate hypocrisy twixt theory (One Truth Fits All) and practice (sophist paralogism) is why ancient Greeks like Plato and Aristotle hated sophists! Attorneys practice natural quantum law, while they claim a theoretic ESQ ideal. Attorneys stand in sophism and belie their SOMitic 'one-size-fits-all' monism. Modern politicos call it 'spin.' Attorneys 'spin' law, and as such it 'solicits' mere opinion, mere hegemonic convenience, not local islandic legal truth. Attorneys can make 'law' whatever they need it to be.

For too long, society has been blind, but an enlightenment is near... Nature's evolute pluralism guarantees it.

But this pseudabsolute, hegemonous control is both 'law' and government's Achilles heel. That very 'pseudabsolute' assures r-evolutionary instability. Better, it assures eventual extinction of its practitioners.

Boris hates these templates! He tells us they guarantee social engineering ineptness. Both templates and social engineering and its innate ineptness guarantee plug-ins who can only flip burgers.

While any organization's or individual's anchor of absolute hegemonic stasis drags, their constituents sail away on quantum reality's sea of relentless flux. Static behavior is behavior to be disdained and ignored. Static anything is stuff to be disdained and ignored. Stuckness iso yuckness! Boris claims even more: "It is evil."

Were governments, businesses, schools, academia (E.g., to dump Newton and Aristotle!), et al., to eschew ESQ, individual autonomy could again grasp freedom's reins. But in quantum reality we must accept a balance of both dynamis and stasis.

How much of each? That question need not be asked if we could all be individually responsible and autonomous. I see that as an interim asymptote. We are gradually moving toward it. Our internet is a piece. Virtual, OSS work is another, and so on...much ESQ is fading now... Doug.

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To contact Quantonics write to or call:

Doug Renselle
Quantonics, Inc.
Suite 18 #368 1950 East Greyhound Pass
Carmel, INdiana 46033-7730
USA
1-317-THOUGHT

©Quantonics, Inc., 2000-2012 Rev. 26Aug2009  PDR Created: 5May2000  PDR
(26May2000 rev - Correct several instances of our poor grammar in our p. 44 comments.)
(26May2000 rev - Extend and revise our comments re: attorneys on p. 44.)
(28Oct2000 rev - Correct very minor punctuation error.)
(1Nov2000 rev - Correct spelling of hypocrisy.)
(14Apr2006 rev - Adjust colors. Release table constraints.)
(26Aug2009 rev - Make page current.)

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