[This seems like RAW at his very best to me.--DC]
Scanned from _Critique: A Journal Questioning Consensus
Reality_, #28
The Semantics of "Good" & "Evil"
by Robert Anton Wilson
The late Laurance Labadie once told me a parable about a
king who decided that everytime he met somebody he would
kick them in the butt, just to emphasize his power. My
memory may have elaborated this yarn a bit over the years,
but basically it continues as follows: since this maniac
wore a crown and had an army, people soon learned to
tolerate being kicked fairly often, and even began to accept
it philosophically or stoically, as they accept taxation and
other impositions of kings and governors. They even learned
to bend over as soon as they saw the king coming.
Eventually, the king died and his successor naturally
continued the tradition and kicked anybody *he* chanced to
meet. Centuries passed, and, in the usual course of things,
the nobility as a whole had demanded, and acquired, the same
"right" as the king: any baron could kick anybody of lesser
rank, and the knights could kick anybody except the barons
or the royal family, etc. A large part of the population
spent most of its waking hours facing a wall, crouched over,
waiting for the next boot in the bottom.
The coming of democracy, in that amazing parallel universe,
could only be understood according to the traditional
thought-forms or acquired mental habits of the strange
people there. Democracy therefore meant to those peculiar
folks that *anybody* could kick *anybody else* as long as
the kicker could prove that he (or she) had a bigger bank
balance than the person receiving the boot in the rump.
Within the context of the gloss or grid or reality-tunnel in
that world, "democracy" could not have any other *thinkable*
meaning. (See Berger and Luckman's _The Social Creation of
Reality_ if this sounds fantastic to you.)
Of course, at first everybody rejoiced in the Constitution
of the new democracy, for now "justice" (as they understood
it) had been achieved: if you had good health and good luck,
you could eventually ac***ulate enough money in a bank to
have the "right" to kick as many people as had the "right"
to kick you, and if you were especially shrewd or especially
lucky, you could rise to the level where you could kick
almost everybody and nobody whoso ever could kick you.
Of course, eventually Heretics appeared in that world, as in
ours. These people wanted kicking abolished entirely, and
they refused to admit that this constituted a "wild and
radical idea." They said it just seemed like "common sense"
and "common decency" to them. Naturally, no sane, sound
person would take such loonies seriously for a moment. In
order to avoid thinking about the arguments of the Heretics,
the sane, sound citizens developed a vocabulary to
dehumanize and discredit them. Anybody who objected to being
kicked regularly was called a "whiner," a "malcontent," a
"coward," a "queer," a "gutless Liberal," a "loser," a
"defective," a "deviant," a "nut," a "bum" etc.
You see, the people in that world had been conditioned to
believe that if you pinned such labels on Heretics, then it
was not necessary to think about any of their arguments. (I
will pass over in silence the creepy possibility that
certain contributors to _Critique_ seem to have arrived from
that goofy alternative reality with their ideas of what
constitutes reasonable debate unchanged during
spatio-tem****al transformation.)
Larry Labadie had his own point to make in creating that
parable: as an anarchist, he believed the State Socialists
were carrying over the worst features of Capitalism in their
proposed Utopia. To me, however, the parable has a more
general meaning, which I would state as follows: If people
have lived with something every day of their lives, and
especially if they know it has continued for many centuries,
it becomes almost impossible to question it without sounding
like some kind of pervert or eccentric, or, at best, like an
intellectual wiseacre who can be suspected of just playing
head-games or merely "toying with ideas." At worst, the
sane, sound domesticated people will decide you want to
destroy the world or overthrow the deity or intend some
atrocity equally drastic, and they will conspire to silence you.
To illustrate: after two centuries, most educated people can
understand the philosophy of Deism as expounded by Voltaire.
Historical research makes abundantly clear, however, that
most of Voltaire's contem****aries did not understand Deism
at all; references to him as an "atheist" can be found
continually, not just in writers with polemical intent, but
also in many who evidently thought they were writing
objective expository prose. It seemed impossible at that
time for most persons to comprehend that denying the
Christian God (G[subscript c], for convenience) did not mean
denying any and all possible Gods (G[subscript x]).
Midway between Voltaire's time and our own, Theodore
Roosevelt, in a celebrated speech, referred to Thomas Paine
as a "dirty little atheist." Contem****ary accounts describe
Paine as clean and tall, and his own writings express a
Deist, not Atheist, philosophy. It seems that c.
1900 many still found it hard to recognize that between
Christian Orthodoxy and Atheism many other possible
philosophical positions -- Aristotelian "excluded middles"
-- can be found by the independent enquiring mind.
To proceed from philosophical kindergarten to graduate
school in one step, consider this more advanced
illustration: between 1900 and c. 1926, quantum physicists
discovered that certain Aristotelian "laws of thought"
simply do not apply to the sub-atomic level. Specifically,
one cannot meaningfully speak of a sub-atomic "particle" as
a thing-in-itself possessing indwelling "properties'
apart from the observer and the observerational appn
tus. Worse: a sub-atomic "particle" cannot even accun
be called a "particle" without the quotation marks, sin
acts like a wave as often as it acts like a particle.
As I say, this sub-atomic non-Aristotelianism emerged from
experiments and analysis in the first quarter of this
century. The subsequent half a century has confirmed that
the sub-atomic world acts in an even more non-Aristolelian
fa****on than appeared at first, and no attempt to hammer the
data into an Aristotelian framework has succeeded.
What has emerged as the consequence of this? As Labadie's
parable of the alternative world indicates, the consequence
seems to be that quantum mathematics not only seems weird to
laypersons but even to the leading physicists themselves,
who have trouble understanding each other. If a scientific
system cannot be stated in Aristotelian terms, nobody in our
society is quite sure how it *can* be stated. To return to
our metaphor, quantum philosophers seem to be trying to
think of a world without arse-kicking while their minds are
subtly programmed by a world in which such arse-kicking
remains a predominant feature.
Thus, the famous or infamous "Copenhagen Interpretation" of
Neils Bohr and his students (c. 1926-28) seems to me to mean
that we cannot talk meaningfully about any absolute
Aristotelian "reality" apart from us, but only about the
relative "realities" we existentially-experimentally
encounter and/or measure -- but that Interpretation of the
Copenhagen Interpretation must be described as only the way
it _seems_ to me. According to Dr. Nick Herbert of UC-Santa
Cruz, the Copenhagen Interpretation means that no such
animal as "reality" can ever be found at all, at all. I do
not mean to exaggerate: in _Quantum Reality_, Dr. Herbert
actually states the Copenhagen view as "There is no deep
reality." But, then, he dislikes the Copenhagen view, and
has called it "the Christian Science school of physics."
Prof. Mermin of Columbia, defending the Copenhagen
Interpretation, does sound as radical as Dr. Herbert,
attacking it; Mermin says bluntly that "the moon is
demonstrably not there when nobody is looking at it."
John Gribbin, physics editor of _New Scientist_, also
actually writes bluntly that the Copenhagen view means
"nothing is real" on one page of his book, _In Search of
Schroedinger's Cat_, but more restrainedly he says later
that "'reality' in the everyday sense" appears not *useful*
in physics. Nobel laureate Eugene Wiegner, meanwhile, says
that the Copenhagen position proves that we create the
manifestations we observe in a laboratory (by designing the
experiments that produce those manifestations) and therefore
cannot apprehend anything as itself but only as it appears
to us. Or, rather, I *think* that describes what Wiegner
says. Wiegner's critics claim that he says we create
"reality" by thinking about it, which makes the old man
sound like he has overdosed on acid or too many ****rley
MacLaine TV specials.
John von Neumann, meanwhile, suggested in 1933 that quantum
systems should be mathematically considered as having three
possible states (yes, no and maybe, in nonmathematical
language) in contrast to the two states of Aristotelian
logic (yes and no.) Prof. David Finkelstein still argues
that this makes more sense than any other way of talking
about the sub-atomic world, but the majority of physicists
think von Neumann merely performed a mathematical "stunt"
with no physical significance.
The dominance of kicking in the thoughts of Labadie's
alternative world, and of Aristotelian logic in our world,
indicates the difficulty humans experience in trying to
perceive, or communicate their perceptions, outside the grid
or gloss of the conditioned reality-tunnel of their "tribe"
or society.
For instance, we often hear, and perhaps ourselves say, "It
is raining." Such a sentence illustrates what Bertrand
Russell called the domination of subject-predicate grammar
over Western "thought" or philosophy (or perception?). "It"
seems to appear in that sentence only because
subject-predicate grammar demands a subject for the
verb-form "is raining." If you ask yourself what that
mysterious "it" denotes, you will find the question rather
puzzling (unless you believe in a primitive rain-god like
Zeus or Jehovah . . .) The same subject-predicate structure
underlies most pseudo-scientific thinking, such as that of
Moliere's physician who said opium makes one sleepy because
it contains a "sleep-producing property." Most
folk-explanations of human behavior notoriously fall into
this category -- e.g. a woman does not work because she has
a "laziness-producing demon" in her or "is" "lazy," where a
functional analysis would seek a crisper, less demonological
explanation in a depressed economy, in nutritional or
endocrine imbalances, or, most likely, in some syngergetic
combination of social and internal dynamics.
In general, traditional Western thought, especially on the
folklore level, posits indwelling Aristotelian "essences"
(or spooks) to explain virtually everything, where science
—- and, curiously, Eastern philosophy -- tend to find
explanations in functional relation****ps described
phenomenologically in terms of observed interactions. This
may explain why science and Eastern philosophy appear
equally absurd (or equally nefarious) to those raised in the
traditional Western Christian reality-tunnel.
Specifically, we in our Western world have been conditioned
and/or brainwashed by 2000 years of Christian metaphysics
about "Good" and "Evil," and to question that system of
thought or reality-tunnel -- or to offer a phenomenological
alternative -- creates a high probability (of about 99.97%,
I estimate) that nobody will understand what one wishes to
communicate. Nonetheless, I intend to take that risk here. I
will experience great surprise and no small delight if any
of the negative comments this elicits show any comprehension
of my actual meanings.
To begin with, it seems to me that, as Nietzsche said, naive
or intuitive concepts of "good" and "bad" have a different
history than, and can otherwise be distinguished from,
hypothetical indwelling spooks like "Good" and "Evil." As
probably used by our earliest ancestors, and as used by most
people today, "good" and "bad" have the same meanings as
they have for any other animals: "good" means "good for me"
and "bad" means "bad for me." Thus, a dog "knows" somehow
that foul-smelling food should be considered "bad for me;"
an educated human knows further that some sweet-smelling
food may act "bad for me" also. All animals, including
humans, "know" at birth, and continue to "know" -- unless
(in the case of humans) counter-conditioned or brainwashed
-- that hugging, cuddling, petting and oral and/or genital
embrace definitely act upon the organism in ways "good for me."
From this pre-metaphysical or phenomenological or
operational point of view, I quite readily and easily
identify many events or "things" in space-time that appear
"good for me" (e.g. tasty food, freedom of the press, clever
comedy, great painting, love-making, Beethoven, my word
processor, money arriving regularly in large doses, certain
drugs and vitamins, the above mentioned
hugging-petting-fusion etc., etc.). I also observe easily
many "things" or events in space-time that appear "bad for
me" (e.g. Fundamentalist Christianity, Communism, Naziism,
all other attempts to interfere with my liberty, toxic food,
toxic waste, horror movies, certain drugs etc., etc.). I
also observe that many things that seem "bad for me" seem
"good" or harmless for others.
Continuing on this existential-phenomenological basis, it
next appears to me that "good for me" and "bad for me" must
be considered relative functions, in several senses. What
appears "good for me" often appears "bad" for somebody else;
or what appears "good for me" may sooner or later have
consequences "bad for me;" or what appears "good for me"
when age 20 may no longer appear "good for me" at age 50;
and some recreations I judge "good for me" may later clearly
appear "bad for me." In general, "good for me" always
remains relative to my knowledge or ignorance at the time I
make the judgement, and I know from experience that I judge
wrongly at times. (Notably, although hugging, cuddling etc.
always appear "good for me," the consequences of picking the
wrong partner or the wrong time may clearly emerge later as
unequivocally "bad for me." This probably underlies most
***ual superstitions, phobias and fixations.)
Some animals seem at times genetically programmed to
recognize, some of the time, "good for my pack" or even
"good for my species," as do***ented in e.g. E. Wilson's
_Sociobiology_, Dawkin's _The Selfish Gene_ and similar
works. With or without such genetic programming as hidden
agenda, many humans clearly show the capacity to think
about, and aim for, that which appears "good for my species"
or even (recently) "good for the biosphere as a whole." Such
judgements still remain relative to the general welfare of
the judger, relative to location and history in space-time
(what appears good for the foxes will probably appear bad
for the chickens) and, even in the case of "good for the
biosphere" relative to the knowledge or ignorance of the judger.
Before proceeding, I beg the reader to notice that if human
semantics had remained on this primitive phenomenological
level, and the relativity of judgement remained obvious to
all, negotiation and compromise would perforce play a larger
role in history than they have hitherto, and violent
"crusades" and religious/ideological wars would have played
a comparatively smaller role. It always appears possible to
negotiate about what appears good and bad to us in concrete
situations; but it becomes increasingly impossible to
negotiate successfully when metaphysical "Good" and "Evil"
enter the universe of discourse. The tendency becomes then
to fight, and to fight as violently as possible, as the
blood-curdling history of Christian dogmatism clearly shows,
and as such secular religions as Naziism and Communism have
proven again in our own century.
By comparison, the Con****ian ethic remains phenomenological;
Con****ius explicitly said that his system "was not against
human nature" and compared it to "loving a beautiful flower
or hating a bad smell, also called "respecting one's own
nose." Taoism and Buddhism differ from Con****ius chiefly in
greater awareness of the relativity of judgements (and the
possibility of trans-ego perception or detached-from-ego
perception); but neither contains anything like the
Occidental metaphysical concept of "Good" and "Evil."
Indeed, some of the most famous passages in Taoist and
Buddhist scripture hurl ridicule at any metaphysical notions
of nonrelative "Good" and "Evil" -- notions which apparently
emerged occasionally in the Orient, among eccentrics, as
Oriental pantheism occasionally appears in the Occident,
among eccentrics.
Nietzsche, as most people know, believed that metaphysical
"Good" and "Evil" not only contradict most intuitive
organismic evaluations of "good for me" and "bad for me" but
appear to have been devised with the intent of contradicting
(and confusing) such naive or "natural" reactions. (Most
priestly notions of ***ual "Good" and "Evil," notoriously
contradict and confuse naive or natural organismic
evaluations, for instance.) In other words, Nietzsche
claimed that priests invented "Good" and "Evil" to obtain
*power over others* -- to persuade people not to trust their
own evaluations; to place all trust, instead, on the priests
themselves as alleged representatives of a hypothetical
gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft and mass called
"God." It appears to have been Nietzsche' opinion that since
this hypothetical gaseous vertebrate could not be located in
normal sensory-sensual (existential) space-time, the
priests, in effect, intended to teach people, "Don't trust
yourself; trust us" or, more bluntly still, "Don't think;
we'll do the thinking for you."
According to this analysis, political tyrants, who only
control our bodies and actions, exhibit less raw "lust for
power" than Popes or Ayatollahs or other priests who try to
control our thoughts and judgements, i.e. to invade our
inmost sanctuary. (See Nietzsche's _Will to Power_ for an
extensive analysis of this phenomenon.)
Whatever one thinks about this Nietzschean attempt to
psychoanalyze the motives of the ancient priestcraft, it
appears historically that the "Good" and "Evil" metaphysics,
as distinguished again from simple organismic judgements of
"good for me" and "bad for me," has functioned to give
power, and always more power, in horse doctor's doses, to
priests and preachers of all hues and persuasions. (It seems
easy to think of a Buddhist or Taoist monk or Con****ian
gentleman-scholar as possibly living in isolation, but a
Christian clergyperson, by definition, seems to be somebody
who tells *other people* what to think and what to do., i.e.
has *power* over then usually based on raw fear and threat,
e.g. "You will go to Hell if you doubt me.") After 2000
years of Christianity, most people accept being told what
"is" "Good" and "Evil" by an alleged expert just as
automatically as the people Labadie's parable accepted being
kicked.
Does history tend to justify Nietzsche's view that this
system of otherworldly metaphysics (interpreted by alleged
experts on that alleged other world) leads to "degeneracy,"
"decadence," "sickness," "neuroses," "lunacy," "epilepsy"
etc.? Well, I don't know about epilepsy (which now appears
organic or genetic rather than sociological) but Nietzsche's
other terms all refer to the prevalence in Christian society
of what he called "resentment" and "revenge" -- envy or rage
against those who live without Christian metaphysics,
coupled with ferocious desire to punish or destroy such
people. It seems impossible to real a page of St. Paul
without encountering this kind of resentment-and-revenge
compulsion almost immediately, and you can hear it on TV any
night by turning the dial to the Fundamentalist channels in
the high 40s, where the leading evangelists will usually be
found fomenting hatred against non-Christians (when not
tearfully confessing whatever personal sins or crimes have
previously been unearthed and well-publicized by the pagan
media). The Christian theologian, historically, seems a
person intent on terrorizing others into doing what he wants
them to do and thinking what he wants them to think, or
killing them if they will not submit.
The animal, the child, the pre-literate society, the
Con****ian, the Buddhist, the Taoist, and most of the world
live in reality-tunnels in which "good" and "bad" remain
demarked by organismic evaluations of "good for me/good for
my tribe" and "bad for me/bad for my tribe." Only the
Christian sects -- and such secular religions as Naziism and
Communism which may be considered, as the historian Toynbee
considered them, late Christian heresies -- contain the idea
of absolute "Good" and "Evil" and the *encitement to
violence* implied in such a concept.
It appears to me, then, that by "turning everything
upside down" (Nietzsche's phrase) -- i.e. by denying
organismic and relative evaluations of "good" and "bad" and
replacing them with *definitions* of "Good" and "Evil"
decided by some priestcraft or some Central Committee -- we
have strayed far from sanity and into the realm of fantasy
and madness. Concretely, when I decide to class something as
"good" or "bad," I remember that I have done the
classifying, and also that I have no overwhelming evidence
of personal infallibity; I take *responsibility* for the
judgement, in the Existentialist sense, and I remain open to
learning, and to changing my mind, if new data indicates
that I should revise my evaluation. But if I classify
something as "Good" or "Evil" in the metaphysical sense,
defined by some priesthood or Party Line, I do not "take
responsibility," I become virtually a ventriloquist's dummy
through which the priests or ideologists speak and act, and
I abdicate all possibility or learning more or revising my
mistakes. It does not seem terribly exaggerated when
Nietzsche calls this "turning everything upside down"
because in submitting to such an abstract system and denying
my own perceptions, I have reversed evolution and "resigned"
as it were from the human race. I could easily be replaced
by a robot or servo-mechanism at that point. Humans
generally do not behave like robots unless they have been
indoctrinated with some metaphysical system like
Christianity or its close relatives, Judaism and Islam, or
its late heresies, Naziism and Communism.
If this essay can escape being regarded as intemperate
polemic or wild exaggeration, I must explain in more detail
the concrete functional difference between organismic "good"
and "bad" evaluations -- "respecting one's own nose" in the
Con****ian sense -- and metaphysical "Good" and "Evil." Then
my point will perhaps appear clear, even to those who most
vehemently reject it.
I propose that the organismic, intuitive, primitive, "naive"
evaluations of "good for me or my gene pool" and "bad for me
or my gene pool" -- even when condensed into the simpler
"good" and "bad" -- reflect our actual situation as bodies
moving in space-time. Evolution has given surviving species
an assortment of genetic programs that roughly inform each
individual organism about "good for me" and "bad for me."
These genes do not appear infallible -- as witness the dog
who drank spilled paint because paint smells more like good
food than like bad food. These genetic programs may tolerate
modification by learning experience, in dogs, cats and other
higher mammals, including some (non-dogmatic) human beings.
Empirical learning itself may be modified by careful
reasoning from inferences, etc. All of these (genetic
programs, learning, reasoning) reflect an endeavor to gather
the data for an accurate map of our position in space-time
and of what profits or harms us or our tribe or species. On
the other hand, the metaphysical doctrines of absolute
"Good" and "Evil" do not reflect our trajectories as bodies
in space-time in any respect. Metaphysics and its language
structure reflect rather a fantasy-world or
world-created-by-definitions which does not meaningfully
refer to our concrete existential history in space-time at
all. If this point appears as recondite or hermetic as the
most inscrutable pages ofHeidigger, I will try to make it
more simple with the following two columns of examples.
[Obviously, I've changed the formatting here.--DC]
I. The electron is a wave.
II. The electron appears as a wave when recorded by this
instrument.
I. The first man stabbed the second man with a knife.
II. The first man appeared to stab the second man with what
appeared to be to be a knife.
I. The car involved in the hit-and-run accident was a blue Ford.
II. In memory, I think I recall the car involved in the
hit-and-run accident as a blue Ford.
I. This is a fascist idea.
II. This seems like a fascist idea to me.
I. Beethoven was better than Mozart.
II. I enjoy Beethoven more than Mozart.
I. This is a ***ist movie.
II. This seems like a ***ist movie to me.
The first column consists of statements in ordinary English,
as heard in common usage at this primitive if of evolution.
I believe this column contains the same structural
implications as Aristotelian logic and the Christian
metaphysics of "Good" and "Evil." I also believe this column
reflects a fantastic view of the world in which we assume
ourselves not "personally" involved in the act of evaluation
but paradoxically able to discern the spooky, indwelling
"essences" of things.
The second column consists of parallel statements rewritten
in *E-prime*, or English-prime, a language proposed for
scientific usage by such authors as Alfred Korzybski, D.
David Bourland and E.W. Kellogg III. E-prime contains much
the same vocabulary as standard English but has been made
isomorphic to quantum physics and modem science generally)
by aboli****ng the Aristotelian "is" of identity and
reformulating each statement phenomenologically in terms of
signals received and interpreted by a body (or instrument)
in space-time. In short, believe that E-prime contains the
same structural impications as science, radical Buddhism
(Zen, Mahayana) the naive evaluations of "good" and "bad"
that seem natural to most people who have not been
indoctrina Christianity or its totalitarian modern derivatives.
Concretely, "The electron is a wave" employs the
Aristotelian "is" of identity and thereby introduces the
false-to-experience notion that we can know the indwelling
Aristotelian "essence" of the electron. "The electron
appears as a wave when recorded with this instrument
reformulates the English sentence into English-prime,
abolishes the "is" of identity and returns us to an accurate
re****t of what actually transpired in space-time, namely
that the electron was constrained by a certain instrument to
appear a certain way.
In English we talk blithely about things or entities that
may or may not exist, and often about things that a never be
proven to exist or to not exist; in E-prime we can only talk
about what has actually been experienced and by what method
it has been experienced. Aristotelian English encourages our
tendency to wander off into worlds of fantasy; E-prime
brings us back to concrete phenomenological recording of
what we actually experienced in space-time.
Similarly, "The first man stabbed the second man with a
knife," even though lacking the formal "is" of identity
appears Aristotelian English to me, because it assumes the
non-involvement of the observer and of the observer's
nervous system. The proposed E-prime translation, "The first
man emed to me to stab the second man with what seemed to be
a knife," scientifically includes the *instrument* (the
speaker's nervous system) in the re****t, recognizes
phenomenology, and, incidentally, often happens to accord
with brute fact. (This example ifers to a well-known
experiment in General Psychology, in which a banana in the
first man's hand performs the "stabbing" but most students,
conditioned by Aristotelian habits, nonetheless "see" the
knife they expect to see. This experiment dramatizes the
fact that hallucinations can be created without hypnosis or
drugs, merely by taking adantage of our habit of thinking we
see "things" when we only see our brain's *images* of things.)
"The car involved in the it-and-run accident was a blue
Ford" again contains Aristotelian absolutism and ignores the
instrument used -- the brain. The E-prime translation
reminds us that the brain often "remembers" incorrectly.
"This is a fascist idea" contains the Aristotelian "is" and
asserts that the speaker has the mystic ability to discern
the hidden "essence" within or behind phenomena. The E-prime
translation reminds us that the speaker has actually
performed an evaluative act in interpreting signals
apprehended by his or her body moving in space-time.
"Beethoven is better than Mozart" contains the usual
Aristotelian fantasy about indwelling spooks or essences.
The E-prime translation, "I enjoy Beethoven more than
Mozart" places us back in ordinary space-time where the
speaker's ears and brain can be recognized as the source of
the evaluation, and we realize that the statement actually
refers to said ears and brain and not to the two collections
of music seemingly discussed.
"This is a ***ist movie" (standard English) again assumes a
fictitious uninvolved observer mystically perceiving inner
essences, while "This seems like a ***ist movie to me"
(E-prime) returns us to Earth and ordinary face-time by
including the existential fact that the observer has been
involved in making the evaluation.
It has been claimed, by Korzybski, that the neurolinguistic
habit of regularly using E-prime trains the brain to avoid
common errors of perception, uncritical inferences, habitual
prejudices, etc. and to show increased capacity for creative
thought and greater enjoyment/involvement in life. This has
not been proven, since few have taken the trouble
systematically to retrain themselves in E-prime and they
have not been exhaustively tested by psychologists. However,
it remains my impression that those scientists and
laypersons most apt to use "the spirit of E-prime" (if not
always the exact letter) do exhibit the positive traits
claimed by Korzybski, or at least exhibit these traits more
than a random sample of the population.
On the other side, those most apt to use and over-use the
"is" of identity, historically, make up the major part of
the world's long, tragic list of fanatics, paranoids,
Crusaders, Inquisitors and Ideologists, and have
responsibility for the bloodiest and most horrible
atrocities recorded in human annals.
In summary, I suggest that existence never contained "Good"
and "Evil" -- or "inches" or "pounds" or "ergs of energy" or
"degrees Fahrenheit" -- until complicated primate brains
("human minds, "in more polite language) put them there as
systems of classification. I suggest further that the
"naive" view of "good for me or my clan" and "bad for me or
my clan" contains all that can meaningfully be said about
our actual experience in space-time, and that metaphysical
"Good" and "Evil" speak fantastically of mythic realms
beyond any possible verification or refutation in space-time.
I will scarcely find myself surprised if this article
inspires heated and fervent rebuttals. I await such ripostes
with equanimity. I do hope, however, that nobody raises the
spectre of the old, hackneyed argument that without the
metaphysical concept of absolute "Evil" we will lose our
desire or will to protect ourselves against such monstrous
gentry as Hitler, Stalin, Jack-the-Ripper, etc. Nobody but
Ahab himself ever seems to have believed the whale was
absolutely "Evil" (for biting off his leg while he was
trying to kill it) and one does not have to regard tigers,
polio microbes or other natural entities phenomenologically
"bad for us" as also metaphysically and absolutely "Evil" in
order to combat them. It does not take metaphysical dogma to
fight the patently nefarious; it only takes quick wits in
spotting the "bad for me" as soon as it appears on the
horizon. Animals literally do this, and humans figuratively
do it, by the method of Con****ius: respecting one's own nose.
******
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1587154838/thedanclorenecro/
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
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