From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Sat Jun 19 2004 - 17:41:12 BST
Hi Platt, and all,
Thanks for the Tom Wolfe. I too like him a lot. But for the beauty
of the written word, I gotta go with Thomas Wolfe, or Faulkner, or
the early Styron in "The Confessions of Nat Turner" or "Set this
house on Fire." Anyway, maybe this outta be in the Art and Beauty
thread.
Some comments interspersed below...
On 19 Jun 2004 at 10:38, Platt Holden wrote:
One of my favorite authors is Tom Wolfe. In an article entitled
"Digibabble, Fairy Dust and the Human Anthill," he wrote:
"But in the twentieth century, the Darwin story of human life--
natural selection, sexual selection, survival of the fittest and all
the rest of it--had been overshadowed by the Freudian and Marxist
stories. Marx said social class determined a human being's destiny.
Freud said it was the Oedipal drama within the family. Both were
forces external to the newborn infant. Darwinists, Wilson foremost
among them, turned all that upside down and proclaimed that the genes
the infant was born with determined his destiny."
msh says:
Yes, Freud and Marx were wrong insofar as they discounted or denied
or ignored the effects of genes in determining intelligence, etc.
But, remember, they didn't have at their hands the same science
available to Wilson. It may or may not have made a difference, but
we might give them the benefit of the doubt.
Insofar as Wilson or anyone claims that "the genes the infant was
born with determined his destiny," this is utter nonsense. Clearly,
society plays a vital role in determining one's destiny. You can be
born a Bush and end up in the White House; or you can be born a
genius in El Salvador and end up on the end of a bayonet.
ph:
An interesting viewpoint. But, more interesting is the idea that our
human response to Dynamic Quality is genetic. In speaking about
"internal forces" in a new born baby, Pirsig wrote:
"From the baby's point of view, something, he knows not what, compels
attention. This generalized "something," White-head's "dim
apprehension," is Dynamic Quality." (Lila, 9)
This would, of course, apply to all humans regardless of race.
msh says:
Don't see the connection to genetics here. It seems to me that all
babies will respond to DQ in this manner, and that, as environmental
factors take over, some will become more or less responsive over
time.
Best,
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
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