In <7nse4b$fq9$1 at panix2.panix.com> gcf at panix.com (G*rd*n) writes:
"Phil Roberts, Jr." <philrob at ix.netcom.com>:
| How about LESS DETERMINED in the sense that we are a
| species which is beginning to show signs of having some
| SERIOUS RESERVATIONS about blindly and obediently caring
| out a number of nature's emotional mandates....
Gordon:
> Indeterminacy exists at the lowest levels of the physis.
> Even if it were not for QM, as Feynman showed, classical
> mechanics also produces indeterminacy.
> Probably, the organization of living beings is a way of
> evolving larger determinable systems in spite of this
> fundamental instability. The organization of animal
> bodies, for example, is highly homeostatic. In the larger
> animals, especially in primates, we begin to see the
> evolution of societies which impose order and conformity
> on their members. And in the case of human beings, a large
> brain, originally evolved for some purpose like better
> swinging from branches or rock-throwing, now fills with
> rhetoric which commands obedience to simple principles and
> fits the individual ever more snugly in with his social
> context.
> Finally, humans evolve the mass media and the Internet,
> where they increasingly hear about and conform to a
> rhetoric of non-conformity and submit to the dictates of
> "freedom." The direction of evolution is clearly towards
> obedience, not away from it.
> Too bad.
>
Postmodernist heal thyself! Perhaps a dose of Nietzsche is
needed here. All things recur. Civilizations overextend,
dark ages return. A serious restructuring of the species
will await the development of something like telepathy.
Telephone and television inch us toward it, but do not break
the wall of individualism.
Ned
