The pursuit of intelligence
For a species that embraces our intelligence and our altered consciousness, we have used it for a good while with little concern for human happiness, for a world of balance. Intelligence has become a gateway instead for distancing ourselves through ideologies, creating economic systems prizing material above human welfare, advancing technology that though it has its benefits in sufficiency, we use it to physically estrange ourselves from one another and nature. Technology, of course, has no will of its own. It is how we decide to use it that matters. Thus, we are the ones responsible, not technology itself. I see technology as a positive thing only if its use is put to benefit and progress the entire human race, not just certain groups over others.
This whole endeavor towards intelligence and our concern for trying to become intellectuals on our own is meaningless to me if we search, investigate, and experiment only to be neutral about it in practice, without any regards to what it might contribute to our well being. See, I thought the point of us becoming a more intelligent race was so that we could figure how better to organize ourselves so that no one starves, is oppressed, and receives the respect as all citizens of earth should. What good is it to sit around and discuss Aristotle, quantum-mechanics, or the literary geniuses if in the end, it just makes you think of yourself as some kind of philosopher, without never once applying that thought into a good deed to help your counterparts?
We're intelligent enough to recognize our own problems. As I get older, I know for sure that people have always been generally conscious that there are problems with the world. This awareness exists everywhere in some shape or form. Usually the euphemism that occupies it is "That's just the way things are". But I've come to an interesting conclusion. Our altered consciousness, our so-called human intelligence, makes us, in fact, a very dumb species. All these little philosophical, ontological, scientific, etc problems we go around discussing day by day are born out of the social fiction we play and negotiate in as our subjective minds allow. We have discussions that give us some kind of inner-pride of being a genius, but doesn't get us any closer to understanding or caring for each other.Science has gone more into 'how can we make doing this easier for us' rather than 'how can this benefit everybody to sustain themselves, coexist peacefully, and live comfortably without it being at the expense of another'.
Our perception and intelligence is so high, so wonderful that we come up with things like racism, sexism, evil monetary systems that disguises slave and slave lifestyle under 'workers' and 'careers', torture methods for animals to be used in our industries, and biochemicals used in the middle east to burn people's faces off. Yeah, we're really intelligent.
Though a lot of people take a huge interest in Greek and Roman thought, and its philosophy is highly praised in the scholarly world, anyone who looks into the actual system the Greeks and Romans lived in, will see that all of those thoughts were just bullshit pastimes. Which is what most of intellectual discourse today is: bullshit pastimes. None of it developed to actually manifest in our actions. I remember what a friend once said to me as I tried to explain the sheer idea I had of Einstein's photoelectric effect. Her reply to me was:
"Is physics going to help me eat, going to get me a room and bed to sleep in, gonna provide me clothing?"
It comes down to questions that I have: Why pursue intelligence if we're not going to use it to help ourselves , one another, as well as other beings on this planet? Why desire understanding if that understanding achieves nothing but titles, credentials and fame? What is the role of intelligence today? Why probe into theories of consciousness if we act with an almost unconscious attitude towards the world that exists today?
I'm not saying intellectual activity need have a beneficial end to it. I certainly understand the joys that come with intellectual curiosity. But I feel it's become less about actual curiosity, and more about our obsession with the image of the intellectual. And this image comes with an almost contradictory or indifferent attitude to the moral sentiment that exists in humans. Science fears emotional association, while religion stays in its own little world, securing salvation and hope for individuals but none for humans as a community in this world.
I do acknowledge that there has been some progression towards helping humanity and that much intelligence has indeed contributed to making life somewhat better as we know it. But we are at a point now (and have been for quite a while now), where we could do a lot more. As much as we specialize in politics, literature, religion, science, philosophy, economics, music..very few of us specialize in knowing about the troubles of others, how best we can help them, and the world we live in. Suffice it to say that I'm disgusted by a species that watches its own die, starve, degrade itself and struggle while relishing in our 'intellect' and watching what the engineering geniuses will come up for us next.
This whole endeavor towards intelligence and our concern for trying to become intellectuals on our own is meaningless to me if we search, investigate, and experiment only to be neutral about it in practice, without any regards to what it might contribute to our well being. See, I thought the point of us becoming a more intelligent race was so that we could figure how better to organize ourselves so that no one starves, is oppressed, and receives the respect as all citizens of earth should. What good is it to sit around and discuss Aristotle, quantum-mechanics, or the literary geniuses if in the end, it just makes you think of yourself as some kind of philosopher, without never once applying that thought into a good deed to help your counterparts?
We're intelligent enough to recognize our own problems. As I get older, I know for sure that people have always been generally conscious that there are problems with the world. This awareness exists everywhere in some shape or form. Usually the euphemism that occupies it is "That's just the way things are". But I've come to an interesting conclusion. Our altered consciousness, our so-called human intelligence, makes us, in fact, a very dumb species. All these little philosophical, ontological, scientific, etc problems we go around discussing day by day are born out of the social fiction we play and negotiate in as our subjective minds allow. We have discussions that give us some kind of inner-pride of being a genius, but doesn't get us any closer to understanding or caring for each other.Science has gone more into 'how can we make doing this easier for us' rather than 'how can this benefit everybody to sustain themselves, coexist peacefully, and live comfortably without it being at the expense of another'.
Our perception and intelligence is so high, so wonderful that we come up with things like racism, sexism, evil monetary systems that disguises slave and slave lifestyle under 'workers' and 'careers', torture methods for animals to be used in our industries, and biochemicals used in the middle east to burn people's faces off. Yeah, we're really intelligent.
Though a lot of people take a huge interest in Greek and Roman thought, and its philosophy is highly praised in the scholarly world, anyone who looks into the actual system the Greeks and Romans lived in, will see that all of those thoughts were just bullshit pastimes. Which is what most of intellectual discourse today is: bullshit pastimes. None of it developed to actually manifest in our actions. I remember what a friend once said to me as I tried to explain the sheer idea I had of Einstein's photoelectric effect. Her reply to me was:
"Is physics going to help me eat, going to get me a room and bed to sleep in, gonna provide me clothing?"
It comes down to questions that I have: Why pursue intelligence if we're not going to use it to help ourselves , one another, as well as other beings on this planet? Why desire understanding if that understanding achieves nothing but titles, credentials and fame? What is the role of intelligence today? Why probe into theories of consciousness if we act with an almost unconscious attitude towards the world that exists today?
I'm not saying intellectual activity need have a beneficial end to it. I certainly understand the joys that come with intellectual curiosity. But I feel it's become less about actual curiosity, and more about our obsession with the image of the intellectual. And this image comes with an almost contradictory or indifferent attitude to the moral sentiment that exists in humans. Science fears emotional association, while religion stays in its own little world, securing salvation and hope for individuals but none for humans as a community in this world.
I do acknowledge that there has been some progression towards helping humanity and that much intelligence has indeed contributed to making life somewhat better as we know it. But we are at a point now (and have been for quite a while now), where we could do a lot more. As much as we specialize in politics, literature, religion, science, philosophy, economics, music..very few of us specialize in knowing about the troubles of others, how best we can help them, and the world we live in. Suffice it to say that I'm disgusted by a species that watches its own die, starve, degrade itself and struggle while relishing in our 'intellect' and watching what the engineering geniuses will come up for us next.