Tuesday, 30. January 2007, 00:15:06
By Wim Rietdijk, D.Sci.
Essays by Wim Rietdijk
THE SCIENTIFIZATION OF CULTURE17.
Partly summarizing: among the main socio-cultural problems - that is, those on which the intelligentsia should concentrate - are these:
a) Priority of reason and of an ethic that aims at minimizing suffering and optimizing happiness; fighting all ideas contrasting with such enlightened starting-point;
b) Realizing that human moral, emotional, intellectual and, therefore, genetic qualities are vital in the relevant pursuit of happiness and that, consequently, eugenics and genetic engineering applied to man are more progressive than egalitarianism, also in reducing underclasses, addiction, crime and the like;
c) The realization that by far most ideas contrasting with the spirit of a) and b) serve vested interests that are in line with historical anti-Enlightenment. E.g., the "disadvantaged industry" that ignores the results of genetics in giving precedence to "nurture" over "nature" as the main cause of problem groups still appearing in an affluent welfare society. For such idea creates jobs, status and power for the major interest group which is constituted by this industry. [Note here that the original Enlightenment appeared to be naïve in one important respect, viz. in assuming (all) people "to be good by nature".]
One more vital example of ideas serving interests has been elaborated above: many still have an interest in relativizing reason and rational ethic for similar reasons as, e.g., nobility and clergy had two centuries ago: such reason and ethic threaten and undermine the power of vested interests, in-crowds and convention.
d) Finding concrete explanations of and conceiving specific theories about socio-cultural phenomena, especially such ones that explicitly or implicitly expose powerful groups and interests, being aware of the fact that especially social actors and situations which are of questionable good faith and rationality deserve scrutiny. (For, good faith and rational practices will be more easily recognizable for social research, not being hidden by ideological disguise.)
e) Immoral vested interests should be recognized in various purportedly well-meaning laws, institutions and practices. E.g., think of the privacy and technicality cult in law enforcement that often makes finding the truth more difficult. Intellectuals (and politicians) should be extremely suspicious about the interests behind such situation, and particularly about a mentality that actually accepts that an accused is set free because "privacy" has been violated or a technical error appears in his summons. One should ask oneself: "What is hidden here?"
f) Just as in the past, the uneducatedness and moral indifference of the majority are ultimately the main cause of social evil. Those many who are more interested in and invest more agression in sport than, e.g., in the fact that in the US democracy is made highly theoretical by the mere fact that elections will largely depend on money spend by interest groups, those many get what they deserve if they complain to feel "powerless".
The intelligentsia, however, should take the lead in opposing such situations, rather than drain its own energy into what is equally irrelevant as such sports: irrational philosophy (Heidegger, Foucault, Lyotard,...) and incoherent art without any function in awakening and focusing emotions.
g) In this context one has also to ask oneself how it could occur that our sociologists are so much intellectually disinterested in so major a subject as sexuality that the most essential points are systematically ignored, as we saw in (6) above.
Could it be that, e.g., the relevant research is not popular because it would expose typical means by which establishments used to and will manipulate people's minds, in this case by censoring emotions and instincts in a way comparable to how "traditional" censorship did so with respect to our intellect? [Compare (6), and (23) and (30d) below.]
h) Whereas in former ages censorship, illiteracy and poverty, the lack of mass media and the like caused the majority to be unaware and/or powerless with respect to eliminating abuses and fostering progress, currently it is the complexity of society, bureaucracy, procedure and power relations, and the concomitant obscurity, as well as our inundation by the media by facts from which only few can discriminate what is relevant. Note that such inundation, the spirit of the TV-commercial, and the proliferation of "contacts" all contribute to other-directedness, superficiality and "image" subtituting substantial content. These join indifferene ensuing from affluence and relativistic ideology. All of this works for the status quo. (Remind: even the French revolution only began when there was hunger.)
We can say that, essentially, "only" science and technology still move it - radically. Is it a coincidence that our intelligentsia is very little interested in their preponderant socio-cultural role (or even distrustful), or does this betray its basic conservatism?
Still, the intelligentsia should see through complication, discriminate essences as to abuses, take the lead in exposure and attack the immoral and irrational so that the silent majority would no longer feel powerless while vested interests manipulate politicians and, moreover, educational, juridical, medical and other establishments out-manage and out-power the public and its interests.
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