[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[markhsmit]

On Jan 24, 2010, at 9:11:33 PM, "Khoo Hock Aun" <khoohockaun at gmail.com> wrote:
This in no way detracts from the assertion, that I believe Pirsig makes, in
that as societies evolve, an intellectual level emerges, irrrespective of
the context and geographical location, whether in tandem with other
civilisations or in isolation. The value in this is that intellect now leads
evolutionary development, rather than social drivers. The ongoing debate in
this list, is what constitutes the intellectual level; some assert it to be
the subject-object divide, logic itself and some, Pirsig himself asserts,
symbol manipulation, some assert it to be more, but the net effect,
whichever is the same - the conception of ideas and acting to manifest those
ideas in the world around us. India and China too had their versions of
subject object logic within their respective philopsophies but this did
not to drive and dominate the development of society as in the West.
Perhaps, the emphasis of the community over the individual arrested this
tendency and what you call the "ego" is not a central character in the play.

Mark responded:

Hi Khoo,
I was struck by the phrase that the intellect leads evolutionary development, because
this takes it away from its biological setting in the sense of adaptation to the environment
through survival.  I am in agreement that evolution works in many ways.

For personal reasons I have been studying autism for a number of years.  This is both
from the biological and metaphysical side.  Recently, in corroboration of my "theories"
an epidemiological study found clusters of autism (I don't have a reference because I
heard it on NPR).  The only similarity in these clusters was the fact that they were in
upscale neighborhoods and autistic children were born to educated parents more.
The data was significant.  The explanation for this as presented on the radio was that
upscale parents may seek help more and thus be counted more.  This may be true,
but I have another idea.  Autism may be showing the signs of evolution as it is attempting
to create the next level in intelligence.  Evolution is not pretty, and many mistakes 
are made before success is reached.  Based on my knowledge of autism, I can pick
out all the positive features of autism and I deduce a high intellect that also has
extreme empathy.  That is, autistics can sense what people are feeling in highly 
specific ways.  There are other traits which also indicate a higher brain power.
Now, just like a child cannot survive and has to be taken care of, autistics are
in the same position.  In some cultures autism is deemed extremely powerful
and such people are elevated to witch doctors and such.  The sensory 
perception of autistics is indeed different which, at present makes the
noisy way we live quite confusing.

There is no doubt in the rise in autism.  The clusters described above cannot
be explained though environmental factors, and any explanation for a chemical
basis for autism has fallen short.  While it is difficult to see the forest for the
trees, an evolutionary explanation may result sometime beyond my lifetime.
It is interesting to speculate where man will go next, and how biology will
play a part.

Best regards,
Mark