[MD] anti-intellectualism

[X Acto]

The Metaphysics of Quality resolves the relationship between intellect and society, subject and object, 
mind and matter, by embedding all of them in a larger system of understanding. Objects are inorganic 
and biological values; subjects are social and intellectual values. They are not two mysterious 
universes that go floating around in some subject-object dream that allows them no real contact 
with one another. They have a matter-of-fact evolutionary relationship. That evolutionary relationship 
is also a moral one.
Within this evolutionary relationship it is possible to see that intellect has functions that 
predate science and philosophy. The intellect's evolutionary purpose has never been to discover 
an ultimate meaning of the universe. That is a relatively recent fad. Its historical purpose 
has been to help a society find food, detect danger, and defeat enemies. It can do this well 
or poorly, depending on the concepts it invents for this purpose.
The cells Dynamically invented animals to preserve and improve their situation. The animals 
Dynamically invented societies, and societies Dynamically invented intellectual knowledge 
for the same reasons. Therefore, to the question, 'What is the purpose of all this intellectual 
knowledge?' the Metaphysics of Quality answers, 'The fundamental purpose of knowledge is to 
Dynamically improve and preserve society.' Knowledge has grown away from this historic purpose 
and become an end in itself just as society has grown away from its original purpose of 
preserving physical human beings and become an end in itself, and this growing away from 
original purposes toward greater Quality is a moral growth. But those original purposes 
are still there. And when things get lost and go adrift it is useful to remember that point 
of departure.
The Metaphysics of Quality suggests that the social chaos of the twentieth century can be 
relieved by going back to this point of departure and re-evaluating the path taken from it. 
It says it is immoral for intellect to be dominated by society for the same reasons it is 
immoral for children to be dominated by their parents. But that doesn't mean that children 
should assassinate their parents, and it doesn't mean intellectuals should assassinate society. 
Intellect can support static patterns of society without fear of domination by carefully 
distinguishing those moral issues that are social-biological from those that are intellectual-social 
and making sure there is no encroachment either way.
Lila ch23
 
In the battle of society against biology, the new twentieth-century intellectuals have taken 
biology's side. Society can handle biology alone by means of prisons and guns and police and 
the military. But when the intellectuals in control of society take biology's side against 
society then society is caught in a cross-fire from which it has no protection.
The Metaphysics of Quality says there are not just two codes of morals, there are actually 
five: inorganic-chaotic, biological-inorganic, social-biological, intellectual-social, and 
Dynamic-static. This last, the Dynamic-static code, says what's good in life isn't defined 
by society or intellect or biology. What's good is freedom from domination by any static 
pattern, but that freedom doesn't have to be obtained by the destruction of the patterns 
themselves. Lila ch23
 
Until the First World War the Victorian social codes dominated. From the First World War until the 
Second World War the intellectuals dominated unchallenged.
From the Second World War until the seventies the intellectuals continued to dominate, but with an 
increasing challenge - call it the 'Hippie revolution,' - which failed. And from the early seventies 
on there has been a slow confused mindless drift back to a kind of pseudo-Victorian moral posture 
accompanied by an unprecedented and unexplained growth in crime.
Of these periods, the last two seem the most misunderstood. The Hippies have been interpreted as 
frivolous spoiled children, and the period following their departure as a 'return to values,' 
whatever that means. The Metaphysics of Quality, however, says that's backward: the Hippie 
revolution was the moral movement. The present period is the collapse of values.
The Hippie revolution of the eighties was a moral revolution against both society and 
intellectuality. It was a whole new social phenomenon no intellectual had predicted 
and no intellectuals were able to explain. It was a revolution by children of well-to-do, 
college-educated, 'modern' people of the world who suddenly turned upon their parents 
and their schools and their society with a hatred no one could have believed existed.
Lila ch23