[MD] Sociopathy (wasRe: Step Two)

[John Carl]

Jan-Anders,

On 8/26/14, Jan Anders Andersson <jananderses at telia.com> wrote:
> Yes
>
> There is a razor too, the dividing principle, known as ethic betterness. The
> betterness of jumping into a superior level.
>
> "So what Phaedrus was saying was that not just life, but everything,
> is an ethical activity. It is nothing else. When inorganic patterns of
> reality create life the Metaphysics of Quality postulates that they've
> done so because it's "better" and that this definition of "betterness"
> -this beginning response to Dynamic Quality-is an elementary unit of
> ethics upon which all right and wrong can be based.” Lila
>
> The hunt for step two is to find the very threshold from organic into social
> betterness.
> Where is it?
>

Sometimes when trying to find something, it's helpful to look at its
opposite.  I came across a passage on sociopaths, that while it might
be more relevant to step 3, is still relevant in that it shows what an
un-ethical step looks like.

Taken from Time, Will and Purpose by Randy Auxier:

The problem of the sociopath is precisely the failure to credit the
*value* of the possible experience of others, and the metaphysics that
follows from such a condition fails to credit the possible reality of
the same. Only with such a perverse move can there be a "problem of
other minds" and other pseudo problems which 20th century philosophy
so often occupies itself.  The real issue is not the reality of other
minds, but the tendency among some to trust ungrounded abstractions
above concrete experience, deemed "the philosopher's fallacy" by James
and Dewey.  More pointedly, all forms of abstractionism and
reductionism are sociopathic and we lament that this is the current
state of professional philosophy and a great deal of science, both
social and natural. ... The human being who strives to be a person by
serving institutions that have been warped risks taken into himself or
herself the defects of purpose and memory that are immanent in the
activities of the institutions themselves.  Thus one can, under the
right circumstances, get individuals such as Hitler, who thinks he is
serving the genuine purposes of the Fatherland by purposing policies
that destroy the very cause he sought to advance, or one can get
scientists such as Dawkins and E.O Wilson, or philosophers such a
Dennett, these little fascists of the intellect ensconced within their
tiny domains of thought who are engaged in the academic and
educational equivalent, cleansing the Reich of human thought of
whatever strikes them as impure.  They tell human beings, without
apparent shame and without any hint of humility, that we are nothing
more than our biology or our physical aspects, or whatever the Zyclon
B of their pet theories happens to be, and often this is not even
recognized as a fundamental assault on human dignity and the full
range of the human experience.

----

Now, I hear you asking me, J-A, what does this have to do with the
step from biological to social patterning?  This:  It's important to
remember that the evolution we speak of, is not a mechanistic
evolution.  DQ is more than that.

Yours,

John