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The Nature of Reality - Part II

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 3/23/2007

An Epistolary Dialogue Between Roberto Calvo Macias and Sam Vaknin

Dear RCM,

As usual, your letter is a feast of erudition disguised as ignorance dipped in provocation. I ask you to trust me. That is, to close your eyes and to follow me, holding my virtual hand. In this letter, I will pose two questions. On first blush, they may seem all but irrelevant. They may provoke your ire. You may be tempted to end our epistolary (ad)venture here and now. But, please don't. A clear answer to either of them - or even the attempt to obtain such an answer- will carry us a long way into the territory we are both trying to explore. Meaning, choice, natural and artificial - will all follow from this digression. Forgive the enigmatic tone. It is not meant to put you to the test - rather to stimulate you into one of your prodigious rebuttals...:o))

The first question, therefore:

Why is meritocracy considered more equitable and just than an aristocracy?

Why does the possession of a superior brain (the fundament of meritocracy) entitle one to superior benefits and perks, status and position, assets and reputation, career and future? Why this linkage between the quality of a specific tissue of the body and the life of its lucky possessor? And why prefer one tissue (the brain) to another (the blood, the genes)? Aristocracy is based on the ownership of certain genes inherited in societal-organizational units known as "families". Why is this to be neglected in favour of meritocracy - the ownership of a brain and the use it is put to?

One possible answer is that the inheritance of the "right", "aristocratic" genes is not dependent on the individual so endowed. He contributes nothing to it through his labours (as opposed to the meritocrat whose whole life is dependent on the effort he puts into it). But then the inheritance of a brain is equally the outcome of an arbitrary genetic lottery. The inheritance of genes or of a brain (= a specific protein translation of specific genes) both are equally random events, entirely outside the control of the lucky beneficiaries.

Another part of the above answer is that it is not sufficient to possess a brain. One has to put one's intellectual faculties to use to qualify as member of the meritocracy. One is born an aristocrat - but becomes a meritocrat through work and the investment of resources. This process of becoming is what sets the two elites apart.

This is a poor answer for two reasons. The first is that the preference of becoming over being is rather arbitrary. One can just as easily (and arbitrarily) prefer being to becoming (as, indeed, humanity has done for thousands of years). The second is that one used to work hard to earn one's title as an aristocrat. Noblesse definitely obliged. The life story of the Marquis de Sade demonstrates how easily one could lose his de facto membership - if never his de jure affiliation. Thus, both elites demand that their members go through rites of passage, learn the catechism and practise the faith. To be a meritocrat or to be an aristocrat - is a full time job.

Another argument is that meritocracy is self-evident. It is "scientific" and falsifiable in the Popperian sense (through unambiguous achievements, objectively testable) and that it contributes to the survival of the species (for instance, through scientific achievement) - presumably, as opposed to aristocracy which lacks these commendable qualities. And yet, that aristocracy was self-evident is ... well, self evident. That it was objectively determinable - that is: rigorously and falsifiably so - is also clear. Records of birth and of upbringing used to determine its membership were more reliable and consistent criteria than the SAT or GMAT scores employed by meritocracy (as the sorry state of American "education" can demonstrate). And aristocracy contributed to the well being and development of humanity no less than meritocracy. The latter has been with us for less than half a century. All that preceded it was achieved by humans who lived within aristocratic, stratified, class societies.

My second question has to do with whores and with consultants.

Whores (and gigolos) rent out their genitalia to customers. Consultants rent out their brains to customers. Both collect fees for allowing perfect strangers to make use of their respective organs for a limited period of time.

Why is it, then, that whores are abhorred and degraded while consultants are praised and elevated? Why is a brain different to a vagina? Doesn't the use made of a brain have more indelible and irreversible consequences than almost any use of a vagina? Shouldn't the mundane use of a magnificent and breathtakingly exotic machine (such as the brain) be considered more degrading than the use - however mindless - of a more basic organ such as the vagina? After all, in whoring, the whore's vagina is put to the full use it was designed for to start with. But a consultant (or a lawyer, or an accountant, or a college teacher) often under-utilizes his brain to an offending extent.

True, the whore provides us with an emotion-less imitation of an act which is often emotion laden. Often - but not always. And this is the redeeming feature - that sex is a mode of communication capable of expressing a wide range of emotions and of conveying a wide variety of messages, many of them devoid of all emotion. Thus, prostitution sits well and comfortably within this spectrum. But not so mental prostitution. We hold in disdain and contempt he who disavows his own beliefs, or disowns the things and people dearest to him - and all this for material gain. Shouldn't we be doubly repelled by he who disowns his own intellectual potential, his own capabilities and capacities and compromises by prostituting his brain? If a person is capable of writing a great novel but instead writes dispatches for a daily paper - shouldn't we be taken aback by him? If another has been a brilliant physicist in his youth only to become a mediocre financial consultant due to his own laziness and lack of perseverance - shouldn't we be appalled by him more than we are by a prostitute? Verily, isn't he himself a prostitute albeit of a different kind, prostituting a different organ?

What is it that makes our judgement of the vagina materially different in this critical and analytic age in which all prejudices were proclaimed dead (even the biggest one of all, God)?

I think in both cases (meritocracy versus aristocracy and consultant versus whore) - we react to the real as opposed to the imitated, the genuine or authentic as opposed to the fake, the natural as opposed to the artificial, the full path as opposed to the shortcut.

But enough said. Your turn now.

Sam


Dear Sam,

I have read with due attention your two questions and the final knot - I must confess I didn't catch your final argument; what do you mean exactly? That we are irredentist dualists, or that we are replete with "mental sins", or that we, in the wide range of reality, always prefer the "idea" to "the shocking truth"?

Especially enigmatic remains to me your last phrase: "The full path as opposed to the shortcut" (it links with "my problem" and I have been meditating on it very deeply). Or, perhaps you may choose to leave them to the end - in which case I shall continue my letter.

Meritocrazy or aristocrazy?

Sincerely, I don't care about these questions - I am out of those childish games. They are for those intelligent people that write and talk in the media. It is the same stupid circle of progressives versus conservatives. Those are matters of age, of dynamism, of money and fear, etc. You have nothing, you are a socialist, a revolutionary. You have something to lose, you are a conservative, a tyrant. There have always been aristocrats (in that sense that you propose), the only democratic people till this day were in fact aristocrats! (Athens). Meritocracy is only the dynamic phase of aristocracy.

More interesting is to see what kind of new aspirants to aristocracy are coming to dominate the earth. As you have well described, they are no longer the beautiful, or the valiant, or the well-born. No! In the world of reason, they belong to "the brain gifted", and of those to a very special species: THOSE WHO ARE CAPABLE OF SURPASSING THE TEST. This linking with "the test" is so marvellous, so symbolic, so traitorous! The men of "the test"! The elite of "the test"! As far as I know this very process (including the erasing of the remnants of the old elite) was public knowledge as early as 1931 (Der Arbeiter; Ernst Jünger) and completed its dark side in 1938 (Der Perfektion of Technik; Fiedrich George Jünger).

And more interesting indeed, about meritocracy, is this question:

Why people such as socialist demagogues and other actors are not satisfied with all the glory and the power, why the hell did they also want to appear as saints "at tout prix"?

About meritocracy and regarding all those questions of tests, statistics and so on, the Romans (who thought about questions of power better and with more seriousness than us) had a marvellous inquiry: cui bono?...And also another pretty one of Pilato's: where is "the merit"? (freely translated):-)

Vaginas or brains?

This question has been debated for centuries in the clubs of that punctilious people: the scholastics.

Nothing more far of my intention to contribute to that joke with another turn of the crank.

Those questions of prostitution, hypocrisy, double moral were resolved a century ago (Aurora; "Old PowderHead") - and also all the contradictions between matter/idea. Please, nothing of morality in this epistolary " joint venture"!:-)

The brain's prostitution is a fascinating problem. It was comprehensively explored as early as the XVIII century, in that masterly way characteristic of the genius, in Fausto (Goethe). And this links again to "my problem": what is the merit of brain? How can we value that which measures itself? Of what use is the brain? What should we do with this gift? To summarize: what is the meaning of life?

Positioned at this point, inhaling the fresh air of mountains, we observe questions fall down from the sky, as thundering rays of a choleric Zeus:

What kind of "new men" are going to be our next aristocracy?
Are they, perhaps, the techno-men?
If so, what are the consequences?
What is modern technology?
Why Hephaistos is always represented as lame, and surrounded by little creatures, small demons?
Admittedly, they know how to make and use machines, but do they know how to rule people?
If so, which kind of cyber-control are they going to use?
What are the consequences of that control?
Is this purely a human change, or is it tellurian, or cosmic?

Finally, I would like to make a distinction that has to do with the extension of the fire, the profundity of the change. What is happening is not, as many people think, a "typification" (a realization, an emergence in reality) of the technician. On the contrary, what is actually happening is the "technification" of the human species.

wishing you the best
roberto

PD: Another question that remains open is what do I means when I use this controversial word: aristocracy, which, obviously, has nothing to do with gene-transmission and all those fantasies.
If you want to discuss that, we must reach an agreement on the meaning of prophets, visionaries, poets, artists and philosophers before I can expose what I understand by "aristocracy". This can be of help to our original propose, for the prediction of the future is really science's one-and-only "motto".

(continued)