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Sparx, v. 1, issue 6, February 1948
Page 6
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Debs, and Einstein-- have a sickening lot of faults themselves when you get into it. But compared to them your masses of people are no good at all-- maybe once or twice in their lives they do something great or noble, and spend the rest of their time living it down. That's worse than total depravity. P: You've been using a lot of pseudo-mathematical expressions. May I as whether you have worked out any figures in this field? It occurs to me that you'd run up against some knotty problems unless you frankly used arbitrarily chosen measuring units to express just "how far" people fall below your standards. A: Cripes, man, you can't be mathematical about something like this. P (triumphantly): Then you're being visceral. Anelestos, don't you realize that you're int he grip of a mood? Even if you felt like this all the time, it would merely signify that you were a soured personality. There's no absolute, objective referent for these value judgments. They come from inside your skin; they don't characterize something outside it. If they did, they could be reduced to mathematical statement. The mainsprings of motivation are inside your skin, too. When, say, you decide to postpone an enjoyment, you're not going through a process of mathematical reasoning. You're weighing imponderables. P: But you want to do such weighing while in a reasonably normal state of mind. Look at Generation of Vipers. You'd think Wylie was down on the whole human race. He even castigates your Uncommon Men. But there are passages in the book, and particularly in his vision of future greatness, which show him taking an entirely different view of human possobilities. If he didn't write those at different times of the day, he must at least have had a mighty mood-wrenching job to get his tune changed. The point is that it is a mood. A: Anybody that praises Homo sapiens is in a mood, too, and a very peculiar one. P: I wonder if I haven't taken the wrong tack. I can't analyze and refute your statement that we're no good until I see what use you intend to make of it; as it stands it's still up in the air, not tied down to any concrete operations. A: A generalization can have ultimate referents in a sheaf of operations; but it's as a generalization that we live it. P: But what do you have in view? Are you advocating race suicide, or pessimistic individualism, or what? A: Say I'm just expressing my feelings, Protelamnes. They're an operational fact. ifyoudidn;tunderstandtheabovejustreaditagainafewtimes.ihadtotwice BLANK SPACE FOR COGNITATION
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Debs, and Einstein-- have a sickening lot of faults themselves when you get into it. But compared to them your masses of people are no good at all-- maybe once or twice in their lives they do something great or noble, and spend the rest of their time living it down. That's worse than total depravity. P: You've been using a lot of pseudo-mathematical expressions. May I as whether you have worked out any figures in this field? It occurs to me that you'd run up against some knotty problems unless you frankly used arbitrarily chosen measuring units to express just "how far" people fall below your standards. A: Cripes, man, you can't be mathematical about something like this. P (triumphantly): Then you're being visceral. Anelestos, don't you realize that you're int he grip of a mood? Even if you felt like this all the time, it would merely signify that you were a soured personality. There's no absolute, objective referent for these value judgments. They come from inside your skin; they don't characterize something outside it. If they did, they could be reduced to mathematical statement. The mainsprings of motivation are inside your skin, too. When, say, you decide to postpone an enjoyment, you're not going through a process of mathematical reasoning. You're weighing imponderables. P: But you want to do such weighing while in a reasonably normal state of mind. Look at Generation of Vipers. You'd think Wylie was down on the whole human race. He even castigates your Uncommon Men. But there are passages in the book, and particularly in his vision of future greatness, which show him taking an entirely different view of human possobilities. If he didn't write those at different times of the day, he must at least have had a mighty mood-wrenching job to get his tune changed. The point is that it is a mood. A: Anybody that praises Homo sapiens is in a mood, too, and a very peculiar one. P: I wonder if I haven't taken the wrong tack. I can't analyze and refute your statement that we're no good until I see what use you intend to make of it; as it stands it's still up in the air, not tied down to any concrete operations. A: A generalization can have ultimate referents in a sheaf of operations; but it's as a generalization that we live it. P: But what do you have in view? Are you advocating race suicide, or pessimistic individualism, or what? A: Say I'm just expressing my feelings, Protelamnes. They're an operational fact. ifyoudidn;tunderstandtheabovejustreaditagainafewtimes.ihadtotwice BLANK SPACE FOR COGNITATION
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