Digital Underground - uXu - Underground eXperts United #uxu-260

### ### ### ### ### #### ### ### ### #### ### ### ##### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ##### ### ### ########## ### ### ########## ### ### ### ### Underground eXperts United Presents... ####### ## ## ####### # # ####### ####### ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## #### ## ## #### # # ####### ####### ## ## ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ####### ####### # # ####### ####### ####### [ On 'Love, Sex And Marriage' ] [ By The GNN ] ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ ON 'LOVE, SEX AND MARRIAGE' by THE GNN/DualCrew-Shining/uXu "Love, Sex and Marriage" by Leon Felkins, is a well-written essay about the 'real' forces behind a familiar phenomena; namely 'love'. In short, the conclusions drawn by Mr. Felkins claim that love is nothing more than a result of our genes. There is nothing 'mystical' with love - everything is reducible to genes. Love does not exist in some 'divine' way, nor is it some metaphysical object (as we normally would like to claim) - it is just our genes that play with our mind. We are also restricted by our 'memes.' In social life, we stay away from immoral actions due to these memes. However, I would like to show that this essay is not as controversial as Mr. Felkins wants us to believe. On the contrary, this essay is very characteristic for the period after the industrial revolution, which we live in, when it comes to methods and conclusions. This is the core of Mr. Felkins essay: Love and sex are nothing more than a show written and directed by our genes and memes. Hence, we should not accept any religious, metaphysical or equal answers concerning love. No physician consult the holy bible to find answers, since everything is in the atoms. Naturally, says even the physician, not 'everything' is in the atoms. There must be other forces that we do not know about. Love, for example, cannot be in the atoms alone. So where is it? In the genes and memes, according to Mr. Felkins. We have just realized that we have fallen into the pit of extreme scientism. We live in an age where 'science' is the endless source of all truths. After the industrial revolution, man threw away all dogmas and understood that the old truths were worthless. Science is Science. Science is the Right way. Mr. Felkins essay is another fine example of this movement. Everything around us must, by necessity and 'rationality' be reduced to empirical science (in this context, psychology is also considered as an empirical science). Why is that so? Because, empirical science produces results. Empirical science means 'progress'. There is no progress in metaphysical and religious beliefs! It is not even Science! That is why we must abandon these worthless activities! The world is atoms. We are made of atoms. Therefor, we are ruled by the atoms. Hey, wait a minute, some people say. Ruled by atoms? Is not that reductio ad absurdum? Of course it is. But reducing everything concerning the human mind, when it comes to love, to genes and memes, is not that reductio ad absurdum too? Perhaps not. Reducing everything to atoms is a messy business. That would be too hard to get a grip on. Reducing it to genes, however, is much more easier. We will find 'results', or in this case 'explanations'. But what kind of 'explanations' do we really find? Well, in the end: love is a results of our genes. Mr. Felkins just love to reduce everything to our genes, this is a fact. But that is, as said, not all - there are memes too. Genes are the hard core, they do not change as fast as memes do. Working together, genes and memes produce what we would call 'love'. So, is there something wrong with this reduction? Prima facie, no: The reduction makes it very easy for us. We find easy 'explanations'. But we said that it was a messy business to reduce everything to atoms. But just because it is messy, it does not mean that it is wrong. But it does not mean that it is right either. Reducing everything to genes and memes is easy; but that does not make it true. It gives us 'explanations', of course, but what kind of explanations? Let me put it this way: worthless explanations. We are in dark waters here, the human mind is a very unfamiliar place. We do not know how the brain works at all. And how our genes really work are not so familiar either, as Mr. Felkins wants us to believe. But he offers us easy explanations that 'works'. Sure, they work in a sense. But just because they work prima facie, are they true? Probably not. As I said, the human mind and genes are not completely explored. We do not really understand what love is. Hence, some uneducated people suffers from a special kind of neurosis, says Mr. Felkins. Those who know that love is just in the genes and memes, does not suffer from this because they know what it is all about. How nice. Back in the old days, philosophers treated their neurosis by reducing everything to four basic elements. That explanation of the world 'worked' too! "What does a 'stone' consist of? Well, these elements..." "What is love? Well, these basic elements... <genes> <memes>" The picture now ought to be clear; Just because something is easy to explain, that explanation is not necessary true. We look at the ancient philosophers and laugh. How could they be so childish! But when we try to explain the unexplainable nowadays, we are dead serious. We are scientists, hard men that knows how to separate Truth from False from Nonsense. There is also a drawback: alienation. Science is said to give us the truths, but the 'results' alienates us from morality and ourselves. We do not longer believe in objective moral truths since science has told us that morality is nothing more than memes. We are suddenly turned into utilitarians, seeking pleasure because it feels good. We do not respect other people, we do not 'really' love them - because we know that in the end everything is just atoms (or 'genes', whatever). Man could not stand the religious crap anymore and turned to the empirical sciences for truths. This was of course a healthy thing to do. Religion is nothing more than dogmas. But science has made us worship other dogmas. The result of religion was oppression. The result of science is alienation. We want to believe that we understand the background to everything, but in the end we are just as confused as we were back in the old days. Mr. Felkins wants us to avoid the mine fields of myths concerning love and sex. But he is walking on another mine field; the one that belongs to the empirical sciences. The myth that science is everything, is nothing more than a myth. My critique can be easily explained by Mr. Felkins; I am just interested in sex. And this text will give me more sex. I guess his line of argument would be like this: 'My way of handling love is controversial. People will not agree with me. Some people will dislike my ideas. You do not like my way of dealing with the problem of love. And you know that some women <or men, if I had been a woman> will fancy your way, because it appeals to the old myths about love that people like (as love is in movies from the 50's: mystical). Hence, your text is just a result of your genes. You want sex.' Of course, I am not sure if Mr. Felkins would express himself like that. But the concept is hopefully clear: Mr. Felkins wants to (as all empirical sciences) reduce everything to some minimal object. Micro is the word of today, macro means nothing. We believe that we are on our way to the final truth, because we have trashed the religious crap. But we have just changed our point of view. God is dead, long live physics. The result is alienation from ourselves and other people. Mr. Felkins claims that "...<memes> can be overridden by applying the rules of logic." This would be true if the world was black and white. But the color of theory is, and will always be, grey. What should we do? Return to the old days? Of course not! But we should be careful. Science works good, that is a fact. But we should not forget to study the morality more close, and not trash it with the words 'Everything is just in the atoms or genes anyway!' because then we will suffer from another kind of neurosis, namely alienation. And that is as bad as being oppressed by religion. Science is just a new religion, let us be aware of that. * Sources. (There are naturally several more sources to the views expressed in this text, and the below ones are just a few of them.) - Peter Railton, "Alienation and the Demands of Morality", Philosophy and Public Affairs Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring 1984). - R. Schacht, Alienation. Garden City, NY: Doubleday (1971). - A series of lectures held by PhD Craig Dilworth on philosophy of science, at the University of Uppsala, Sweden (Spring 1993). - Rom Harr, The Philosophies of Science, (second edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press (1972) /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ... naturally, but who is the underground master? If we knew we would tell you. CALL THE STASH +46-13-CHECKINDEX \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ This is not Art. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- uXu #260 Underground eXperts United 1995 uXu #260 Call LHDý -> +1-818-546-2332 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

← Svenska e-zines (1990-2008)