The question about human equality has raged philosophically, that is to say with arguments on both sides, as long as any discussion. It is often been associated with its corollary, the equally philosophically charged debate regarding nature and nurture. I will attempt to clarify how this equality rests on a discussion about the quality and quantity of an individual�s rational faculties. In this discussion we will find that there is substantial reason to believe in a dual category model, a system that supports the idea of two distinct human groups. These two groups I will call the Iconoclasts and the Collective. From this I will suggest the need for unequal treatment in regards to the two properly identified psychologically-defined groups.
I do not, in my papers, pretend to do justice to the art and science of philosophy. I am not a pure philosopher. In this respect, I will remain consistent here by merging philosophy and ideology; or, one might say, by upholding dialectic simultaneous with conclusive pedantry. I might pretend there are two sides, as a means to fostering discussion and enlightenment, but it will be obvious that i don't always believe it. I will state facts that may, at first, to unprepared ears, seem dogmatic and manipulative. Such is the nature of my inquiries.
The query regarding equality has two basic possibilities if it is to be taken seriously in discussion. These possibilities are simply that either all men have equal potential given equal circumstance, or that some men are in fact superior to the rest to such a degree that they are truly different and unequal. This may seem an oversimplification, but consider it in depth. In light of the way in which I am asking this question - in regards to psychology - any consent to dramatically different evidence is enough to warrant concern. This concern would give way to discussion radically different than the normative view in our modern world of tolerance and equality. I will certainly further the discussion, or up the ante, by claiming that the differences are so great, and so remarkable, as to justify superior treatment. Either there is a point at which one group of people are remarkably and unchangeably superior in rational faculty or there is not. If this point cannot be sufficiently proven it may be assumed that though people differ, their potential is basically and justifiably assumed to be equal.
Another important note is that i am not making reference here to racial or ethnic diversity, though i would be open to another separate discussion that i believe would be fruitful in this regard. This particular discussion is about intellectual differences.
I believe the two groups don�t merely differ by quantity. The two groups use this rational faculty in two very different ways when it comes to truth seeking. This difference is what makes each distinct and one superior.
Any reasonable person is confronted with the fact, in our modern societies, that people seem unable to adapt their rational faculties to the realities of the world. The many utopian themes of the past centuries demonstrates a two fold perception. This perception is that it is both worthwhile and possible to save the world of man. But these themes have as their impetus an inherent critique of current values. Consider the fact that philosophy, the root of all science and the companion of all modern scholarly theism - a thing obviously at the foundation of man�s rational education - has lost its place in our culture. This is a peculiar situation among all of the world�s perplexities. In a modern and educated world, the benefits of which may be seen as a product of the history of philosophy, there seems no special regard for or understanding of this father of science. The value of man�s rational faculties and the quality derived from its exemplary practice is easily proven. The clearest proof of which may come from the highly esteemed utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill. But here again is another perplexity. The idea is so easily proven, and its supporters are highly esteemed in history, yet the conclusion seems not only weak in practice, but valued as its opposite in modernity. There is no doubt that one of the most popular and philistine critiques of philosophy follows that it requires too much thinking; or, apropos of Eastern thought et al, it requires of man too much work and results in inhuman coldness and perpetual distraction. Though these truths are upheld in modern societies, their predicates seem to vanish into thin air upon closer examination. For these reasons a defense of philosophy in theory is actually quite a simple project and, consequently, one that I need not continue.
I will rest my argument on the points considered and add only that any further skeptics, regarding the current perceived value of philosophy, visit an academic philosophy department and experience the historical carelessness, the brute relativity toward truth, and the casual disregard for any serious dialectical confrontation with respect to rational faculties. If this doesn�t work, count the undergraduate philosophy majors on one hand and inquire as to the potential of their degree outside the university structure.
If the reader will tolerate my creative use of words, I will claim that the two groups of people be designated as iconoclasts and collectivists. The two names serve to describe characteristics of each and, through literary reference, serve to highlight my thesis: that there is a marked discrepancy between those prone to a herd mentality and those prone to enlightenment mentality and the wonder of philosophy. There should be no doubt which group is the minority. There may however, even at the conclusion of this paper, be a doubt as to the genetic heritability of the iconoclastic life, as I call it. But I will say here that this problem, this nature/nurture confusion, need not deter the reader from accepting the duality of these existences. Human adults have proven so incorrigible that this fact alone serves to demonstrate the lifelong consistency with which the members of each separate group maintain. My thesis is merely that there are two distinct and stable groups for all practical purposes.
It is obvious that members of these groups, if we can start to imagine the outline, are hardly persuaded to change sides in a lifetime. The distinctive element of the higher faculties, for this discussion, is what we might call the 'instinct to truth'. The first group, the collectivists, are so moved by this instinct that they will embark on a lifelong mission to prove truths not by evidence, but by whatever suits their goal. In instances where they use evidence - and in our world there may be many - this usage is dependent on the 'instinct for truth' rather than on the ethical value of evidential processes. Their goal is to create truth at any cost and, as a consequence, in opposition to any competing theory. The worth of their competition is irrelevant to them in a their greater scheme. A collectivist philosopher may succeed to some extent with evidential arguments, but he will, at some point, turn to more creative types of �reasoning� in order to achieve more complex truths. An example of this in more poetic form is my interpretation of Bacon�s quote: �A little philosophy inclineth man�s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth mens� minds about to religion.� A collectivist mind, no matter how well trained philosophically, is more concerned with purposes and goals - these always being the comforting types of goals - and has as his target not what there is, but what he wants there to be.
If we are to believe that Bacon is an outstanding example of the iconoclastic mind, Nietzsche is even more so. The greatest characteristics of this mind are a desire to create an objective value system, a resistance to social pressure, and a relationship with the temporality of existence. This can be shown as such:
1. Desire to reevaluate current values.
2. Resistance to social pressure.
3. Relationship with the temporality of existence.
These three qualities, apropos of Nietzsche and respectively, can be seen as: his reevaluation of morals, his life-long commitment to what might be called a personal rebellion (against nihilism, against altruism, against weakness in reasoning, etc), and his profound understanding of the irretrievability of time (and the common man's resentment of this). Just as a scientist considers his project as something to be revealed, as truth to be uncovered, yet accepted as temporary and dynamic, so does a philosophic mind examine its own life. This style in history found its home, the confluence of philosophy and science, the merging of two things that were never truly separate, in Sigmund Freud. Freud believed as tantamount to our success the understanding of the polyphonic nature of truth. Our own truth can only be understood at best when confronted with opposing views - the modern definition of the objectivity of science. The opposite of this process, for Freud, the collectivist or religious mind, only understands its own version of truth; and no matter how well its position is understood and articulated, its only value is then as mystified dogmatism. It may be said clearly, about the iconoclast, that he has a more consistent and self-maintained value system in theory and practice. And any paradox or clash that can be imagined between truth�s consistent and dynamic nature is one perceived from an overly simple and obtuse position. The iconoclastic style is active. It discovers what it will with a prime concern for objectivity and practicality while at all times aware of the absurd reality of the movement and fluctuation of metaphysical concerns.
Let us then return to the thesis. There is much evidence to demonstrate two distinct types of people, as we have discussed and outlined. The first criticism of my theory, of course, would come from the scientific thinkers themselves. Why do we not have evidence of this distinction? If the world is mainly comprised of material things and processes amenable to evidential argumentation, why is there not more evidence for this theory? I believe there are four simple reasons to contradict this objection.
Firstly, the collectivist is unaware of the iconoclast. He is unaware because he cannot stand to be confronted with the difficulties of the iconoclastic style. His own innate style is such that the benefits of iconoclastic truths are less important than the value of the comforting effects of his delusions. The very nature of the collectivist mind, due to this and many other limiting factors, makes him unable to identify the other category at all. It is true that he is aware of rare and annoying people that serve to complicate his worldview, but they have no name or consistency to him.
Secondly, social pressures support equality. Any discussion about clear distinctions in people work against the ill-founded primary moral conception of the natural equality of the species.
Thirdly, iconoclasts are for obvious reasons afraid to speak out.
Lastly, and even more indistinctly, is the fact that intellectual groups of people are not comprised, as they might naturally be, of a higher percentage of iconoclasts. Due to many factors, and mainly the factors previously discussed herein, groups of thinkers and policy makers and educators are not empowered by the iconoclastic style and thus deprive society of the benefits as such.
The four reasons why people don�t know of this distinction can be shown as this:
1. The iconoclast is unknown and misunderstood in a broad cultural context.
2. Political Correctness insures the truth value of human equality.
3. Iconoclasts fear speaking out.
4. Intellectual groups are not really made up of intellectuals.
So this previous information demonstrates why the evidence has not been willfully uncovered, but what is the actual evidence for the distinction between the groups? What sound reasons are there to believe in the distinctions between the two categories? The evidences I have uncovered fall into two general categories: historical and qualitative.
Historical
It is clear that science and the inventive mind have given to man the avenue to peace and the possibility of health. This has been best demonstrated by the scientific enlightenment and the culmination of its ideas in America. These ideas have been expressed and unified through the work of secular iconoclasts like Aristotle, Bacon, Hobbes, Freud, Darwin, Locke, Mill and Nietzsche. They have also been furthered by the iconoclastic tendencies of less secular men like Socrates, Plato, Copernicus, Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Einstein. If the iconoclastic style is more effective for the success of the race, then why is it that human civilizations have not changed as the result of the influence of these thinkers? If the iconoclastic influence has had nearly a zero sum effect on the masses - consider the dramatic failure of utopian ideas - then the popular mind must be so different as to render it impotent to change. When we read Nietzsche�s discussion of the future man there is today a sad reality in the failure of his prognostications. The same is true of Freud�s predictions about the scientific atheism of the future. The world today is as permeated with religious violence and discrimination as it has ever been. Even American political decisions, working within a system designed to be as close to the iconoclastic style as a Socratic Athens, are mired in religious morality and subjective perceptions of otherwise scientifically demystified truths.
In America, the masses have gained so much power over truth that scientific axioms have become mystified beyond recognition. Three important areas serve to demonstrate more closely the specific problem. These areas are images, laws, and medicine. These three correspond, not coincidentally with three of the main foci for philosophy. I will chart these three and their philosophical correlates. The chart can be shown as:
1. Images The Ego, Self-Perception, Reality.
2. Laws The Super Ego, The Construct, Morality and Ethics.
3. Medicine Health, Humanism, and the Ultimate Good.
Any examination of Hollywood demonstrates a profound popular concern for the relative position of the self in modernity. This relativity extends to dramatic examples of the self as �unreal.� The mystification of scientific and objective truth relies on the cultural conditioning of image-philosophy. If the self is not real and the external world unverifiable, mystification can be upheld. The Academy Awards in 2002, as an example, blatantly focused on the perception of quality in film and acting rather than on any effort to demonstrate objective value. The color of an actors skin and the political climate dictates the value of the artistic worth in an aesthetically confused mileu. These films must hire companies to improve their image in society in order to increase success with the Academy and eventually with the buying public. These images are bought and sold without question.
The failure of America to deter or even discourage citizens from using mind-altering substances is an excellent avenue of exploration that can only reveal further problems associated with the delusional break between self-perception and external reality - the world of the image.
The political focus on a presidents sex life rather than on his objective successes is again another clear example. Citizens are more concerned with the President's image, as defined by the consumerist/conventional moral paradigm, than they are by his political actions .
The second area is law. It seems perfectly fine to any reasonable man that John Stuart Mill was correct in asserting that no government should make laws that protect man from himself. He stated that governmental concerns should be about individual transgressions that effect other people exclusively. Laws against drug use, private sexual conduct, and suicide will not work in a free society. This concept that there must be a separation between government and individual, and the pessimism obvious in the blatant failure of these laws when practiced, seems to fall on deaf ears. To make the point more clear and powerful: Why is it that our laws are predicated on a base as unscientific as religion itself? The judicial process seems scientific enough, though fused with Christian language, but the foundational belief systems are founded on historically mystified religious grounds. The Iconoclastic thinkers - clearly Nietzsche as example - have had little effect on the conception of law by the masses.
One tarnished example, in our culture, is the odd connection between health-care and education on the one hand and popular Christianity on the other. This is not a connection that has diminished, but increased. It is now a fact that the Catholic health care system has become the largest private-sector health care provider in the country with 620 hospitals and 48 of the country's managed care plans. Catholic hospitals are regulated by the Ethical and Religious Directives which denies services such as birth control, tubal ligations, vasectomies, and abortions. This impact on the scientific community is best demonstrated in the recent and expanding offensive, by the religious right to deter the progress of potentially ground-breaking research on fetal tissue in the 80s (Reagan) and now, more importantly, on stem cell research and cloning (Bush Jr). The push for further Christian moral education for children, and the same economic trend in the health-care issue, demonstrates a clear historic stagnation that must be considered as due to a certain, inevitable type of human mind.
History is a stark and violently undeniable fact.
There is no reason to believe, whatsoever, after studying Egypt and Greece and Rome, that our society is becoming less violent, less resentful, less dogmatic or less oppressive. After three thousand years, we have a good picture of history. Regardless of whether it is bad, or merely a cold fact, it is strangely demonstrative of the idea that a unique minority of enlightened and dynamic thinkers must exist alone and in direct contrast to the masses.
Three further continuations of the historical evidence are: the consistent failure of utopian themes, the recurring failure of the vision for greater and more enlightened men, and the glaring modern fact that high-tech communications have removed the possibilities that otherwise might have argued against the transmission of iconoclastic ideas to the masses.
Qualitative
The other group of evidences consists of quality differences that are so remarkable as to transcend mere cultural or environmental habits. These are the differences previously discussed in regards to the 'instinct to truth.' The odd difference between the value of this 'instinct for truth' stands boldly in any psychological model as an important and useful distinction. The iconoclastic style transcends many other qualities in man, across cultures. What makes Nietzsche so accessible and useful to Americans is the distinctive nature of his style, a style which thrills the masses and redeems the rare genius of iconoclasm.
Conclusions
The consequences of this theory are many. The most disconcerting is clearly the marked pessimism regarding the movement of human history. Thousands of years of iconoclasm have not redeemed the two current dominant political ideologies, the communist model and the democratic model. One system suffers from not enough freedom and the other perhaps too much. It is a confusingly paradoxical situation that does have as its only resolution the pessimistic concept of the dire intellectual limitations of the common man.
It is clear that the value of iconoclastic thought transcends boundaries and maintains literature even in the face of religious persecution. This is what is meant by enlightenment thinkers when they claim, rightly or wrongly, that science always wins. The method of obtaining truth through the iconoclastic method is superior and results in pioneering works of philosophy and inventions of science. Nietzsche is a prime example of this theory. It is against the collectivists very nature to risk losing his grip on truth, yet he is incapable of denying the success of the iconoclastic position, though he is, by nature, exempt from using it in its original form.
Empiricists have as a foundational belief, though they are apt to qualify it to suit their argument, that men are born as blank slates. They believe that environmental stimuli is the reason for any differences among men. A further conclusion herein consists of the belief that all men have the potential for equal accomplishment by a modification of these environmental stimuli. It is a very optimistic view indeed. The basis for these thinkers, and many more, to exhibit a propensity for altering their own such premises is synonymous with the findings of science. Human environments have often been significantly modified with no result. Clearly the prison systems and mental health fields are testimony to this as regards adult people. Insofar as children are concerned, hard scientific evidence has supported, and has in the least shed much skepticism on its opposition, through meticulous familial studies. Any rational conclusion then must support contrary claims. The equality of men cannot be proven by deference to a discussion about environmental concerns alone