Chapter 15
The 2000-Year Streamlining of Society
2The longing of individuals and minorities to journey from known to unknown territory was amplified, after the early human ‘‘delousing,’’ from a longing to journey bodily, to a longing, on the part of a few, to journey mentally. It was discovered that the mind can explore without bodily accompaniment through teleologic projection of analyzed past exploration experience. For instance, a child who has never been outside New York City can reasonably comprehend movie scenes of Alpine skiing as an extension of the experience of sliding down the banister compounded with memory of snow in the streets, albeit very dirty snow. There emerged from the early masses certain central thinkers who, teleologically traveling, ushered in the mind-over-matter emergence era.
3 These mind-over-matterers attained de-selfed rationalization by virtue of integrity of thought, readiness to include, and persistence in penetration and analysis. This was furthered, as the social front in a succession of north west ‘‘outs’’ established itself on the Mediterranean stage, by objectifying thought into mathematical forms. Once away to the concept of ‘‘time,’’ through mathematical thinking, the persevering-with-integrity mind-over-matterers must surely have been impressed with wonder at their having the time in which to THINK, especially to think effectively.
4 Undoubtedly and in consistence with the caliber of their demonstrated thinking, the early successful scientific philosophers must have comprehended the fact that sufficient time for rationalizing had accrued through man’s environment conquest. This environment control was not available to their cave-dwelling forebears, whose time was fully consumed in defending, replenishing and reproducing themselves, or in the subsequent primitive objective science of recording experience with pictures. It was not until a large enough number of human forebears, stimulated by leader-minds, fortuitously banded together in cooperative effort that a degree of sustained environment control became possible, providing the potential isolation of a modicum of time for rationalizing. This event marked the beginning of science which, as defined by Edington, is simply, The sincere attempt to set in order the facts of experience,’’ with the implied goal of ordering future experience.
5 Setting in order the facts of their experience, the mind-over-matters of the great mathematical emergence era (known to us as having occurred particularly in the Mediterranean lands 700200 B. C.) must have realized that their environment control was maintained by dint of animate slavery. Human slavery was at its historical zenith when geometry was incepted, both in the numerical proportion of society involved and in the smooth functioning of the system, and in sheer cruelty.
6 Our thinker,’’ pursuing causes and effects with integrity, must further have rationalized that he had evolved a thought progression i.e., from arithmetic, to geometry, to trigonometry, to force analysis, and, finally, to certain laws offeree, including leverage, the application of which would give the user a practicable mechanical ‘‘advantage’’ over human work ability.
7 In effect,’’ he must have realized, ‘‘I have unwittingly established a progression, the further extension of which indicates that the utilization of the mechanical advantage principles will result in more work being done than could possibly be accomplished by the use of animate slaves without such extensions.’’
8 Continuing to reflect, he went on: ‘‘Although man has for long empirically demonstrated ‘mechanical advantage’ in work through the hand prize, and other simple instruments, the distinction here is that I may now anticipate results even in compound leverage design through the instrumentality of mathematics, geometry and scientific laws of force. The farther the extensions of these truths, the greater the acceleration of time control and work saving in the matter of attaining environment control with an ever diminishing use of animate slaves. The end result must be the complete replacement of the animate by the inanimate slave. The power for the operation of the inanimate slaves will be derived from mechanisms motivated by inanimate forces such as I have detected, segregated and charted in kinetics of wind and water phenomena.’’
9 The scientist-philosopher realized that until man should conquer his environment with the indicated inanimate slaves, he should not in integrity be entitled to discover new cosmic knowledge; but if and when he should succeed in such conquest, then in leisure and conscientious freedom, new central philosophies for the enjoyment of that environment would undoubtedly accrue. However, until the accomplishment of environment control by the inanimate slave, mans mental activity (the philosopher perceived) must be confined to the amplifying, by rationalization of the physical processes already evolved through the scientist-philosophers mathematics<geometry <laws of force progression. This amplification would transit two periods: one of retrogression of every characteristic of the old society based on personal slavery down to a low point of almost complete zero, and another of evolution from central chaos to a society based on an inanimate slave sustenance.
10 Wherefore, ever goaded by integrity, the rationalizer must have foreseen that society would mandatorially be designedly streamlined by himself to chaos in synchronization with the (uncomprehendedby-the-old-society) evolution of the inanimate mechanism; chaos, because bereft of all comprehension of meaning in its traditions and uncomforted by experienced knowledge of the new. Divining peril to this streamlining design in any pronouncement of so devastating a procedure, he resolved that no new cosmic concept should be evolved until this evolution attained majority. Accordingly, he declined to broadcast clues or set down formulas involving any human or personal equation. He did, however, reveal certain laws of inanimate and impersonal properties, for instance, the law of the proportion of weight displacement of water by floating bodies. (Archimedes, 280 B. C., Syracuse, north westward of Greece.)
11 These impersonal laws, interpreted through the centralattitudes of the attained philosophy and deriving from scientific observations of inanimate phenomena, were the first of many in the realm of science upon which man could ‘‘hang his hat’’ without fear of disillusionment. They are to be differentiated, however, from those set down by the prophet’s disciples, who romantically cited promises in equations of personal performance. The reason the philosopher-scientist refused to state laws or formulas for attainment in the terms of personal performance was that these would preclude man’s ‘‘thinking through’’ to results, a popular mind-to-over-matter progression that must not be interrupted if mind were to dominate. By the nonavailability of laws of ‘‘how’’ to rationalize, man was free to rationalize. Thus free, and simultaneously compelled to rationalize in order to survive, man was bound to perform the myriad of extension developments of the mechanisms essential to attainment of that thrilling day when environment control would be structured upon an inanimate slavery of objectivized self-mechanics extension into a from-self-segregated family of mechanics.
12 In 1632, Spinoza reviewed well the single ‘‘life preserver’’ of civilization which the scientist-philosopher had provided for use during the flood water period of the era of chaos:
13 It was looked upon as indisputable that the judgment of the Gods far surpassed our comprehension; and this alone would have been sufficient to keep the human race in darkness to all eternity if mathematics, which does not deal with ends, but with the essences and properties of forms, had not placed before us another rule of truth. In addition to mathematics other causes also might be assigned, which it is superfluous here to enumerate, tending to make men reflect upon universal prejudices and leading them to a true knowledge of things…The wise man…is scarcely ever moved in his mind, but, being conscious by a certain eternal necessity of himself, of God, and of all things, never ceases to be and always enjoys true peace of soul. If the way which, as I have shown, leads hither, seems very difficult, it can nevertheless be found.’’