dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi) (09/18/86)
Tim Sevener writes: > Then there is, of course, Heinlein's series on the "Methuselah Complex" > in which a secret group of "genetically superior" people who have > secretly crossbred to attain incredible lifespans are persecuted > and envied by the mass of the "genetically inferior". It's interesting that Tim associates genetic good fortune with "superiority", and its opposite with "inferiority". Good fortune is one ground on which humans judge one another as superior or inferior. Another ground is accomplishment, another is ability, and yet another is aesthetic taste. If you can get people to judge you as superior, or at least equal, they will respect you, treat you well and invite you to parties. If, on the other hand, people judge you as inferior, they treat you poorly and snub you. In the case of animals, humans judge animals to be *very* inferior. So inferior, in fact, that most of us consider it okay to kill them for food. In general, superior beings are considered more deserving. Since being judged inferior leads to unpleasant consequences, people try to prove themselves superior by various means: boasting of their IQ scores, their sexual accomplishments, the extraordinary greatness of their stereo equipment, their finer musical tastes, and so on. This is what's curious about the concepts of superiority and inferiority: Why should it be so important to one to demonstrate to others one's finer tastes in music, or that one has a better stereo? Why should such things affect the way we treat one another? And if person A has the more active sex life, while person B has finer tastes in wine, which factor is more important in judging superiority and inferiority, and why? For that matter, in questions of taste, how is it decided which is the "better" class of music that is listened to by the "better" class of people? When people get snobbish about musical tastes, they usually judge their own tastes as superior to those of others. By describing the music somebody else listens to in unflattering ways, they attack the other person's self esteem, as a means to inflate their own. When a question came up as to who should get more pay in an argument in netnews about affirmative action, the attitude of a large number of posters was that education outweighed all or most other factors in deciding who was more deserving. Education is something of which most netnews users have a higher than average endowment. Mere coincidence? Of course, we all know about your typical racist... he/she considers his/her own skin colour as a mark of superiority. Practically nobody thinks that people of some *other* race are superior to themselves. What about the superiority of humans over other animals? Humans are more intelligent. Other animals are faster, others can fly, others are more beautiful. But we consider intelligence to outweigh all these things. Why? Could it be because intelligence is the one thing we have more of than other animals? In short, do we base our choice of the grounds on which we judge superiority on self-flattery? Are the concepts of superiority and inferiority nothing more than self-serving delusions? -- David Canzi "If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?"