The Human Trifecta: Infinite Stupidity, Wicked Humor, and Evil Morality

The decisive error of materialism and of agnosticism is to be blind to the fact that material things and the common experiences of our life are are immensely beneath the scope of our intelligence. --Frithjof Schuon

And just what is the scope of human intelligence? At its outer and inner edges, it is none other than the Infinite, the Absolute, the Eternal. It cannot be surpassed, for it is potentially total, which is to say, "adequate," or proportioned to, the Divine Mind. Hear me now, believe me later.

If those sophering from materialitis and reductionosis were correct, this total intelligence would have no cause and no explanation, certainly not on Darwinian grounds. Obviously, no other animal has an intelligence that infinitely exceeds the necessities of survival.

In other words, "survival" is the sufficient cause of animal intelligence. But what is the sufficient cause of mathematical truth, aesthetic truth, metaphysical truth? Not to mention, music, humor, love, poetry? As I said in my book, these are "luxury capacities" that are as different from animal intelligence as life is from matter.

To quote Arthur Koestler,

"[T]he evolution of the human brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is also the only example of evolution producing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use; a luxury organ, which will take its owner thousands of years to learn how to put to proper use -- if he ever does."

And luxury is an apt word, for it is a kind of extravagant light placed in the middle of nowhere, like a brain inside Paris Hilton. How did it get there? Why does she have it? She'll never use it. It will just sit there idly, like a huge inwhoritance she'll never touch. How could natural selection produce a bunch of nothings capable of knowing the Absolute but individuals capable of knowing absolutely nothing?

As the zoologist and science writer Matt Ridley put it, there is simply no conventional scientific way to "understand how a costly investment in big brains today may be justified by cultural riches tomorrow."

To which a Raccoon always adds cultural poverty, i.e., the structured stupidity that has beset most human cultures down through history. In this regard, we are the true multiculturalists, in that we believe they're almost all pretty damn stupid. Those cultures that have escaped enforced collective blindness and motivated stupidity are the great exceptions, not the rule.

In a peripheral or possibly direct way, Dr. Sanity's post today touches on an aspect of this problem. For example, if you want your country to flourish, oy vey, don't be such a schmuck: just befriend the Jews. In this regard, you can take the Bible quite literally: I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse (Psalm 37:22). I would guess that there's just about a 1:1 correspondence between the success of a country and its hostility toward Jews, being that the anti-Semitic Islamic world is at the bottom of the barrel of bipedal monkeys.

Dr. Sanity quotes Meryl Yourish, who writes that

"People talk about the brain drain of various nations’ top scientists and doctors coming to the U.S. because here’s where the action is. But let’s not forget the incredible addition of talent America has received due to the persecution of European Jewry for the last few centuries. The waves of Jewish immigrants from Europe brought America a lot more than the Hollywood studio system. It brought us top scientists, thinkers, doctors, technologists, and authors." The anti-Semite David Duke "goes to Iran to be feted by his fellow bigots at the Holocaust denial conference, while back in America, the Jews that Duke hates so much are working hard at their respective crafts, and being recognized by the rest of the world for the valuable contributions they make."

Dr. Sanity cites the statistic that "Though Jews make up a mere 0.25 percent of the world’s population and a mere 3 percent of the United States', they account... for 27 percent of all American Nobel Prize winners, 25 percent of all ACM Turing Award winners for computer science, and 50 percent of the globe’s chess champions." Not to mention a disproportionate number of the world's great comedians -- the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Jack Benny, Rodney Dangerfield, and dozens of others. On the other hand, nearly all Islamic comedy is inadvertent, as we shall see below.

There is a wise crack in the Talmud that says something to the effect of "every blessing carries a curse." Thus, it seems that human beings could not be given the gift of potentially infinite intelligence without simultaneously being exposed to the imbaccilus of infinite stupidity. Indeed, if you toss free will into the package, how could it be otherwise and be other than wise? Intelligence, being both free and infinite, must be free to be infinitely stupid. Which is why, in the words of Ronald Reagan, "The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."

So, on the one hand, natural selection cannot account for an intelligence that vastly exceeds the needs of survival; but nor can it account for an "intelligence" that is so comprehensive in its stupidity that it clearly undermines survival prospects. That God placed the Muslims on top of the oil proves that he too must have an ironic (sadistic?) sense of humor. Or, as Joyce put it,

Hohohoho, Mister Finn, you're going to be Mister Finnegan! Comeday morm and O, you're vine! Sendday's eve and, ah, you're vinegar! Hahahaha, Mister Funn, you're going to be fined again!

Nevertheless, this meandertale is a grand funferall with many a smile to nondum if you're abcedminded to its claybook!

In fact, humans are so intelligent, that they can use their intelligence to explain away their utter stupidity, as demonstrutted in this hilarious interview on Muslim TV (cited by Dr. Sanity) that goes into the question of why the Nobel Prize has been awarded to 167 Jews, and to only four measly Arabs out of 380 million -- all four of whom "are considered traitors."

The interviewee answers with a series of questions: "Are we Arabs not included in the transfer of the scientific genetic code? We, the descendants of Al-Khawarizmi, Al-Jahez, Al-Razi, Avicenna, Ibn Al-Haytham, and Casey Kasem -- are we all born idiots? Is there not a single scientist or deejay among us? Are we not included in the genetic code? Is intelligence not transferred down among us Arabs?"

Yes, of course. No animal is intelligent enough to be as stupid as this person. They ought to give a Nobel Prize for Intelligent Stupidity. Oh wait. And the winner is, Al Gore.

By the way, they also give the Nobel Prize for "evil goodness," as indicated by Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter, and Kofi Annan. Again, only a highly moral animal could be so infinitely morally confused.

Now, let us suppose that we are made "in the image of the creator." That doesn't really explain much unless we know what the creator looks like, so to speak.

That was going to be the original topic of this post, but I got sidetracked, so I suppose it will have to wait until tomorrow.