Parable Of The Idiot Flowers Discussion
Parable Of The Idiot Flowers DiscussionThis page spawns from the utterance "I hate psychopaths."
Just a quick question: According to the ParableOfTheIdiotFlowers, what kind of flower would these psychopaths be? -- PCP
The kind of flower that would pull out all its neighbours by their roots to use them as fertilizer and not bother asking any questions about it.
Think you can answer in a way that proves you read the page? ;-)
I was left speechless by that page but since you insist on having my opinion of it, I think that the notion of evil on that page is crude, naive and dead wrong. Whatever concepts are on that page simply have no relation to either evil or goodness.
"innate tendency to do bad things"
This is wrong, there is no such thing.
"the inner self left alone, is a good thing"
Outside of formal logic, the opposite extreme of a completely wrong belief is usually wrong also. The idea that being "left alone" is a good thing is an AmericanCulturalAssumption and any serious treatment of goodness or liberty shows the notion that being alone is good or liberating to be absurd. The rest of the page is just expansion on this fundamental delusional, paranoiac, anti-social and misanthropic feeling that is so common among Americans.
You'd think that a page about "growth" and development would be related to childrearing; and the fact that the topic is completely absent is one reason for alarm. Another is writing it in the form of a parable; parables are used to convey messages which are either trite or dead wrong, usually the latter. Yet another is the notion that being intellectual is in some way bad; American anti-intellectualism rears its ugly head again. But the biggest of all is the notion that having no concern for others is "good"; that just smacks of psychopathy. If that page has any relation to evil at all, it's in promoting and defending it.
Other than that, both "growth" and "freedom" are important psychoanalytic symbols. And how else could they possibly be interpreted on that page? They certainly can't be taken seriously since a decent treatment of growth could never shy away from child development. The parable mode and the use of vivid imagery means that page is ripe for psychoanalysis. How predisposed you are to rationalize that page will depend on whether or not you're predisposed to getting its fantasy message; I am not at all so predisposed. -- rk
So pretend for a moment that you like, "get", and understand the parable. In this situation, you see it proposes that any individual, raised in at least a moderately healthy environment, and at least encouraged to love others, form trusting bonds, and always pay attention to exactly what they feel will not grow up "evil". You must admit that at the very least they won't turn out like Janet Reno or William Bennett. The point is that one might always be born with their cranial neurons tangled, but not necessarily wrong or evil. Evil must be learned. -- PCP
All of the above mentioned things are conspicuously absent from the page and are not implied by the parable. There is no mention in the page of a single bond or concern for another. If anything, there is only concern for oneself. The parable itself actually says nothing on that subject and anyone who believes it does is reading things into it.
Good versus evil are simple categories but they're difficult to apply or even justify. Much easier to just measure empathy, projection and reversal independently instead of some arbitrary Evil Quotient. Further, even if 'good versus evil' were justified, evil is not merely learned but involves a very specific mechanism of learning; child abuse. The phrase "evil is learned" has a very simplistic, though implicit, model of learning. The phrase "evil is transmitted through child abuse" has a vastly more complex and more accurate model of learning. -- rk
[BTW the full context of the parable, from the book Conversations With Seth, Vol. 2, by Sue Watkins, explains that "intellectual" is used here mockingly. The cranky flower is _not_ more wise or intelligent than the peaceful one. "I am not telling you the intellect is wrong, or that you should not use it."]
About the Americanism angle, this particular parable, produced during the IndoChineseConflict? period in USA history, was recounted during a party held to celebrate someone successfully dodged The Draft...
consider the lilies of the field
The ParableOfTheIdiotFlowers is lovely. If I were a flower, I would draw much inspiration from it.
The sad thing is, I am not a flower.
Perhaps you are like a flower. While the parable as read seems a bit too iconoclastic to me, I'm slowly learning that there is great value to just letting things be more than I often have. Sure, a little water, a little fertilizer, but mostly let things emerge. It can be a very good feeling, and I find that results are as good, or better. Hmmmm ...
I have to agree with the `dead wrong' opinion above. To produce better results in any endeavour, you should pay attention to what's going on around you. The decision to leave things as they are and see how they progress is just as much a decision as that to change the situation. The decision to leave things as they are and ignore what happens, as the 'idiot flower' does, is just as dumb as changing something and then ignoring what happens after you make the change.
I also strongly disagree with the thought expressed in this fable that if you let organisms follow their instincts, everything will turn out nicely. I think it's fairly obvious, for example, that if you want responsible adults, you have to put a fair amount of work into civilizing small children by putting an end to much of their `instinctive' (innate) behaviour. -- AnonymousDonor
Human beings have no instincts; or at least, no significant ones. And children turn out to be most well-adjusted emotionally and psychologically, if they are given as much freedom and liberty as possible. See FreeSchools for a discussion that touches on the subject. Web searches might use "helping mode of child-rearing" and "taking children seriously" (there's another name for the movement but I forget at the moment).
So it is not at all obvious that one needs to "civilize" children. And I strongly disagree that it is at all desirable. A few centuries ago, infants were not allowed to crawl on the floor (they were strapped tightly into unmoving bundles 24/7) because this was considered to be "bestial" and "uncivilized" behaviour. One shouldn't have adult expectations of children because contrary to popular belief, it does not help and usually hinders the child's development. -- RichardKulisz
I'd just like to point out that I think the above statement about humans having no significant instincts is dead wrong. This kind of statement usually grows out a comparison between humans and animals. An instinct is usually thought of as kind of a pre-programmed response to an environment, in contrast to a reasoned response which involves thinking through consequences. Then (the fallacy goes) since humans have more reasoning than animals, they have less instinct. But this is incorrect: humans have more reasoning and more instincts. Our huge brains contain both the ability to reason more effectively than animals and the "storage" to have more instincts too.
What are the human instincts anyways? Offhand, I only know two; humping and breath swallowing (when plunged underwater). -- rk
Breathing. Grasping with the hands. Vomiting. Probably a good deal more. (An "instinct" is just something you are born knowing how to do without needing to be taught, right ?)
Yeah. Then there are the things like human language and morality which are strongly biologically based. If you're exposed to even the rudiments of a language (ie, phonemes), you will adopt or create one. If you're bonded to a person in the first three years of infancy, you will adopt or create a moral system (ie, you will not become a psychopath). Those aren't instincts but maybe 'innate abilities'? We should probably list those as well. Is there a difference between an instinct and a reflex? It seems like a reflex is a reaction to external stimuli and an instinct is more internal.
I don't think vomiting is an instinct; people die on their own vomit when they're sick or drunk. It seems vomiting per se is just a physical reaction and vomiting properly (heaving and kneeling over a toilet :) is learned.
So far, reflexes:
I answer your question below. Should probably take out (love is not .....).-- rk
Which brings to mind; what exactly do we mean by 'grasping with the hands'? Is it reaching with the hands or closing the hands on an object? I think it's the former but I can't be certain; nor can I be certain that it isn't learned.
Maybe we don't need to go into such fine points of detail. It's enough for me to reflect that people are different from flowers in one crucial respect. Leave a flower on its own and it'll probably do OK; leave a human newborn on its own and it will never develop into a normal human being, e.g. Itard's wild boy.
And on a completely different subject, I heard that Romulus and Remus could've been raised by a prostitute because "she-wolf" is the same noun as "prostitute" in Latin. If this is correct, it would disqualify them as "wild boys".
Instincts, an opposing force to intellect, might just be the way a scientific nihilist might be drug into "understanding" the "parable".
For example, let's give a name to the cranky flower. Let's call him, oh, I don't know, how about... J. Edgar Hoover.
Hoover grows up gay in a society that permits one to vent ones frustrations about oneself on people who are gay or black or commies. So Hoover, believing that he must grow "this way instead of that way", learns to repress his true nature while twisting up all his feelings into hating other gays and blacks & commies. He gets a job as a global shadow-dictator, responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent anonymous strangers, and for the deaths of thousands of people he personally orders his hit squads after. All because he deeply and profoundly hates himself.
I pity the fool. -- PCP
Um, I fail to see where "instincts" are involved here.
And I think that that's really the salient point for this whole discussion. To think that flowers grow to sunlight because of instinct is to completely distort any sense of the word instinct. The best you might argue is that it is reflex. On top of that, the way flowers grow is a process with feedback that has evolved over millennia. The flowers solve the complex problem, not through reason (or instinct), but through ingrained reflexes. Although the individual flower didn't 'think' to solve the problem, evolution did. Without the genetic basis for the solution to the problem of how to correctly grow and respond to sunlight, the flower would most likely miserably fail, especially since it has no recourse to thought.
Humans developing in the context of modern societies is a completely different issue. Modern societies have not been around for millennia to allow evolution to ingrain useful solutions to the particular problems that they pose. To the extent that development in a modern society is based on different forces than those that have been present over evolutionary time-scales, humans require alternative methods of learning and decision-making to negotiate the issues that arise. These alternative methods involve culture, communication, learning, and reason. Applying such methods to our individual situations is in no way going against our inborn nature, because our inborn nature was not designed to deal at a reflexive or reactionary level to all of the problems and issues that development in a modern society entails. -- ChristopherSmith
And how exactly did Hoover learn to "repress his true nature"? How exactly does one determine one's "true nature" in the first place? The Parable says absolutely nothing about that. If one hates blacks, is it okay to express this hatred by lynching a black person? The parable assumes that "growing up alone" will result in a healthy, well-adjusted, happy human being and people interpreting this will reject child-rearing methods which they know will lead to violence and hatred. Of course, this is the reverse of a sensible reasoning process which involves looking at what "being alone" actually means and figuring out through deduction and experimentation exactly what you get if you raise children that way. Instead, people redefine what "being alone" means in order to exclude any negative outcomes, because "being alone is good" is a cherished AmericanCulturalAssumption and so beyond questioning.
In order for a child to learn a language, you have to speak it to them and in order for them to grow up moral and empathic, you have to give them near-constant love, support and affection. Even just for a child to not die, you need to give him physical contact at some point. Humans are not flowers, if they're not touched then they die. Of course, that's exactly what "being alone" means in the parable. And if not physical isolation then at least emotional, at which point you get deeply disturbed individuals. But let's pretend for a moment that "being alone" is somehow redefined to exclude all undesirable outcomes like not being able to speak, or being a psychopath, or just dying.
So what does "being alone" mean now? I suppose it means "being free to follow one's instincts". Of course, it's not anywhere near enough for children to be allowed to do what they want since as infants humans rely on other people entirely. So by the same active imagination that transformed "alone" to "free to follow one's instincts" we will suppose that the meaning of "being left alone" includes active participation by the parents where the parents are also following their own instincts. Presumably, they can also "be alone"; it would be strange if one person's being "alone" logically precluded another person's being in the same state. The problem then is that touching one's children, speaking to them, giving them affection, and even feeding them (ie, all the things that are necessary in order to avoid the horrendous consequences of a naive interpretation of "being alone") are not instincts. Most people think that such things as "maternal instincts" exist but they don't and even a casual perusal of the history of child-rearing with its universal infanticide and incest (usually caused by the mother, not the father) will disabuse one of the notion. Maternal and paternal feelings are not instincts but residues from one's own childhood.
In order to support "being alone is good" you have to redefine "being alone" to such a degree that it becomes entirely alien and even contrary to the naive interpretation of the phrase. I'm still expecting people to say that "growing up alone" is metaphorical. People who like this parable are rationalizing it, they're not looking at it critically. -- rk
You need not try so hard. The Universe is constructed in such a way that the following two rules apply:
Love is an instinct. Hate is learned.
The belief that the natural laws of the Universe get these the other way around is the heart of the contention. -- PCP
LoveIsNotAnInstinct. It's an innate ability and for most of human history, the capacity for it was eliminated as a consequence of brutal child abuse. What the ancients meant by love has nothing to do with what we mean by love today. The ancients believed that love was obedience, submission/domination, fear, possessiveness, lust and infatuation. The idea of romantic love is a modern discovery, dating no more than a few centuries. The same goes for "maternal instincts" which are a modern discovery and not instinctual at all. -- rk
When you love, you channel the primal energy that drives the Universe.
When you hate, you indulge in self-destructive behavior, and you don't have any fun. When you are not having fun, you are not doing anybody, anywhere, any good. -- JaneRoberts.
'What about evil? Do we need to love or to hate it?'
Presupposition: Evil exists.
Imagine there's no heaven. -- JohnLennon
When I love, I get pleasure. (because I love to be loved and being loved feels good)
When I hate, I get pleasure. (because plotting the downfall of the next door neighbour whose music is too loud feels good)
I win. =)
-- TorneWuff, DevilsAdvocate.
Interesting discussion, but I see a kind of bias toward defining mankind in a biology-only sort of way (man is the product of chaos chemistry and some marvelous accident of programming called DNA).
Instincts may be a DNA thing, but I don't think this covers the ground well enough.
I have trouble reconciling this with cases like, say, Mozart. I've heard truly hysterical explanations of how this guy was able, at age six, to do things with violin and keyboard that men of several times his age with decades of dedicated practice could not.
I don't think you can do that with genetics. Oh, yeah, there's a recessive gene that contains the knowledge of intricate music composition and performance and it just jumps out every few hundred years or so.
The human condition has more to it. As ludicrous as it sounded to me at first, I have to say I favor "he remembered it" as the most workable explanation. This breaks a number of pet theories, but taken along with other examples of children knowing more than is possible for their age, it's the only thing that adequately predicts the phenomenon.
Given this, and given that some people seem to be "born hostile" or "born wise" or "born whatever" when observably many of these conditions require learning, I am lead to conclude that people are "born with baggage."
It would, under these circumstances, be a mistake to attempt the treatment of these conditions chemically or surgically. Interaction will be required. How is the baggage brought forward? Science isn't there yet. Now we're treading in the domain of metaphysics.
But once one gets over the hurdle of humans being more than a chemical-electrical phenomenon and allows that there may be a continuity beyond the physical stuff, then it becomes possible for people to be "born evil" or "born chessplayers" or "born mathematicians." Now the phenomenon is not only predictable, it's inescapable.
Really? How many such 'born chess-players' do you know who have devised the game for themselves, rather than learning the rules of chess in the usual way?
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