I don’t believe John Dewey consensus is intelligence. Apparently, I need reeducation.
John Dewey wrote:
I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs.
http://dewey.pragmatism.org/creed.htm
Adolph Hitler wrote (as translated from German):
In the lowest peoples of the earth this quality is present only to a very slight extent, so that often they do not go beyond the formation of the family. The greater the readiness to subordinate purely personal interests, the higher rises the ability to establish comprehensive communities.
This self-sacrificing will to give one’s personal labor and if necessary one’s own life for others is most strongly developed in the Aryan. The Aryan is not greatest in his mental qualities as such, but in the extent of his willingness to put all his abilities in the service of the community. In him the instinct of self-preservation has reached the noblest form, since he willingly subordinates his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour demands, even sacrifices it.
Not in his intellectual gifts lies the source of the Aryan’s capacity for creating and building culture. If he had just this alone, he could only act destructively, in no case could he organize; for the innermost essence of all organization requires that the individual renounce putting forward his personal opinion and interests and sacrifice both in favor of a larger group.
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html
I don’t think life comes in a flavor of 5-parts-happy-to-one-part-sad except at the expense of others. I don’t think the collective inherently anchors itself in the truth by virtue of consensus. The scientific method uses community discussion and debate for sure, but scientists have a philosophy that grounds them to the evidence, which is why science is actually progressive. I don’t think logic that works back to the given of feelings is logic at all. I think that logic is what gives people power to make their lives better or worse. I think two people can be completely logical and just yet be at odds. Resources are limited. I don’t know what sense of fairness can overcome that fact and not inexorably lead to universal poverty.
—Doug Morris, 31 May 2011
‘Reality’ Doug 