Tuesday 26 August 2014

Reasons For Me To Like Poul Anderson's Brain Wave

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977). 

(i) I enjoy imaginative and speculative fiction.

(ii) I am interested in discussions about how society might be reorganized for the better.

(iii) I do not have enhanced intelligence! - but am an impractical, theoretical intellectual.

(iv) I meditate.

(iv) is relevant. Anderson's characters must cope with an inner change that makes each of them see himself and his life more clearly - clearly enough either to be horrifying or to open new possibilities. Meditation has precisely these effects. I am going through a similar process to Anderson's characters but without any help from an improved intellect.  

Corinth makes the point that:

"'...the IQ concept is only valid within a limited range; to speak of an IQ of 400 doesn't really make sense, intelligence on that level may not be intelligence at all as we know it now, but something else.'" (p. 43)

A quantitative change becomes a qualitative change, exactly as Hegel said. And we see that Corinth and others learn how to use their minds to control their instincts, which is the direction in which meditation takes us although, for most of us, at a much slower rate.

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