Philip Wylie Strikes Again.

In another forum in which I participate, a particular thread meandered around the subject of intent preceding action, hovered over the idea of whether or not people should want to allow mind reading (if it were possible) to prevent crime before it occurs, and gave birth to this mini-essay below. I've modified it slightly for readability and clarified some points which are out of context.

Enjoy!

--Wag--

One of the best philosophical essays I've ever read on this subject, albeit tangentially, is Philip Wylie's, "An Essay on Morals." I think one of the horrors feared most by the human being is the revelation of their own inner thoughts, thoughts which they guard with fierce determination. Throughout much of human history, we struggled to create of humans, an ethereal, mystical, mighty and powerful self, culminating in a creature superior in all ways to all other creatures on the planet. We made gods of ourselves and then, in ever-increasing arrogance, began to use our newfound reason to castigate ourselves and brought fear and guilt into the picture. In order to assuage that fear and guilt, we created gods above us for ourselves and then, in the ultimate arrogance of all time, we began to adhere to the belief that, via our own sacrifices and obeisances, we could influence and guide the decisions of these almighty gods, especially in their whimsical punishments of newly self-deprecated humans.

Certain individuals, more arrogant than the rest, claimed to even speak to these gods, as if the gods had nothing more important to do than pay attention to us pathetic animals. 'Cause that's exactly what humans are. Simply animals with the powers of reason, creativity and long-term memory. We had ideas, fer Krissakes! Yeah, we had greater ability than the common animals of the world but were we better than they? Of course! We had gods and they did not!

Fast forward through the millenia and we find that these delusional and arrogant assumptions about ourselves and our relationships to these selfsame gods, albeit with different names here and there, these gods have such a hold over man that we have learned to completely fear to acknowledge our animal sides, our basic instincts which drive us. The same instincts which we have attempted to whitewash and to call "evil" and which still rest quietly at our core, influencing our every thought. But remember: We proved to ourselves that we are better than animals and we created morals to demonstrate to ourselves that our instincts were now subject to our powerful will.

Our list of commandments grew (Seven? Fourteen?) to the point where we believed that to even think of any basic instinctual urge contrary to our new moral code was in itself a grossly negligent abandonment of our self-created greatness. We began to fear to expose our thoughts and hence, we carefully hid them behind heavy masks. Our thoughts became subject to personal judgement and close inner scrutiny for fear that if others of our compatriots knew of them, they would cease to love us, cease to respect us and if motivated well enough, to even hate us in a hypocrisy of indulgence in the animal side of our instinctive natures.

We carefully guard our thoughts now. If a man considers in his mind the joys of sex with a woman who is married to another, he must keep it to himself and never express that desire to anyone, otherwise, he suffers dire consequences. If he wishes to have his neighbor's car or lawnmower for himself, he's convicted in his own conscience with sufficient severity to prevent him from letting anyone know lest he then be railed upon by his fellows.

We fear to reveal our thoughts indiscretionately. It has become necessary to become something other than what we are in order to survive in a society with rules. Perhaps that survival instinct is still there, hidden somewhere inside us and keeping us from gross errors which would jeopardize our very existence.

I think, therefore, that such are the reasons we fear to reveal our thoughts. We do not wish to be proven to be the animals which we deny of ourselves, particularly among others of our fellow human animals who think in their inherited arrogance, that they are better than we and will use any device necessary to prove it.

If they could get ahold of our thoughts, we would all definitively be shown to be even as the animals.

--Wag--