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Logic, Why Don't They Teach Logic at These Schools?
October 10, 2003, 11:37 p.m. I just had a screaming, hair-pulling, tickling wrestling match with my sister. I like to tickle-fight and wrestle, but few people will do it with me. I think I’m a bit too vicious. Or they’re guys and they’re all ‘I’ll hurt you,’ or, ‘you’ll hurt me, get those wildly flailing feet away from my crotch.’ I recently finished reading City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende. It’s a strange book . . . exotic, actually, would be the best way to describe it. It’s only the second book I’ve read set in Brazil, the other one being, funnily enough, Brazil by John Updike, but it seems that said country has a bewitching exoticism. However, I have heard Updike wrote that book based on a whole bunch of travel guides. Anyway, long story short – there was one character in there, Ludovic Leblanc, a supposed anthropologist, who had a theory that . . . bothered me. Here is a summation of it, in his own words: It has to do with the lethal competition that exists in nature. The most violent men dominate in primitive societies. I supposed you have heard of the term ‘alpha male’? Among wolves, for example, the most aggressive male controls all the rest and claims the best females. It’s the same among humans. The most violent men command; they obtain more women than other men, and pass their genes on to more offspring. The other must be content with what’s left. Do you follow that? The survival of the fittest . . . Compassion is a modern invention. Our civilisation protects the weak, the poor, the sick. From the point of view of genetics, that is a terrible error. And that is why the human race is deteriorating. Now this character is constantly lampooned throughout the book: he is definitely not an alpha male, except in his own mind. The only time he ever does something courageous is out of compassion. But . . . this speech still disturbs me. I’ve no arguments against it, except the feeling inside me that I know we need to look after those weaker than us. Wolves, after all, are known for their ferocious defence of their young. But still, I can find no flaw in the logic of his argument (but then, I haven’t had a classical education ; )) and no response to it either. Help?
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