Franz J. T. Lee

Reason and Wisdom

A brief  Autobiography

Part I:
Juvenile Insipience

Part II: The Age of Reason: Love At Every Sight !

Part III: Scientific Earthquakes and Philosophic Tornados


Pandemonium Electronic Publications, Mérida, Venezuela, 1999

Copyright 1999, Franz J. T. Lee, All Rights Reserved

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SCIENCE  AND  PHILOSOPHY


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CHAPTER  TWENTY

REASON   AND   WISDOM

Part Two


THE  AGE  OF  REASON :
LOVE  AT  EVERY  SIGHT !

Sapientia and The Nineties

To become wise is to get cool, is to slowdown, to be cautious, very
precise, more lovely, most lovingly, extremely dangerous. Why are
some people clever, cui bono ?  Why are others so wise ,  que sais-je ?

To be clever and to radiate  wisdom are two different qualities, not
necessarily two sides of the same relation, of the same thing. Vanity,
irrationality and eloquence have nothing to do with Wisdom; confidence,
especially in oneself, brilliance, genius, originality, totality and militancy
more readily nurture sapientia. Certainly, the nitwit or blockhead, the
Dummkopf or Dumpfkopf, is counterpoised to both the dextrous fox and
the learned owl, but its real opposite is the payaso, the clown or tomfool.
Concerning the latter the whole globe is already invaded by these
preposterous extraterrestrial creatures.

The tomfool gaffs like a threshing machine, spitting out ideological
straw and strewing social smog in all directions; the clown is more excited,
is restless and blind ; his artistic delicacy is the tragicomical idee fixe, the
eternal absolute truths.

The Owl of Minerva is mysterious, invisible ; in all obscure and vague
matters she is in her element ; she is quiet, preponderant, mature,
imperturbable, caring and careful, solid and stolid. Christ is dear to her,
Marx is dear to her, but the flowing Truth is dearer still : in the Aristotelian
tradition she hoots :  amicus Plato, amicus Socrates, sed magis amica
veritas !

The Bitter Lesson

Awe stricken all of us wander on this thorny road, along these dangerous rocky cliffs;
some of us get our horns entangled in the arid social shrubs,
and we reach the point of no return, of never ever being able to liberate
ourselves; others with supernatural endurance outlive the devastating
hurricanes and typhoons of our times; those that fall by the wayside
either liquidate themselves or they genuflect, make the sign of the cross,
pray; and then  leave the rest of the matter to the divine che sará, sará ;
others are dragged along by the jolly carnival of politics and exotic sexism, by the
currents of virtual reality and the circus of global progress and
pleasure ; although completely encircled by hungry wolves and bloodthirsty werewolves,
very few people succeed to build their humble shacks on firm
earthly soil; only an infinitesimal minority of us can still find a little while
to reflect, to think and to reason about, for and by themselves, to become
wise.

The Bitter Lesson : Not the Information Highway, Only simple Acting
 a n d  Thinking, About Yourself, By Yourself and For Yourself, Here
a n d  Now, pave the narrow serpentine track towards Wisdom, towards Emancipation.

What did the formal logical "Nineties" reveal ?

Generally, a Man is decorated with a Prize, with a Nobel Prize, with
a Distinguished Service Cross, with an Honorary Doctorate, because
either he is a "hero", or in his field of work, he has done something par
excellence , or he has "discovered" something brand new, for the
technological progress and social welfare of Mankind. Thanks to these
Great Men we enjoy myriad of luxuries of life, health and sanity! Also
may they be eternally blessed for their good work and invaluable
contributions to continental discoveries, military conquests, global
evangelization, statesmanship, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Holocaust and
Chernobyl !

I  Want  News !

What did a life, a death, a life  a n d  death of some six "decades",
on some three continents  "discover" ?  What is new, what is up ?
Any News ?

Surely, it did not perform miracles, it did not produce world wonders,
nothing to be proud of, nothing worth  any price,  any prize. It did not
climb Mount Everest, it did not jump around on the Moon, it did not even
jump over the Moon. It did not write, compile or compose the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is not a walking "Brockhaus" or "Big
Larousse".  It did not fight in Vietnam or Iraq, however,  it surely did
experience many "Desert Storms".

Au contraire, it is a miracle that as a Relation, as a Bezug, it survived at all, and
did not land on Robben Island or was thrown down a barranco.
It is a great wonder that it still has brains to think and a spinal column to
go in upward gait, it is simply wonderful to be able to act  a n d  to think independently.
This is surely priceless, one of the few things which money could not buy, cannot buy.
In splendid flummox nights it does surmount its own Mesa in the Loma de Los Indios. This perilous adventure does not enter the Book of Guinness but rather appears on a Home page.

Where have all the Flowers Gone ?

In a world of massive ecocide, where the deforested Andes look like a
huge Mars crater, where the evergreen Pedregosa of Mérida is progressively
being converted into a stony, lifeless, treeless cement desert, where, as a
consequence,  the steaming heat melts the zinc and asbestos roofs, where
the tiles become white hot, and where, through the open windows, the
wind howls like a starving wolf, where, on earth, will somebody sincerely
be congratulated because in a desert region he has planted more than a
hundred trees within two years ? And, in a world, where water supply is a luxury,
where potable water is a very rare gift of the water lords, who will notice the
lovely and loving care devoted to these natural beings so that
they may survive, may grow, may flourish ? Who cares about Nature ?
Who has nightmares about global ecocide ? Who feels hurt when he chops
off the head of a chicken or reduces an age old tree to lumber ? Except,
Woody Allen, who has noticed that this whole globe is simply a huge
"Four Seasons" Restaurant ?

In a world, where Money makes the Earth go round, where can one buy
the time and the leisure to achieve the nearly impossible ? As stated before,
this natural social relation cannot be found on the labour market ; it has no
exchange value, no price, no prize! The above is ever new, is sempiternal news.
It exists as  acting  a n d  thinking, it transcends as Love At  Every
Sight !

Science   a n d  Philosophy

The layman, the debutante, may ask :  What has the above to do with
"stringent scientific research" and "profound philosophic reasoning "?
Like a bolt from an azure sky, the reply comes :  It has very little to do
with them! In fact, it is not even their opposite, it has a non-relation to
that which in the Patria, in Western, Christian Civilization, classically and
traditionally is being  defined as "Natural Science"  and  Philosophy.
Should our Science  a n d  Philosophy have a relation to the above ?
If so, why ? And, when it does not have a relation to the above, is this forbidden?
Is it a capital crime ? Who prohibits this? And what is the
penalty? Who forbids Formal Logic, Dialectics, Racism, Nazism, Neo-Liberalism,
World Wars, Globalism ? Are there only official methods
of scientific research and philosophic reasoning? Do no others exist ?
Certainly, the above questions are scientific novelties, philosophic innovations !


PART  III

SCIENTIFIC  EARTHQUAKES AND  PHILOSOPHIC TORNADOS

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE