SOPHIA; BETTER CIVILIZATION AROSE FROM BETTER BRAINS, BETTER IDEAS AND BETTER EMOTIONS.

LOGIC ARISES FROM EMOTION. IN PARTICULAR, THE SUPREMACY OF OUR CIVILIZATION RESTED ON BETTER BRAINS, BETTER IDEAS AND BETTER EMOTIONS, RATHER THAN ON "GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL".

Abstract: What makes civilization advance? Why did "European" civilization overwhelm the whole planet? Because of materialism and biology, say some Americans: see Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel." Others evoked the "Genie du Christianisme" (Chateaubriand). Surprising, since "Cretin" derived, long ago, from "Christian".

We suggest instead that the supremacy of "Western civilization" did not arise from materialism, biologism or cretinism, but rather from learning to become more clever, better, faster, and deeper. And that not just because of better logic and brighter ideas, but FUNDAMENTALLY because of more powerful and more refined EMOTIONS to help make the Western mind with. WE ARE MADE OF CULTURE, PART OF IT EMOTIONAL.

The "West" rose in the welcoming "MIDDLE EARTH", which slashes broadly across temperate Africa and Eurasia. The Middle Earth was, per its position, the LARGEST FORUM OF IDEAS AND EMOTIONS the planet could have, which made it foremost in elucidating the mind: HENCE its supremacy. To conceptualize it better, we name it "MEDITERRA".

Past elucidation of reason has spurned the EMOTIONAL CALCULUS. Philosophy all too long spoke as if one could, and should, leave emotion out of the engine of rational creation. Still the civilization of the West itself, when at its best (Crete, Greece, early Rome, Franks, Middle Ages, Renaissance) was aware that EMOTION LEADS LOGIC: the civilizational leaps forward were EMOTIONAL. The Middle Ages was superior to the Greeks, because its emotions were better grounded in the full human potential. The deliberate cultivation of appropriate emotional bases gave reason an adaptability which underlies the Middle Earth's powerful civilizational surges. Far from being the enemy of reason, better emotions led to better neuromorphogenesis, better logic, better brains, better institutions, better civilization.

THE RISE OF THE "WEST" OWES A LOT TO THE HUGE TEMPERATE "MEDITERRA" BEING AT THE CULTURAL CENTER OF THE WORLD:

A frozen European neolithic hunter was found, carrying a technological panoply of various origins, from insulating double boots to antibiotics. Natives of the Amazon, 5,000 years later, were not as modern. Why? Because the immense climatic, geological and ecological variety of Europe facilitated technology and trade, and allowed the latter, in turn, to create a more selective environment. Double boots are of no advantage in the Amazon, but they provide with Alpine supremacy. In this more technologically minded trading environment of goods and ideas European tribes had to find an edge in further know-how to survive, and the more they did, the more they made it so, a self reinforcing phenomenon one should call exponentialization.

Example: Celtic civilization restricted writing to its Brahmans, the Druids. That made Gaul more primitive than the more literate Roman civilization. When Caesar came, so many Celts opted for the more literate civilization, i.e., for Rome, that they let the legions win. Enough Celts had embraced reading to tilt the balance. In a total war with Gaul, Rome would have been wiped out. But the books were on the side of Rome.

If one observes Earth at a distance, and asks: "where would an advanced technological civilization have the highest probability to rise on that planet?" -- the answer is obvious. The disposition of the continents is such that civilization grew faster where it did. Maximum civilization should be in the middle of everything, where ideas and emotions come from all directions. The Americas are isolated from the rest of the planet, and each other. Most of Africa is isolated south of the Sahara, besides being immersed, like South East Asia, in inimical-to-communication rain forest. The other continents are connected in one giant mass radiating from the center: the MIDDLE EARTH. MEDITERRA. Alexander knew its importance, he wanted to unite the MEDITERRA, all the way to the Pacific ocean (but his army went on strike in India). The Romans confused it with "their" sea, the Medi(um)-Terra-nean (= Middle-Land). A lot of what made Rome had been initiated further east, though.

The Mediterranean sea is on one side of Middle Earth, India and China on the other, and they talked for millennia. The Middle Earth being the center of the planet, most discoveries, and technologies from somewhere else came through it, and, be it just for this reason, it became the place of maximum knowledge, and maximal thirst thereof. Its size allowed to make the largest collaborative inventions of the whole planet, some of which spanned the entire expanse from Egypt to India and China, and several millennia.

The COGNITIVE ADVANTAGE of Mediterra was compounded by lots of fertile land, lots of sun, lots of water, ecological and geological riches and niches. This facilitated MENTAL SPECIATION, and encouraged further the rise of engineering and technology. The Middle Earth was the earth's civilization engine. The Middle Earth invented so much of civilization that the rest of the world could be viewed as redundant. A few material technologies came from China, but were soon transmitted west. The connection with China was viewed as so important that the Mongols joined the Franks in a huge war to smash the Muslim gangsters who had cut it (11, 12 &13 C).

The evolution of crops, writing, and people deflected the center of civilization to the extreme west. The genius of the Greco-Romans mixed well with the somewhat antagonistic, but complementary genius of the Celto-Germans, resulting in a secular synthesis contrasting with encroaching anti intellectualism in the East, which was ravaged by fascism (and became superstitious, sexist, enslaving, obscurantist and decadent).

"PLUS ULTRA": DOMINATION BY THE DRIVE TO TRANSCENDENCE:

Middle Earth became so alluring because of previous efforts of Eurasiatic MINDS, and, mostly, as a mental-spiritual caldron of cultures (e.g. Sumer was annihilated, but its culture went north). Diamond has it the other way around, and too close to the dung. According to him, the cows made the civilization. Verily, civilization made the cows. Moreover Middle Earth did not just dominate in engineering, but in most technologies of the mind: state, social harmony (Egypt), bicameral representative politics, accounting (Sumer), alphabet (Mesopotamia, Crete, Tyr), trade, democracy (Crete and Greece); psychoanalysis, philosophy (Greece), mathematics (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, India), visionary law (Rome), morality of altruism (Jews); modern ethics, feminism, public education as religion (Franks), etc. When Pharaoh sent Phoenicians around Africa, the metaculture of the "West" was in place: going to the moon is more of the same. Civilization became a self feeding process boosted by a better knowledge of the mind itself. The resulting metaculture of Middle Earth, once created, was so strong a tool and weapon that it survived time, war, and holocausts. Charles V's motto: "PLUS ULTRA" (More Beyond, 16 C) feels it all.

CLAIMING EUROPE OWED EVERYTHING TO LOCATION IS SOMEWHAT CIRCULAR; EUROPE LEARNED TO FOCUS ON KNOW-HOW TO IMPROVE LOCATION:

Diamond answers the question -" why do the Whites have so much material goods?", as a real estate agent would: location, location, location. Diamond reflects that the Europeans have more because they started with more: the best plants, the best animals, the best germs, the best metals. All of these magically found in western Asia. To say that the better chicken came from the better egg, or the better gun, does not add much, though. Such conceptology reduces civilization to materialism, a much promoted frame of mind in America (eschewing questions endangering the American hegemonic gravy train).

Diamond's reasoning is circular, because domesticated species are manmade. The species were in Mediterra, because their inventor, Mediterran man, lived in Mediterra. Man-made evolution created dog, cow, horse, pig, donkey, sheep, chicken. Ten wild almonds make a man sick, but selecting almond trees evolved non poisonous almonds. And so on. In the Americas, man encountered camels, elephants, horses and exotic giant mammals. Man, carried away by the easy pickings of the giant American island, as Americans seem wont to do, annihilated them all. Bovines, pigs, agoutis and tapirs, were also found, but not domesticated. Only llamas were. The Americans did very well with plants though: protein on the stalk compensated for the absence of protein on the hoof.

The same holds for minerals. As soon as the Conquistadors got to the New World, they went mining. They ascended right away volcanoes in Mexico to get the saltpeter they needed for gunpowder. Ancient Sumerian records, 5,000 years old, already distinguished 155 minerals. Fundamental assets of the "West" were about know-how, the know-how that there is such a thing as know-how, the PASSION for know-how, and the know-how about how to gather more know-how. All these emotions and revelations pertaining to know-how were so superior that they became THE metaculture of the "West". Technical details such as antibiotics were forgotten, but not that intelligence overlorded it all.

AFRICA AND JAPAN SHOW THAT BOWS, GERMS, AND STEEL PALE RELATIVE TO THE BIG MENTAL TOOLS WHICH FURTHERED CIVILIZATION:

Africa had its own steel technology (500 BCE, at the latest). Visiting Europeans faced steel, and African germs were second to none. In Africa, "Guns, Germs and Steel" worked against the Europeans (as in Japan). So Europeans could not colonize tropical Africa, and, sensibly, put the natives in charge of enslaving and conquering themselves. Still tropical Africa was a civilizational backwater, however much bows, germs and steel, Africans had. This shows that materialism is not, by itself, enough to ensure the exponential civilization Europe achieved. Materialism kept Europeans away, but did not bring more civilization to those enjoying it: a lesson materialists should meditate (as emperor Meiji did in Japan). North African Egypt and (newly arrived) Carthage were major contributors to our civilization, whereas tropical Africa was not. Why? Carthage used elephants; no black African society ever did. Why?

Mediterranean winters are wet and cold, people feel like building houses and cities. There are waterways everywhere, and the Middle Earthlings, to conduct valuable trade, bringing distant necessities, always built better ships (Crete). In Africa, long distance trade was not even a possibility. Trading in the thick equatorial forest is not as easy, besides being pointless, the main construction material of the past being wood, which rots in the tropics (wooden churches last 1,000 years in Norway; the only major civilization which failed mostly on its own, the Maya, was tropical).

Further back, though, during the neolithic period, the Sahara was green, with open forests, and giant lakes. Then Africa was arguably the largest subset of Middle Earth. And, indeed, from the invention of ceramics to the creation of tropicalized cattle, and the rise of Egypt, the Sahara was at the forefront of civilization. So it is indeed Africa's subsequent isolation from Middle Earth and immersion in the green equatorial jungle which doomed it to backwardness. Bows, germs and steel were plenty, and plainly irrelevant.

Even worse with the Aztecs; anthropophagic philosophy ruled them:

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE AMERICAN POPULATIONS (HENCE CIVILIZATIONS) WAS OVERLORDED BY PHILOSOPHY:

The Aztec war civilization ate people industrially. Perhaps other ways could have been found to balance the diet, had the inclination to do so existed. Aztecs could have just eaten more turkey and fish (as the Maya). But the Aztecs felt no PHILOSOPHICAL need to switch to out of their inhuman human diet, quite the opposite. More rewarding to terrorize people. Those enmities were their undoing. Cortez found indigenous allies, transmogrifying his small command into a huge army, which wiped the Aztecs out.

Millions of Incas submitted for purely philosophical reasons that Pizarro and his 162 companions played like the world class experts they were.

Native Americans had few germs, and no steel, making them vulnerable to the Europeans. This explains why they were eradicated in the north: they could be, and they were, because, the English authorities in charge, a group of powerful English investors and their sponsors, DELIBERATELY DECIDED TO ERADICATE THEM. It was decided at the highest political and PHILOSOPHICAL level. The English "Chief Justice" called for "perpetual war against the infidels" (1608). Later on, Anglo-American generals ordered the distribution of blankets from smallpox infirmaries to (friendly) Indians. No doubt they had diner with the Devil first, and a friendly chat.

It came to the opposite in the Spanish empire: after a fierce debate, Charles V ordered the termination of the conquest, to stop the holocaust in the Americas (circa 1550). This is why the Americas are not entirely Hispanic. The difference was drastic: Native American genes flourish in Mexico, but were eradicated a few miles north. That difference has little to do with technology, or germs, or steel, but has everything to do with DELIBERATE PHILOSOPHICAL DECISIONS: a deliberate extermination to the north (with an ongoing cover-up), and a deliberate fraternization to the south.

CRETAN CIVILIZATION METAPRINCIPLES SURVIVED DEATH BY VOLCANO, HYPERTSUNAMIS, AND STEEL:

The first modern civilization was Crete. She traded between the landlocked agricultural powers (Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc.). The Cretans invented the sea going galleys (modified into transatlantic ships by the Vikings, 3,000 years later!) Also exchanging ideas, they were highly technological, anti-sexist, and very rich. So rich, they could afford democracy.

After the Earth's most terrible volcanism in 25,000 years ravaged Crete and her islands, Mycenaean civilization, in continental Greece, west of the devastating ashfall and waves, took over (in competition with Semitic Tyr). Then invaders armed with steel swords overwhelmed the bronze armed Mycenaeans, and civilization collapsed in the "Greek Dark Ages". Most men were killed.

Amazingly, by the eight century BCE, Greece reappeared as the most advanced civilization. This shows that strong civilizational principles have a life of their own, and that women solidly anchor civilization. One is reminded of what happened with Europe later on: out of the ashes, phoenix like, civilization rose, as the brightest again, where it had been the brightest. The culture (or its women!) seduced and penetrated the conquerors. CIVILIZATION IS STRONGER THAN STEEL. SUPERIOR IDEAS AND FEELINGS WIN.

The Greeks got the habit of being open to the world from the Phoenicians and the Cretans/Myceneans. They spread "like frogs around the pond" of the Mediterranean sea.

AN EXAGGERATED EMOTION, IMBALANCED HATRED OF MAN FOR MAN, DOOMED ATHENS:

From their troubled past, the Greeks inherited a chronic disease, an emotional imbalance: OVERENTHUSIASTIC HATRED OF MAN FOR MAN. The propensity to hatred destroyed Greek democracy. It showed up in war of Greek against Greek, inhuman slavery, sexism, and demented hubris.

Athenian democracy and Athenian slavery were both operated on an industrial scale. The contradiction was absolute. One cannot be human, and antihuman at the same time. This drove the Greeks crazy. Slavery, especially in the mines, was of a level of violence rarely equaled. Slavery led to absolute hatred, of slaves to masters, and reciprocally. Slavery led to a total devaluation of the standards of civilization. In slave revolts, the slaves only dreamed to enslave the masters. Philosophers wondered if slaves were human. One cannot advance civilization in one's head, as one comforts oneself with innocents agonizing from the torments one inflicts on them.

People strongly object to be maximally exploited, with ultimate violence, and often would prefer to die in combat, if they got a chance. To prevent this chance, maximum physical and mental forces have to be continually applied. These exertions of an enslaving civilization suck so much mental energy that not much is left for its advancement. That is why Rome stagnated: it was thoroughly organized as a slave society. Once the entire via from Naples to Rome was ornamented with squirming crucified slaves. The Mongols (Yuan) were less well organized. Confronting a rebellion of their slaves, the Chinese, they envisioned exterminating them all. Disagreements among Mongols prevented this, and the Ming won.

Violence and slavery perfused Greek civilization so much that it tended to discrimination, and an inclination to rush to military solutions, instead of the patient conversations which elevate. Constant fighting weakened Greece to the point of extinction. In the thirty years war against Athens, fascist, racist, enslaving Sparta's huge war fleet, paid by fascist Persia, caught on a beach, and destroyed, the Athenian fleet, sealing Athens' fate. Much later the Spartans would dwindle to a mere 2,000, out of a racism so intense they preferred dying off to fraternization.

Not only did Greece self-destruct, but she encouraged the Romans in the error of their ways.

THE EMOTION OF ROMAN FASCISM, AND ITS EXTENSION, CRETINISM, KILLED CIVILIZATION:

The Roman peasants, civilized by the globe trotting Greeks (and Asian immigrants, the dark, mysterious Etruscans), learned to out-engineer, and out-fascize everybody. If not, Rome may have been annihilated. Italy was crammed with tough customers. The Romans depended upon republican fascism for survival; they became geniuses of organization and will, enshrined with sophisticated law. After the Gauls occupied Rome in 390 BCE, the Romans fought them for the next 1,000 years (and lost).

Roman fascism got carried away. Rome annihilated Carthage and Greek democracies (146 BCE). A conspiracy of plutocrats took power, by waging wars overseas. The super rich came to own Rome, and fought each other for control of the civilized world. Military fascism fully took over (with the African born Severus, ~ 200 CE). Finally the near barbarians (Constantine) and their allies the Christians established a fascist theocracy imitated since (Islam), but never equaled. The Christians "warred against the philosophers", burned books, closed schools, and invented the crime of being "pro choice" (= heresy), punishable by fire (~ 380 CE). Hitler burned his enemies in secret, but not so "Christianism", for the next 12 centuries. Civilization collapsed into the Dark Ages.

ANTI INTELLECTUALISM, AN EMOTION, CAUSED THE DARK AGES:

As Hitler told his comrades, it would be most pleasing to kill all intellectuals, "but we need them". The Roman Christian fascists did not know as much as Hitler did, and hated artists, scientists and intellectuals much more. They killed them all. Rome was decapitated. Not surprisingly, as befits a headless chicken, further demented decisions allowed the Visigoths to invade.

The Greek Dark Ages had been caused by externalities: volcano, war, and steel. The volcanic calamity had durably weakened Crete, the steel armed Dorian invasion gave the coup de grace. The second Dark Ages were caused ENTIRELY by ONE master cause: the BELLIGERENCE AND FASCISM OF THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD, AND ITS CONSEQUENTIAL DECAPITATION BY CRETINISM (Buddhism would similarly mollify the Mongols, but with more justifications). The Christians destroyed intelligence. But greater intelligence is what had allowed the supremacy of Greco-Roman civilization. Once again, the contradiction was absolute. The Greco-Roman system, born in one ethical contradiction (slavery v. civilization) died in a related, but worse, ethical contradiction (goodness v. fascist cretinism). Jesus said nothing about either slaves or intellectuals and did not anticipate his followers would make his Caesar Tiberius look good. Christianism went from: "Render therefore unto Caesar..." (Matthews 22;21) to "Render yourself into Caesar..." . Christ should have anticipated the problem, as a paragon of morality. Christianism overcompensated for the hatred and cruelty of the Greco-Roman civilization with fanatical altruism.

HOW THE FRANKS BURIED THE GRECO-ROMANO-CHRISTIAN EMOTIONAL MONSTROSITIES:

Clovis, son of a Merovingian king cum Roman imperator, himself Roman general of Consular rank, a pagan, negotiated with the Catholic bishops of the Gallo-Roman aristocracy, the establishment of a new civilization, Europe, on a more intelligent and human basis than either unreconstructed Christians or racist Goths would have it. The Franks, inspired by Troy, shattered the Greco-Roman emotional world picture. The Franks were not sexist, to start with. They put women in power (4 great queens in 150 years), and abolished slavery (under queen Bathilde ~ 650 CE). They legislated that religious establishments had to teach the public, starting the European educational system (solving religion v. education). In all this, the Franks fought and domesticated the church (not just Christian, but also Islamic, the later whining it met with a "Wall of Steel"). The church had killed Socrates. Armed with a SUPERIOR SENSE OF CIVILIZATION characterized by individualism, criticism, and the love of change, the armies of the Franks succeeded where Rome had miserably failed, conquering all of Germany to the Oder (take that, Augustus!). The Franks' world picture was emotionally more advanced and balanced than that of the Greeks (or anti-intellectual Christians/Mahometans). Great philosophers became imperial advisors. Now it was going to be machines, not slaves, Mr. Aristotle. And there would be schools, and queens, and ideas, and no more slaves, and freedom of thought, Messrs. Jesus and Mohammed. The new ethical interdictions imposed in the Merovingian and Caroligian empires of the Franks both forced and allowed technological progress, and made it a social and economic necessity, because they forbade running societies where most people were enslaved, or shrunk. Within three centuries, European energy usage per person was the highest anywhere, or ever. European ascendency never abated since.

WAR, TERMINATOR OF CIVILIZATION, A NEXUS OF EMOTIONS:

The collapse of sophisticated civilizations is mostly caused by war. This is the simplest, oldest of truths, but still the truth. It could be invasion by aliens, or internal war of a class exploiting the rest of society (sometimes a combination of both, though, creates a new civilization: India). Rome used war to invade and decerebrate Greece; finally it devoured itself in a Christian orgy of violence. One man, a man of character, Gengis Khan, wiped out several advanced civilizations. War wiped out the American civilizations. Sometimes exploiters take on the world, ultimately to be annihilated in the backlash: the Assyrians, Athens, Aztecs and Nazis are good examples.

Where does war come from? Man has been the top predator for millions of years; male chimpanzees will fight to death any male stranger, but the question is what psycho-logy turns man in a war machine? Well, hatred and its associates. Of course, one needs power to deliver one's hatred, and so, it is rather the product of hatred with power which comes out as war.

Power though, is not just a matter of steel, but mostly of mind. So is hatred. The former has to do with ideas, the later with emotion.

POWER, IN HUMANS OR CIVILIZATION, IS MOSTLY THAT OF THE MIND:

Crete was powerful, not because she could move vast armies, but because she was welcome in Egypt, and many other places. Everybody felt admiration and friendliness towards Crete. Crete was powerful because she set her mind to develop more advanced technology both in equipment and in social organization. Cretan power still inhabits us. The French republic, following the Franks, still proudly exhibit the Cretans' symbol of power, the double edged ax.

To get this ultimate power, a civilization needs ideas nobody had before. How do they arise? How come just a few people, such as the Athenians between Solon and Aristotle, came up with so many ideas our civilization is made of? The contemporaneous Persian superpower made no lasting contribution to thinking. Persia was 1,000 larger than Athens in population and riches. And a million times smaller in ideas. Why? Many Greek philosophers insisted on the importance of discourse (logos). They insisted too much. Greek civilization was not just about ideas. It was also about what gives rise to ideas.

EMOTION, OR THE OTHER SIDE OF REASON WHICH MADE THE GREEKS SO CLEVER:

The Greeks relished the highest emotional states, they reveled in excitement. The Dionysian side of the Greeks counterbalanced their Apollo side (Dionysus was the rambunctious ("wine-sex") God who relished the turbulence of the senses; Apollo expressed himself with the order, reason, balance: all the refined esthetics, the mathematics, the elevated logic). The vast Greek emotional panoply was directly related to their mental superiority: the Greeks extracted wisdom therefrom. It was not just that they gave birth to tragedy (i.e., psychoanalysis). Greek minds were emotionally motivated and leveraged. There was even more: THE DEEPEST GREEK REASON WAS THE CHILD OF THE DEEPEST EMOTIONS. To understand this major twist, one needs a theory on how the mind entangles logic and emotion.

EMOTIONS MAKE THE LOGICAL SYSTEM:

What is logic? "Logos" means discourse in Greek. The logos should encompass discourses not just of words, but of gestures, acts and facts: any stream of related neurology. Logic is incarnated (literally!) by neuronal connections, locally linear, as digital data ("action potentials") are sent from synapse to synapse. From this generalized definition, any logic is like an electric stream, going down the valley of inevitability. Like a stream of water on earth, going down a valley. But what forces made earth's land? Landscapes are sculpted by the forces of hydrology, but they are dominated by geophysical forces, some of which of a completely different nature. Continental plates foam up, congeal, and then collide, causing overlaps, mountain ranges, and the bubbling at great depths of volatile elements whose eruptions change the earth's climate. Water plays a crucial role in geophysics, through (thin and plastic!) oceanic plates and as a lubricant and high explosive, BUT it is NOT the main engine of geological creation. That, obviously, is heat.

Logic, like water on earth's surface, flows around, sculpting the mental landscape. But it is not any more the full story than water is the full story of earth's landscaping. Deep down a completely different system is at work, capable of giant upheavals, whereas logic per se is incapable of them. Just like geophysics underlies the world of streams, something else underlies the world of logic. Emotion. The evidence for this is multiple:

ALL IS SAID, BECAUSE THERE ARE EMOTIONS, AND THEY THINK:

a) Metamathematics shows any logical system is incomplete: ultimately, mathematics is directed by taste (i.e., emotion). Logic makes mathematics locally competent. Taste makes it valuable.
b) Neural networks adapt with usage. But what created the networks to start with? What if existing networks are hopelessly irrelevant? How to build a network from scratch (as adult humans do when they learn a totally new task)? What are the geophysics of the mind?
c) Neurology is only half the brain. Glial cells make the other half, a system which networks chemically and directs dentritic growth through astrocytal activity. Since the emotional system is greatly chemical, it is not much of a jump to suspect it directs neuromorphology through those astrocytes.
d) The emotional environment tweaks all the neuronal machinery, and even creates it. Rat brains in a Zen environment lose synaptic density, a kitten not exposed to light does not learn to see, a poor emotional environment does not allow to grow a full monkey brain. Some emotions secreted in the brain even kill neurons, and are perhaps used like a road construction crew uses high explosives (stress has its uses!).

Because of the multitude of molecules of emotion, the brain acts as a powerful, high dimensional chemical computer, which rewards, powers and guides logical intelligence. The emotional computer incites and directs the growth of the logical computer. Emotional intelligence builds up logical intelligence.

HIGH EMOTIONS BRING HIGH THOUGHTS, SO THOSE WHO CANNOT EMOTE CANNOT THINK AS WELL:

The emotional system is our DEUS EX-MACHINA. Logical systems make the machine. Spread out connections in the logical systems are called ideas, they overconnect with each other as discourses (we just crushed Platonism). The emotional machinery stands outside, with a dim mind of its own, DIRECTING neuromorphogenesis.

The emotional system is the DIVINITY AT THE CORE OF THINKING. Its extremely highly dimensionality makes it more mysterious than old fashion gods and oracles. Simple animals, such as mollusks, have a neurology, but no emotional system to speak of (no astrocytes!). This shows the EMOTIONAL SYSTEM IS AN ADVANCED (BIO)LOGICAL FEATURE. NO EMOTION, NO ADVANCED BRAIN. The Buddhists, the Puritans, and Descartes had it all wrong: less is not more, we need emotions to generate logic.

Passionless Confucianism and Buddhism made the East lethargic. By viewing high emotional states as ill advised, Buddhism and Confucianism discouraged new paradigms, i.e., new neural networks. THEY SAT AND SANK, BUT DID NOT THINK. Because there is NO REASON WITHOUT EMOTION, AND NO CIVILIZATION WITHOUT REASON, this resulted in little updating of civilization in the East. Institutions empowering advanced emotions did not rise. Local potentates loved it, though. So did various nomads and invaders who occupied China for centuries.

The Meiji, Maoist and Vietnamese revolutions adopted more passionate, hence more clever philosophies: direct, hard-core, Western European imports. Middle Earth is going worldwide. It remains to empower the new emotions through deep institutions.

Conclusion; EMOTION BUILDS REASON, HENCE PHILOSOPHY, HENCE CIVILIZATION:

The exponentialization of technology is overwhelming our intelligence. It would not take too many nuclear bombs for a really bad day, but, still, we keep on doing too little, too late about it. Because we don't fear enough. We have to boost drastically our emotions so they can direct us to the appropriate logic, hence the proper institutions for civilization.

It happened before. Towering self confidence, an emotion, allowed the Franks to throw away the gravest emotional mistakes of 1,600 years of Greco-Romano-Christian civilization. The Franks, not coincidentally, claimed to descend from Troy, which, 1,600 years before, fought the Greeks' sexist imperialistic barbarity. The Franks brandished Troy like Copernicus was going to brandish Aristarchus of Samos: they found inspiration in a prestigious precedent in civilization. What was Christ in all this? Little, besides justifying faith in love and the salvation of advancing morality, another emotion to feed the emotional frenzy of the West! CIVILIZATION IS NOT JUST ABOUT REPRESSING EMOTION. JUST THE OPPOSITE. CIVILIZATION IS INTELLIGENCE ITSELF, INSTITUTIONALIZED, RATIONAL, HENCE EMOTIONAL. The foundations of civilization compute with emotions in individuals and institutions. Better foundations means better emotional computing. We know how good the emotional computing is by the logic it grows, until we, or our institutions, can imagine, or see its consequences, and judge them. To think right, we must feel right. We are not just "Guns, Germs, and Steel." Never have been: it's our minds who ruled, not our guns and germs. We don't need more "Guns, Germs and Steel". This was the savagery we left behind. We are about Brains, Words, and Emotions. And we need more of them, right away. It is a matter of survival, not choice.

Patrice Ayme', May 2005.