[Xmca-l] Re: Your views on a question.

[Martin Packer]

Harshad Dave,

You claim that you want to talk only of “differences.” But then you call those differences “mental levels.” Levels, by definition, are higher and lower. And you write of “differences in intellectual competence” which, since competence is usually treated as a matter of ‘greater’ or ‘lesser,' certainly suggests that you want to make statements about different *levels* of mental ability. No? So your “points" center around your claims to be able to know, or infer, which people are mentally superior and which people are mentally inferior. Am I correct? 

If so, I find your whole approach extremely distasteful. But lets’s look at what people were actually doing in London in the year 1700. This short list of events during that year is from Wikipedia…

	• 27 February – announcement that the island of New Britain is discovered by William Dampier in the western Pacific.
	• early March – William Congreve's comedy The Way of the World is first performed at the New Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields.
	• 25 March – Treaty of London signed between France, England and Holland.
	• 29 July – Princess Anne's only surviving child, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, dies aged eleven leaving the Protestant succession to the Crown in doubt.
	• September –  William III travels to meets his cousin Sophia at Het Loo Palace. This is a precursor to the Act of Settlement of the following year that opens the way to the future succession of the House of Hanover.
	• 20 November – announcement that the first boats have reached Leeds from the tideway by way of the Aire and Calder Navigation
	• 25 December – First Christmas hymn authorised to be sung in the Anglican church, "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks", the words by Nahum Tate having been first published this year, in a supplement to "Tate and Brady".
	• 28 December – Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
	• Approximate date – Jeremiah Clarke writes the Prince of Denmark's March.

That is to say, people were writing plays, hymns, and musical compositions. They were announcing voyages of discovery, international alliances, and political appointments. The Bank of England had just been founded. A important synagogue would be built the following year….

What is it about these events that suggests to you that people in London in 1700 were *less intellectually competent* than people in London today? I can see no evidence whatsoever to support such a conclusion.

Martin




> On Jun 26, 2020, at 11:47 PM, Harshad Dave <hhdave15@gmail.com <mailto:hhdave15@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> This refers to the message of Martin dtd. 26 June 2020 8.30 pm.
>  
> Hi,
> 
> You are right and you have caught my feelings telepathically regarding your first message dtd  25 June 2020, 7.21 pm. Anyway, let us come to the points of discussion.
> 
> Part of the answer is given in my message to Annalisa yesterday (26 June 2020, 4.56 pm). However, I simply and shortly explain my point again.
> 
> The example of man with a gun stands for just to clarify that discoveries and inventions supplement the natural abilities of man to a substantial extent and this supplementing increases on timeline walking towards later (advance) period on the timeline. The questions you raised on this point have answers in the form of my views but it will open a new discussion on different subject matter and I do not want to go away from the prime line of our discussion.
> 
> The prime point you raised in the last paragraph of your message is the correct one. I explain it again here bellow,
> 
> Let us take the example of the city London of the UK. You will agree that in the year 1700 London was there as it is also there in the year 2020. You will agree that socio economic formations of society of London and that of the same in the year 2020 are not equal or same. You will also find a difference in various traits of social constitution, systems and institutions of the respective time. It is not necessary to engage us to determine which one was better out of two. It is just sufficient to determine that they (both) are different.   
> 
> If we randomly select five persons from the society of London in the year 1700 and other randomly selected five persons today in 2020, you will find a difference in intellectual competence in various traits. Here, I make you aware that I use the word difference. It is not always true that any comparison between two should necessarily return with a result declaring one of them inferior and other as superior, one as good and other as bad. But it might surely return with an outcome that both are different. Here, in my discussion, I have addressed the integrated concept of these traits overall as “mental level” and it is linked with the socio economic formation in which the person is living and that is why I address it as “mental socio economic level”.
> 
> Now, if you (and other friends) agree that there is a difference in mental level, I simply say that…
> 
> When two persons with different mental levels have occasions and events to come into interaction with each other in a society, it generates stress and strain in the functioning of the social system.
> 
> Hope It is now clarified.
> 
> With true regards,
> 
> Harshad Dave.       
> 




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