From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Aug 9 07:05:15 EDT 1998
Article: 12616 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: conservatism and evolution
Date: 9 Aug 1998 07:02:19 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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rcarrier@suba.com (Ronald M. Carrier) writes:
> >Contemporary paleo-conservatives tend to respond in one of two ways
> >to the Darwinian captivity of modern culture;
> Huh? What's that?
Possibly the tendency to view apparent purpose in nature as an illusion
produced by mechanisms such as natural selection. Richard Dawkins says
that it is Darwinism that lets a man be an intellectually fulfilled
atheist. And Daniel Dennett shows it can be applied on a grand
cosmological and ontological scale, not merely to issues of speciation.
> they don't see that what scientists have to say about the origin of
> species has much immediate relevance to the issues that agitate
> paleo- conservatives.
Possibly true, but if so perhaps a deficiency of paleoconservatism, a
sign that it is too issue-oriented and therefore just another instance
of the technological approach to human life, the division of life into
separate compartments each of which is managed in accourdance with our
particular purposes.
The problem is that all men by nature desire to know, or at least have
a bias toward a coherent understanding of things, if only because that
seems to make the world simpler and more manageable. As a consequence,
in the long run our understanding of what the world is like has a
profound effect on our understanding of what human life is about, and
therefore morals and politics.
> One may well believe that _how_ that human nature got here will have
> some effect on the politics one can legitimately extract from that
> human nature. But it's not obvious what those effects are, let alone
> that the effects automatically have a revolutionary bias.
Presumably a demonstration that purpose in nature is an illusion, that
the order we see in the world is only the outcome of an unimaginably
immense blind process based solely on randomness and mechanism, would
tend to make it harder to recognize things that in principle ought to
limit and form our own purposes, and thus tend to make make arbitrary
human will and technical feasibility the measure of all things. That
would I think be a revolutionary bias.
> Would you mind providing some evidence that Darwinism has such a
> stranglehold?
It clearly is the official belief, to the point of being all but
constitutive of what is understood as rationality. The issue therefore
becomes whether its status suppresses something valuable.
> >Now is the time to take up the fight.
> And how do we do that?
At this point? Consciousness-raising, presumably.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Sat Aug 8 19:05:12 1998
Subject: Re: AW: Equality
To: p
Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 19:05:12 -0400 (EDT)
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> The fact is that in the last sentence of your reply lies your
> surrender to Marxism and Freudianism when you say that the AXIS cause
> was worse than the ALLIED cause and UN cause. In this way the
> establishment will ALWAYS achieve to let you fight for the cause of
> the establishment.
I don't think so, unless you accept that denial of feminism for example
is the same as Naziism. From the standpoint of establishment
liberalism it no doubt is, but one does not have to accept
establishment liberalism. I agree that the establishment uses Nazi
imagery to enormous effect. On the other hand, if there had never been
Nazis they would have used something else to the same effect, brutal
slaveholders or rapists or whatever. If that were so I would not be
obligated to prove that brutal slavery or rape is good or even that it
is better than everyday life under establishment liberalism. I would
simply deny its identity with traditionalist conservatism. The same
goes for Naziism.
> For a real free thinker it is necessary to get to complete ABSTRACT
> analyses of the history of the XX century and choose from this
> ABSTRACT analyses the the side wich is best.
Abstract analysis is only part of political thought, since the world
does not reduce to human theorizing. That point has been absolutely
fundamental to traditionalist conservatism from Burke onward. It is
possible for extreme evil to be done in the name of abstract principles
that sound quite good, or for bad stated principles to be deprived of
much of their evil by other aspects of actual political life.
> No matter what the personal views of the american allied soldiers
> were, they landed on the beaches of Normandy to give Europe marxism,
> feudianism, homosexuality, pedofilia, picasso, divorce, abortion,
> birthcontrole, materialism and the lot. The AXIS soldiers who fired
> on them fought for the opposition to these anti-human phenomena.
In my view it was the battle of two new orders, two modes of
artificially constructing a society simply based on human will and
desire. The Western Allies at the time were less consistent in
following their stated principles, they had more of an admixture of
tradition, and therefore the actual social order in England and America
was more consistent with a tolerable human life than in Germany or for
that matter our glorious ally the Soviet Union. In particular, most of
the things you mention were subject to severe social and legal
restrictions at the time. I agree on the whole they were implied by
the abstract commitments of the Western Allies and have since been
realized. The enormities of Nazi Germany, however, were being realized
even at the time. Also, the planned extermination of entire peoples is
an unusually great enormity.
> The AXIS is traditional conservatism with its sleeves rolled up.
I don't think so. The triumph of the will is not a principle of
traditional conservatism. Traditional conservatism does not talk about
new orders, it does not organize society on centralized military lines,
and it does not identify the Good with the will of a people to the
exclusion of anything larger and view that will as summed up in the
will of a particular man, the supreme leader, which thereby becomes the
supreme law.
> By the way, I do not believe that ECONOMY is a science (like in the
> Nobel Prize). Mathematics is science, Poetry is art,
> Economy/Astrology/Theology are neighter science nor art.
Certainly not in the manner of the natural sciences. Some of economics
I think constitutes organized knowledge, and any organized body of
knowledge can be called a "science."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Sun Aug 9 17:31:24 1998
Subject: Re: AW: AW: Equality
To: p
Date: Sun, 9 Aug 1998 17:31:24 -0400 (EDT)
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> do you know the famous dialogue of Gobineau and Tocqueville?
No. What was it?
> Still you BELIEVE the historic view the establishment gives to you,
> wether it is about slave societies or National Socialism.
> Independance of mind is also shown by questioning the information
> given to us by the establishment.
I view slavery as a bad thing in principle, because of the lack of
reciprocity and the unprincipled nature of the authority it grants the
master. I have no doubt that there were brutal masters although nothing
I have said requires all or even most to have been so. As to National
Socialism, I accept the claim that the Hitler regime killed 5-6 million
Jews as part of an overall plan to exterminate them. I believe they
acted similarly toward other groups, in particular the Gypsies, and had
they won would have made life very hard for the Slavs. I have made no
special study of the matter, though. To the extent our difference have
to do with different understandings of the historical facts they will
have to remain differences until one or the other of us does some
further investigation.
> By the way, I talked about the AXIS. The AXIS includes a very broad
> alliance from alls sorts of political groups, including the Nazis.
> Charles Maurras for example, or Codreanu, and even simply
> anti-communist democrats. They all fought on the same side.
There were two alliances, one that included Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt
and almost all Anglo-American intellectuals and another that included
Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo and a substantial group of continental
intellectuals. No doubt both enormous evil and much good could be found
in both. I prefer the Allies to the Axis, because the Hitler regime was
more dominant on the Axis side than the Stalin regime on the Allied
side, and because the British and American regimes incorporated to a far
greater extent than any Axis regime principles of popular consent,
decentralized responsibility and participation, respect for established
independent institutions, and therefore acceptance of tradition and
settled moral understandings.
> THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THE ANGLO-AMERICANS AND THE USSR WERE THE
> SAME. THE USSR WAS IN 1941-1945 NOT JUST A GLORIOUS ALLY, IT WAS A
> LOGICAL IDEOLOGICAL BROTHER. I know about all ifs ands and buts in
> this, but purely philosophicaly Lenin and Wilson had the same ideals.
> And so did FDR and Stalin.
The Anglo-American regimes were not constructed regimes to the extent
the USSR and National Socialist Germany were. In operation they were
mostly based on long-established understandings and customs that had
grown up under reasonably free conditions. A few men couldn't change
all that. Since there was no actual dictator Wilson's and Roosevelt's
personal views were not of decisive importance in choosing sides.
> The USA had also concentration camps, killed millions by its actions,
> had organised apartheid both in the north and south and is based on
> the expulsion, deportation or extermination of the American Indian,
> and also because of agressive wars against Mexico and Spain.
The death rate in the camps wasn't particularly high; the actions that
killed millions had some reasonable relation to prosecution of a war
that could reasonably be considered justified (although I agree that our
WWII bombing campaigns against cities were criminal); segregation was a
far more moderate system than in South Africa, and in any case it is
racial extermination rather than racial discrimination or separation as
such that is the decisive objection to the Hitler regime; even in the
absence of all the crimes the American Indian would have been
dispossessed and decimated by disease, alcohol, disappearance of game,
conversion of hunting territory to agriculture or grazing, and in
general by contact with a vastly richer and technically more advanced
civilization with all its temptations; since the territory taken from
Mexico was very thinly populated and had more American than Mexican
settlers, and the acquisitions from Spain simply substituted one
colonial master for another, they did not have the same substantive
character as a war of conquest in Europe.
> If you condem Hitler, you have to condem all presidents from
> Washington to Theodore Roosevelt.
In politics, proportion and relative importance are everything. The
American government has committed and continues to commit crimes. The
same could be said perhaps of all governments. Nonetheless,
distinctions can be made among governments and statesmen and the
distinctions do not I believe favor the Hitler regime.
> Immediatly after their victory the ALLIES put the patriotism and
> traditionalism by wich they had brainwashed their subject to oppose
> the AXIS in the garbadge can and started their extermination program.
> Every day millions of babies are slaughtered by these so called
> democratic gouvernments.
The postwar period has indeed been bad for traditionalism, in part
because of a variety of technological advances and in part because two
world wars and a third cold war induced big government, centralization
of authority and social life generally, and insistence on ideological
simplification and correctness. You're abbreviating the process,
though. Abortion for example remained illegal in America for a quarter
century after 1945. The immediate postwar period, the American '50s,
emphasized patriotism and a sort of neotraditionalism that was real
though shallow.
Also, what would the Axis regimes have become had they lasted? In my
view their principles of social organization, race, the nation as source
of values, whatever, were too arbitrary to build an enduring social
order on. They would have turned into something very different by 1998.
> As far as I know people in the Western World are not in the position
> to deny in the Popperian sense any accusation against the Nazis and
> their leader, and therefor any accusation against the Nazis is
> invalid eighter scientifically or historically.
Holocaust denial is legal in America. In any case, the issue is not
protocol but truth and there were too many people involved and too few
administrative controls over who says what and who controls the evidence
for the whole thing to be simply a fabrication.
> Every state wanting to win a war has to centralise on military lines.
> Germany had to fight a civil war inside its borders. From 1918 on
> liberals terrorised in an organised manner any political organisation
> of traditional conservatism.
Liberals have many vices, but in the nature of things cannot have them
all because some are mutually exclusive. In particular, liberals are
bad at organized terror. If by "liberals" you mean to include Marxists
then I agree some system of bodyguards and self-defense units might have
been necessary. I don't believe though that it was desire to speak
freely that led Hitler habitually to wear military uniform and for the
NSDAP to emphasize mass rallies with massed troops and military bands
and the absolute unity of the German people under a single leader. Such
things suggest principles of social order quite different from
traditionalism.
> Nazism does not identify the Good with the will of a people. For the
> Nazis the will of the people, majority or minority, was completely
> irrelivant. They believed to have a proper view on society and
> history and pushed it forward.
I thought the Nazis treated the will of the Fuehrer as the supreme law,
and identified that will with the will of the German people. If you are
right, why did Leni Riefenstahl call her movie _Triumph of the Will_
rather than _Triumph of Ethical Cognition_?
> Any political idea has to be defended and fought for by military
> force.
Sure. It takes judgement to discern when the means becomes the end,
which is something that does happen.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Aug 9 21:45:12 EDT 1998
Article: 12618 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: conservatism and evolution
Date: 9 Aug 1998 21:42:58 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
> > immense blind process based solely on randomness and mechanism, would
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> I'm not sure that Darwinists would accept that formulation: Dawkins
> sometimes seems indignant about it.
Do you know what he and other Darwinists would say it distorts or leaves
out?
> teleological phrasing is always creeping into Darwinistic accounts
> (e.g. 'the selfish gene').
It's not clear to me that kind of "purpose" is enough to ground ethics,
since all such language does is enable us to talk concisely about how
whatever happens happens. If a selfish gene dies out because it isn't
selfish or clever enough that process can be described functionally
too, as life's way of eliminating the unfit. Man, and your prosperity
and mine, no doubt have a Darwinian function, but so do murder,
betrayal and smallpox, because each has a role in making things as they
are. You suggest "social Darwinism" is somehow illegitimate, but I
don't see what the problem is. If Darwinism justifies anything, as it
must if it is to ground morality, then what it justifies seems simply
to be whatever is going on at the moment since that is precisely the
outcome to date of the evolutionary process and thus the goal at which
universal teleology has been aiming all these aeons.
Also, by being less concise the teleological phrasing can presumably be
eliminated in each case, so the teleology seems simply to be a matter of
the language we find convenient to discuss things. But how can ethical
obligations be extracted from the convenience of forms of language?
Are men willing to die for abbreviations? Should they be? Are you?
> At minimum Darwinism is simply ...
The concern though is not minimal but maximal Darwinism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Aug 10 09:50:51 EDT 1998
Article: 12620 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Maybe One
Date: 10 Aug 1998 06:42:56 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <35CE53B8.6C2F3629@msmisp.com> cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
>> capital aspires to money and security rather than to a rule that is
>> so comprehensive as to displace all other institutions including the
>> family, but they do have the effect of making the managerial class
>> the sole principle of social order.
>Isn't this all the better for capital, or at least the "capital" that
>the managerial class worships and serves?
I don't know what "capital" that is. The managerial class loves money,
just read the various "having" sections of the _New York Times_, but at
bottom has no respect for property because taking property rights
seriously would limit its own power. Consider a tyranny in which most
people are very poor and there are a few immensely rich men who own
everything but whose possessions and even life depend on the continuing
favor of the tyrant. I would call such a situation "bad for capital"
because it subjects capital to arbitrary rule; others I suppose might
call it "good for capital" because money is all anyone cares about and
goes with political influence.
>isn't it "ethnic cleansing" of a sort? Reverse ethnic cleansing? The
>willed destruction of moral communities fueled by utopian
>politco/religious beliefs?
That's a good way of looking at it. Instead of kicking the Albanians
out of some village the Feds insist Yonkers bring in more low-income
minority people. In the first case the village is cleansed of an
ethnicity; in the second Yonkers is cleansed of ethnicity as such.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Aug 11 06:27:25 EDT 1998
Article: 12623 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: conservatism and evolution
Date: 11 Aug 1998 05:58:06 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <902790197snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>> > > immense blind process based solely on randomness and mechanism, would
>> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Have a look at the first couple of pages of 'Accumulating Small
>Changes' (The blind watchmaker, chapter 3). 'anything but a chance
>process...directed by nonrandom survival...a fundamentally nonrandom
>process'.
Still don't see the problem. I said "randomness and mechanism," and
nonrandom survival is a mechanism.
>'All Discord, harmony, not understood;
>All partial evil, Universal Good'.
The view that whatever is, is precisely what ought to be. That's what
a purely immanent ethical scheme, such as Darwinian ethics it seems
must be, gives you.
>If evolution has given us a moral sense and a capacity to reason (and
>one could add, perhaps, a predisposition to religious belief), to deny
>them is an act of destructiveness and futility.
Don't understand. If we deny them then on the Darwinian scheme that
shows that billions of years of evolution have given us the capacity
and predisposition to deny them. Perhaps it is the latter capacity and
predisposition the denial of which would be an act of destructiveness
and futility. Consider Sade's comments on following nature.
>> Are men willing to die for abbreviations? Should they be? Are you?
>Some have been: 'In hoc signo vince'.
The sign was of a transcendental spiritual reality, not of something
that could be fully explicated by reference to blind mechanism and
chance.
>Putting a theory to the widest possible range of uses generally
>involves applying a rather watered-down and unspecific version of it;
>the maximal use of Darwinism (which is what you and the previous
>poster seemed to be objecting to) requires a minimal version.
A strong theory is one that can be applied to a wide range of uses
without watering down. Maximal Darwinism is an extraordinarily strong
theory -- see Dennett.
>At most, Darwinism can be used as an argument against the empirical
>necessity of theism: it is not incompatible with theism, nor can it
>refute it.
What about Occam's Razor?
>One could also make the point that the argument for the reality of
>natural selection is the same as the traditional argument for the
>necessity of moral and material evil in a created universe.
The issue is not whether natural selection is real but whether it is
sufficient to account for the world.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Aug 11 06:27:26 EDT 1998
Article: 12624 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Maybe One
Date: 11 Aug 1998 06:24:36 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <35CFA502.BDD782F1@msmisp.com> cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
>And I think it gives tremendous advantages to capital, of course
>"capital" of a very specific definition.
>I'm thinking of capital which is both wealth and sovereignty at the
>same time.
My thought was that a secure system of rights of property and contract
can exist only as part of a larger system of settled moral
understandings. If wealth combined with sovereignty can do whatever it
feels like doing then that larger system will not exist. As a result
property and contract rights become insecure. The possibility of
plunder means that "sovereignty" -- the ability to do whatever you want
by force -- trumps wealth.
>I thought Jones' article offered interesting insights
Where can it be found?
>Is Art dead? I don't think so. I think other objects pick up the
>symbolic freight, because they are form. It is only that others
>become the Artists, industrial designers
What does it signify when the name of the designer becomes the design,
as in some mass-market clothing and accessories? Rather a variation on
the "whatever the artist does is art" view, I suppose. Form is
recognized as necessary to the articulation of human life, but the
formal content is reduced to assertion of its own existence and
recognized importance.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Aug 13 03:12:46 EDT 1998
Article: 12629 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Maybe One
Date: 13 Aug 1998 03:08:37 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
> "Hip" is an unknown category out here. We have no mental category
> for it. We can barely talk about it. We are not surrounded by enough
> symbols of it that we would feel compelled to pursue it as a goal.
It's odd that the words have remained the same all these years, and
even grow in importance. "Hip" and "cool" have been around since the
'50s; it's as if in the '50s people were still using slang from 1915 or
whenever.
Also, how come people talk about "hip" and "cool" but nobody listens to
jazz any more? It seems the mixture of style and casual urban
amorality has survived but not the art form.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Aug 13 03:12:46 EDT 1998
Article: 12630 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: conservatism and evolution
Date: 13 Aug 1998 03:10:43 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
> On the Darwinian scheme all entities have the capacity, and perhaps
> some predisposition, to cease to survive. That doesn't mean it is
> right for them to do so.
But if everything that happens is chance and mechanism "right" seems
rather extraneous. Also, without extinction no evolution I would
think, so if we are to extract natural teleology from the Darwinian
scheme it seems that it must be right for whatever dies or dies out to
do so.
> Occam's Razor only covers the first point. While it's a useful tool,
> it can't establish certainty.
Only rationality.
> [Natural selection] clearly isn't sufficient to account for why there
> is something rather than nothing at all.
Seems right. So strong Darwinism seems rationally coherent with an
extraordinarily weak quasi-Deism in which God creates existence as
such, or better perhaps "God" (the self-caused being) *is* existence as
such. I'm not sure what that gets anyone.
> But can you imagine a created world, subject to time and capable of
> change, in which evolution of entities and kinds by natural selection
> did _not_ occur?
Depends on what constitutes evolution of entities and kinds.
Biological species for example are extraordinarily stable. They have
not I believe been observed to arise piecemeal. So I can imagine that
variations might evolve by natural selection -- skin color or average
size might change, for example -- but not new species. The system of
organs and functions that constitutes a new species might be too
complex and mutually interdependent to arise from random variation and
natural selection within geological time periods.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Mon Aug 10 21:53:06 1998
Subject: Re: AW: AW: AW: Equality
To: p
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 21:53:06 -0400 (EDT)
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> Until the liberals came along, everybody excepted slavery. Before the
> 18th century nobody opposed slavery (maybe a hard to find example
> excluded).
It was common enough to consider it an evil, and unjust by nature. It
would be interesting to study the process by which it disappeared from
Western Europe long before the 18th c. Presumably that process had
something to do with accepted understandings as to what human relations
ought to be like.
> Essential in opposing liberalism is the inequelity of man. And the
> equality of man was first formulated in 1945.
It was formulated long before that. The American Declaration of
Independence (1776) says "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal ... " Inequality, by the way, need not mean
that men differ from each other as a man differs from a horse. It is
consistent with opposition to liberalism I think to hold that men are
equal in some respects but not others. All men, for example, might be
equally entitled to the protection of the law for their rights, but the
law might nonetheless grant different rights to different men. That
might be a form of liberalism, but a weak one.
> More Slavs fought on the AXIS side than any other group (except
> Germans of course).
My argument that the Allies were preferable to the Axis relies on the
relative degree of domination by the Soviet Union, against which Vlasov
and his men fought, on the Allied side, compared with Nazi Germany on
the Axis side. If the Soviet Union had been as dominant as Nazi
Germany it would be a harder argument to make.
> America could have followed a positive policy towards Germany and
> Japan and help them against the USSR and the communists in China.
> Direct them to Moscow. FDR and liberal America chose for Stalin
> because the ideology was more near to them.
It wasn't simple ideological sympathy. Germany and Japan were pursuing
wars of conquest, while Stalin was not. His victory of course gave him
conquered territory, but that was later. In particular, German had
conquered France and seemed close to conquering England, both countries
closely linked to the U.S. and with kindred political systems. Japan
brought the U.S. into the war by its attack at Pearl Harbor whereupon
Hitler gratuitously declared war. Also, Japan wasn't specifically
fighting the communists in China.
> True, the USA did not create reserves for negroes, as the South
> Africans did. The USA only did that for the Indians.
It's important that the blacks in the U.S. had fundamental civil rights
-- they could own and dispose of property, including real property, go
into any business or occupation, etc. The Indians could do the same --
they weren't required to live on the reservations.
> ABORTION, what about the holocaust against American children today?
> Much more people are killed by abortion in the "free world" than by
> anything else. Even when the holocaust is true, it is only minor
> compared to the crimes of "Row versus Wade".
Again, at the end of the war the abortion revolution was 25 years in
the future. Throughout the West it was treated as a serious crime.
> Colonialism is a Marxist-Leninist word with no intrinsic meaning.
I was simply using it to mean empire-building through conquest.
> Like prohibition in 19-1933 the illegality was a joke. The masses may
> have demanded still the illegality of abortion, but the elite had
> already decided it was legal. Not parliament, but the public
> procecutor defines what is "law". Also in the USA.
The elite view of abortion didn't change until the 60s. Also, until
rather recently most criminal prosecutions in the U.S. didn't have much
to do with what national elites thought. In 1945 the U.S. was still
quite decentralized compared with what it has since become and still
more so compared with most European countries.
> In the fifties intellectual marxism and freudianism concoured America
> (like the body-snatchers), only the Americans did not detect it.
What happened after the 50s obviously had its antecedents. My point
though is that in the 40s the United States and Britain were preferable
to Nazi Germany, not that they were unconquerable by bad forces.
> Every society changes, but the essence of Nazi-Germany was extreme
> nationalism and extreme social conservatism. If succesful in the
> military field, I don't see how it could end or would end.
Neither nationalism nor social conservatism can hang in the air. Both
rely on something below them, a complex of habits, attitudes, beliefs
and folkways independent of the state that provide the substance of
culture and nationality, and something above them, an understanding of
the world as a moral order preceding all human institutions. By making
the state and its leader absolute it seems to me Nazi Germany did
something that would in the end necessarily kill both nationalism and
social conservatism by destroying the setting in which those things
make sense. All there would have been would have been a centralized
adminstrative structure ruling through terror using nationalist or
social conservative slogans as long as it seemed advantageous to do so.
> As a Dutch subject I am requered by law to believe that 5-6 million
> jews were killed by Hitler
The European laws against holocaust denial are of course outrageous.
> Different from pure Traditional Conservatism, but the unpurety was
> the basis of its practical succes.
It wasn't practically successful, and I think could not have been, for
the reasons suggested above and because it lacked a principle of
moderation.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Tue Aug 11 15:43:01 1998
Subject: Re: AW: AW: AW: AW: Equality
To: p
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 15:43:01 -0400 (EDT)
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> Aldough absolute slavery was rare, various forms of serfdom and
> extreme differentiation of society was normal. Indeed, this is a more
> traditional conservative model than a slave state with rightless
> beings, but still, slavery was not considered evil by 99 % of
> everybody until about 1750-1800.
It's true I think that only a few speculative thinkers considered
whether settled social institutions were just or unjust. To most
political thinkers and moralists they were just facts. I'm not quite
sure what that shows about the relationship of slavery to
traditionalist thought today. It certainly doesn't show one should
favor its reinstitution. I agree that the radical egalitarianism that
leads men today categorically and vehemently to condemn all slavery in
all times and places is based on liberalism, and that the place of
slavery in the current moral world as an ultimate evil is distorted and
based on the view that the _summum bonum_ is for everyone equally to be
able to do whatever he feels like doing. That does not however mean
slavery is anything but bad.
> > Essential in opposing liberalism is the inequelity of man. And the
> > equality of man was first formulated in 1945.
>
> No, men only did meen White European heterosexueal Men.
Feminism and the rights of blacks etc. have been issues in America at
least since the 1840s.
> It then comes to the question: "WHAT IS A MAN ?". Certainly babies are
> not men in present liberal definition. They can be aborted freely.
How objectionable is that to you? You seem to accept quite radical
distinctions among human beings, although I don't know what limits you
might draw.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
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In <903042210snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>> But if everything that happens is chance and mechanism
>Once again, you're attributing to the Darwinists a claim that they
>deny.
Odd you should say that. All the discussion has shown so far is that
you use the term "mechanism" in a non-standard way, to exclude natural
selection.
>[Strong Darwinism is] also rationally coherent with quite a range of
>additional theisms, and with St. Anselm's ontological argument for the
>existence of God.
The first claim seems odd to me, since "theism" suggests to me at any
rate a God who intervenes in the functioning of the world, while the
point of strong Darwinism is to give a comprehensive account of the
world relying only on mechanisms such as natural selection -- blind
watchmakers, as opposed to the farsighted watchmaker of 18th c. Deism
or the yet more intelligent and active provident creator of theism.
As to St. Anselm you may be right if existence is not *a* perfection
but (in the case of material existence) the *only* perfection. Then
St. Anselm's God, his necessary being, would turn out to be prime
matter or something of the sort. I suppose one could go farther and
say that material existence would necessarily evolve and you might get
some sort of theology of an immanent emergent deity. How much sense
can be made of such a theology I don't know. Many people have thought
it makes sense.
>> Biological species for example are extraordinarily stable. They
>> have not I believe been observed to arise piecemeal.
>Perhaps you could explain to readers whether the herring gull is the
>same species as the lesser black-backed gull.
Haven't the faintest.
>(i) we are considering a hypothetical world, and (ii) as far as the
>actual world that we live in is concerned many experts (including
>Dawkins) have dealt with it thoroughly.
As to (i), quite so, you asked for a possible world and I gave you a
possible world. As to (ii), I'm in no position without a great deal of
work that I have no present intention of carrying out to discuss
adequately what all the experts have said. I will say that Dawkins
although an intelligent, imaginative and forceful writer is not a
particularly self-aware thinker and tends in one form or another to
assume his conclusions.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Aug 14 12:45:44 EDT 1998
Article: 12637 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Maybe One
Date: 14 Aug 1998 07:05:29 -0400
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In <35D39368.6B160589@msmisp.com> cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
>a certain view of freedom, the kind which equates it with absence of
>moral restraints.
This seems to me a very basic point, that is indeed tied to the state
of the arts. The _summum bonum_ is now thought to be doing whatever
you happen to feel like doing, subject at most to a restraint intended
to be content-free, the equal right of others to do whatever *they*
feel like doing. So acting morally is not the way one becomes what one
truly is, but an external and fundamentally oppressive necessity that
denies what one truly is. The great moral evil is "stereotyping,"
which is in fact the articulation of human life through form (male and
female, father and son, Christian, Turk and Jew, whatever). I think
it's right that the arts have been a substitute religion, a sort of
liturgy, and that they are losing that function because after all an
antiformal liturgy doesn't make much sense.
Maybe all this shows that Platonism is the real issue.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Sat Aug 15 06:23:42 1998
Subject: Re: Sites
To: hj
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1998 06:23:42 -0400 (EDT)
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> Great site.
Thanks.
> Just a little upset that you have blatantly racist sites mixed with
> ones of genuine good.
Mixed? I try to distribute things into categories. I assume you're
basically referring to things at the end. The overall purpose of the
site is not to list things I agree with but to list things relevant to
a tendency of thought, especially things not readily available from
mainstream sources. That would include things relevant to distorted or
perverse forms of the tendency, the unabomber, the KKK and many others.
It seems to me traditionalism necessitates cultural distinctiveness,
which is hard to separate altogether from ethnic particularism, which
in turn has racial connections. At some point one drops out of almost
any train of connections, but to deal with them intelligently they need
to be looked at and thought about.
> Some, like myself, see nazism and aspects of the multiculturalism
> movement as the same sort of thing made from the same source
I don't think I list any nazi sites as such. I understand naziism as a
modernist philosophy that mixes nihilism and a sort of rationality. I
would agree that on a fundmental philosophical level it has more in
common with advanced liberalism than with conservative traditionalism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk@panix.com Sun Aug 16 21:30:32 1998
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Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1998 21:30:32 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: The Oversoul
Date: 16 Aug 1998 00:00:00 GMT
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In article <6qqu77$odo$1@sm-t1.dejanews.com>,
greatcircle@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> Is Emerson merely renaming God? What is Emerson doing in this essay
> except revarnishing the platonic conception of a God that is very
> similar to the Christian deity? Has anyone noticed any pantheism in
> this essay, or (god forbid) panentheism?
As usual, it's hard to say just what Emerson is up to. It's certainly
not anything much like the Christian God he has in mind. For one
thing, "soul" or "the Oversoul" or whatever isn't personal and doesn't
seem to do particular things. Also, there doesn't seem to be the idea
of sin, of a fallen creation, of a God who created and is infinitely
distant. "The simplest person who in his integrity worships God
becomes God ... " Maybe "God" means "moral reality" or some such. The
emphasis is certainly more on the moral than cosmological side of
religion. Pantheism and panentheism have to do with cosmology, so
I think they're present but mostly implicitly.
There is a suggestion that our personality is less important, less
basic, less what we are, than the impersonal. It all reminds me more
of Eastern religion than anything else. Some sort of combination of
Mencius and the Bhagavad Gita, with an emphasis on the former.
From www@dejanews.com Sun Aug 16 21:49:33 1998
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From: jk@panix.com
To: jk@panix.com
Subject: Re: books
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 01:48:59 GMT
Newsgroups: dejanews.members.soc.jimkalb.tradition
Status: RO
In article <6r7up8$tnv$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
rhydon@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> In college I remeber enjoying the Greek tragedies, especially the
> Oresteia. I also liked both The Brothers Karmazov and Crime &
> Punishment. Maybe you have some suggestions. I'd like to read some
> Swift, Conrad, some of Johnson's letters, but it seems I spend a lot
> of time reading recent non-fiction.
See the Oresteia performed if you can. It hits all the basics.
If you liked Brothers K and C&P also see The Possessed (or The Devils
-- it's the same book). Otherwise, it's a huge range of stuff, and
it's hard to know what to recommend. It depends on taste and
particular interest. Explore! You can't go wrong with Swift, Conrad
or Johnson, but there are lots of others. I think _Chronicles_ has
taken to recommended reading lists, near the front, and there's nothing
wrong with their listings. One thing leads to another though. It's
hard for me to think of a recommended list of imaginative literature,
except that good is better than bad. It's all an exploration of the
world.
> Was Horatio Alger the one who wrote about the H.M.S. Hornblower? I
> read some of C.S. Forester's stuff, which I think is pretty close to
> Alger. Also a very small amount of Richard Francis Burton's travel
> accounts, which are pretty fascinating.
It was C.S. Forester who wrote the Hornblower stuff. Alger did stuff
like Mark the Match Boy and Strive and Succeed, poor boys in late-19th
c. America who worked hard, had adventures, became successful and got
nickel-plated watches. Burton is interesting, even the obscene
footnotes. I've read his account of his visit to Mecca and parts of his
translation of the Arabian Nights. Good bedtime reading. Not for the
kids though.
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From: jk@panix.com
To: jk@panix.com
Subject: books
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 19:01:23 GMT
Newsgroups: dejanews.members.soc.jimkalb.tradition
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> On the fiction side, I've enjoyed William Faulkner, Caroline Gordon,
> Madison Jones, and Flannery O'Connor.
Here and elsewhere you list 20th c. things. Anything earlier? I haven't read
that much 20th c. fiction and my favorites are probably a little odd. I like
Musil's _Man without Qualities_, partly because the characters and situations
are amusing, especially if you've worked in a bureaucracy, partly because of
the odd philosophical turns. I like Samuel Beckett's novels, because the
language is so beautiful and because they describe an important situation.
P.G. Wodehouse also writes beautifully, although not on so serious a plane.
> One of the funnest things I've read was Churchill's History of the
> English Speaking Peoples.
Why funny?
> When I was little, I read scores of the adventures of a super hero
> called Doc Savage.
The reprints I remember reading when I was little were the Horatio Alger
novels. Somebody was reprinting them in paperback and selling them in
supermarkets. Good stories as I recall, even though the climax always seemed
to be when the young feller got a nickle-plated pocket watch.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Aug 19 10:55:38 EDT 1998
Article: 12644 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Maybe One
Date: 19 Aug 1998 10:18:05 -0400
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"Louis Andrews" writes:
> That reminds me of Joseph Campbell's comments on traditional Indian
> music and dance. In his recently published diary (_Baksheesh and
> Brahman_) of his Indian visit in 1954-55, Campbell said that the most
> noticeable thing about both was the lack of either a beginning or
> end. This might be related to a "culture of death" as you mention,
> but here in terms of India.
It's an interesting issue, the extent to which the current rejection of
form is something that's happened before and elsewhere. Is it relevant
that Hindus invented the zero, and that Oppenheimer thought of the
Bhagavad Gita when he witnessed the first atomic explosion?
On the face of it modern and Hindu culture are altogether opposed.
Moderns emphasize what can be measured, weighed and controlled, Hindus
the opposite. Both reject form, though, because form is intermediate
between concrete and universal, body and spirit, control and
submission. No form means no moderation -- maybe its absence is more
important than the fact that Hindus reject it from the side of the
infinite and moderns from the side of the particular. Moderns who
become concerned with the spirit tend toward mysticism and Eastern
thought, while Indian businessmen are often shamelessly pragmatic. To
speak politically, both modern and Hindu society tend toward an absence
of public life, historical connection, and organic ties between rulers
and ruled. Such things require a sense of form which is lacking in
both cases.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Aug 22 15:50:11 EDT 1998
Article: 12652 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Maybe One
Date: 22 Aug 1998 15:48:54 -0400
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rcarrier@suba.com (Ronald M. Carrier) writes:
> Hinduism emphasizes the groundedness of form and order in what is
> infinite and so "formless" and "disorderly." This will seem to be a
> simple rejection of form only on the presupposition that form is
> independent and self-grounding. There isn't so much a denial of form
> in Hinduism as an affirmation that form is in some sense transitory.
> Form is "timeless" with respect to the beings that incarnate it, but
> transient with respect to the infinite from which it emerges and to
> which it returns.
My statement that Hinduism rejects form does seem wrong, to say that
it's transitory is no doubt better. Could one say that it is in the
end illusory? I'm thinking of temple sculptures and Arjuna's vision of
Krishna in the _Bhagavad Gita_ in which form slides into formlessness
through the infinite extent and complexity revealed by superior
illumination. The caste system although an order also ramifies into
infinite complexity. To me metempsychosis and eventual escape from the
wheel of death and rebirth suggest that form is *not* timeless with
respect to the beings that incarnate it.
Possibly Greek polytheists tended to see form as independent and self
grounding while Plato represented a monotheistic tendency to view form
as timeless and nonillusory but explicable by reference to the prime
form of the Good, and so as real but transcendentally grounded.
Christianity would then be Platonic and its contrast with Hinduism
would be its greater acceptance of the reality and value of the created
world of which form is part.
> In the Nordic religions, the ultimate origin of all that is, is
> _Ginnungagap_, the yawning void.
So maybe Darwin was the last of the Vikings. In the Icelandic sagas
one gets the impression that Nordic religion was internally
unsatisfactory. Someone might claim that was victors' history though.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Tue Aug 18 06:22:45 1998
Subject: Re: anti-inclusiveness
To: d
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 06:22:45 -0400 (EDT)
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> I'm surprised that a small-town politician from Ipswich (west of
> Brisbane) would be heard of overseas.
It is odd but it's all one world you know. It's not as if the issues
are different in Australia and anywhere else.
> I've had an absolute gutful of treacherous politicians telling us we
> need multiculturalism and "diversity".
And it's hard to argue because *all* respectable authorities agree with
them. And there's no real discussion of the situation because the
professional discussers, journalists, "scholars," "social critics,"
what have you, are all in agreement too. More oddity.
Anyway, thanks for the note.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Sat Aug 22 14:13:59 1998
Subject: Re: a.r.c distribution list
To: rc
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1998 14:13:59 -0400 (EDT)
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> Thanks for your comments on evolution and Darwinism.
It's OK if Fleming doesn't want to take on every issue at once. Being
able to bracket major issues is probably necessary if you're going to
say anything at all. It does seem to me though that there aren't as
many right-wingers with grand philosophical interests as there used to
be, which is too bad since having some idea of what's going on overall
is I think useful even practically.
On Darwinism itself, I haven't put enough thought and study into it to
be really firm in my own views. The view that there's nothing but
atoms, the void and natural selection *does* seem to raise very serious
problems, as does the view that there's other stuff too but no causal
interchange. I think I'd agree that the view that natural selection
explains all is more like an _a priori_ requirement than a finding.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Mon Aug 24 07:04:33 1998
Subject: Re: Thank you, but no endorsement!
To: J
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 07:04:33 -0400 (EDT)
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Thank you for your note.
> I want to thank you for the many excellent resources you have made
> available on your Traditionalist Conservatism site. I have made much
> use of it myself, and have provided a link to it on my own home page
> for over a year.
Glad you have found it of use.
> Unfortunately, it is impossible for me give this site my full
> endorsement. My reluctance is exclusively because of the appeal to
> racism in many of your links -- something that, as a Christian, I
> find reprehensible.
"Racism" can mean a variety of things. There are a lot of different
things on the site, many inconsistent with each other. I certainly
don't agree with everything on every link. The page is intended as a
collection of things relevant to lines of thought that I think are
important but out of favor. It requires showing where lines of thought
can go. For most lines of thought, most of us will drop out at one
point or another.
The basic notions that seem relevant to a response are that tradition
is always tradition of a community, that a cultural community is mostly
composed of people who are born into it, and that common history and
common descent are powerful binding influences and powerfully
influential with respect to the formation and transmission of culture.
Where you think you came from, what you learned at your mother's knee,
who your fathers and grandfathers were are *important* in determining
what you think the world is like and who you think you are.
The authority of tradition has to do with understandings that are
intimately connected to whatever it is that makes us what we are --
what kind of people we are, where we come from, who we are connected
to. Also, culture and tradition have a lot to do with habit,
unconscious assumptions, things one couldn't put in words and that have
to be picked up from one's upbringing and surroundings. So it becomes
hard to separate culture and tradition from ethnicity. It's not an
accident that cultural communities are so closely related to ethnic
communities. An "ethnicity" after all is basically a long-standing
cultural community that because it has been around for a long time has
a long common history and understands itself to have common descent and
to be made up of people of a particular sort. Ethnicity to my mind is
fundamentally a good, and ethnic loyalties legitimate, because they
provide the setting in which cultural tradition thrives most easily.
Ethnicity isn't the same as race but it can't be altogether separated
from it either. Both have to do with what people think they are, what
their history is, where they came from, who their ancestors were, and so
on. I don't think lines have to be absolutely rigid. People can be
adopted into families, and ethnicities can to some extent absorb new
racial elements. There are limits to how fast or how extensive the
process can be though. To my mind that's just a fact about human beings
that we should accept.
> The problem seems to be the confusion of race/ethnicity with culture and
> religion. The former are incidentals; the latter are of utmost concern.
> Christianity is, after all, a universal religion of universal truths,
> transcending race and ethnicity. The culture and religion of a people
> -- take the American people, for instance -- is able to change so
> drastically over time as to be virtually unrecognizable to earlier
> generations. At the same time culture and religion may be transmitted
> from one ethnic/racial group to another for a variety of reasons. (For
> example, English Christian culture has been successfully transplanted to
> peoples of Africa and the Far East.)
Ethnicity is not I think an incidental. People feel it is part of what
makes them what they are. Are they just confused? It is not the
*most* important thing, but that doesn't mean it's not a matter of real
importance.
Christianity is not like Islam a religion with a single comprehensive
law that makes its adherents into a single nation. It is the religion
of incarnation that transforms the things of this world without
destroying them or eliminating their variety and specificity. It seems
to me consistent with Christianity to recognize the existence of a
variety of peoples and membership in a particular people as carrying
with it particular obligations. If you read the New Testament it
sounds that way, to me anyway. Family is one particularism; ethnicity
is another. It seems to me both are OK institutions from a Christian
standpoint -- part of what gives human life form and articulation, part
of what connects human beings concretely to the world and other people.
If white middle Americans all became dissolute pagans it seems to me I
would still owe them something, because I am one of them, just as the
same would be true if that happened to members of my family or old
friends.
People in Africa and the Far East have become Anglicans but not
Englishmen. Elements of English culture have been transplanted but
certainly not the whole. They have remained Zulu or Chinese or
whatever. I would hope they have become better Zulu and Chinese, and
that specific qualities of their ethnic cultures will not be lost if
more of them convert.
> That is NOT to say that racial and ethnic charactaristics are
> insignificant; only that they ought not be made the basis of a
> comprehensive social or political ideology. We are all partakers of
> culture and religion by adoption in some degree.
Here we are completely in agreement. Race and ethnicity shouldn't be
the basis of one's understanding of human life any more than say
wealth. I would add that aren't utterly rigid categories any more than
say family and friendship. All I would claim is that they are
legitimate features of social life and attempts to extirpate them or
their public significance (which is the same thing) are wrong in
somewhat the way attempts to do the same to the government, family,
private property and gender roles are wrong.
As to the page, I'd say that very little freedom of thought and
discussion is allowed on these issues in the world at large just now,
so it's useful to indicate a variety of perspectives. Not all the
perspectives are correct, but the function of the page is more to make
thought possible than to set forth a single position.
I've gone on at length because your note gave me an opportunity to
develop my thoughts on an important issue. I thank you for that.
Further comments would be welcome.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Tue Aug 25 22:13:15 1998
Subject: Re: More thoughts on race and culture
To: J
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 22:13:15 -0400 (EDT)
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> Statistically, one would say that there is a correlation between
> ethnicity and culture -- but it is a mistake to assume that
> correlation equals causation. This is what often happens in the minds
> of racists: my superior culture/religion/traditions result from the
> superiority of my race/ethnicity.
I would agree with correlation as opposed to causation if you said
"race" instead of "ethnicity." Someone could be racially Japanese and
culturally Icelandic, for example if he had been adopted as an infant.
But "ethnicity" to my mind suggests some mixture of culture and of race
in the sense of common ancestry. It refers to common membership in a
people, which is usually a partly physical and partly spiritual
connection. It's not clear to me someone could be ethnically Japanese
and culturally fully Icelandic.
I should add for the sake of completeness that I'm inclined to think
that to some extent there is a real influence of race on culture, at
least for whole societies, so that if the average innate
presocialization behavioral propensities of the Japanese and the
Icelanders could somehow be surveyed they would be somewhat different,
and I expect that such differences are somewhere reflected in the
cultures the two peoples have developed. The matter is obviously
speculative, and I can't think of any practical issue on which my views
would change if they changed on this point. Certainly there are groups
that are racially mixed and culturally united (every culturally united
group, since all groups are in some way racially mixed), and others
that are racially indistinguishable but culturally and therefore
ethnically different (the Serbs and Croats for example).
> Race differs from ethnicity, I think, in that it is an arbitrary
> biological distinction. No "community" or common life of any kind is
> necessary to share a racial classification.
Most classifications are arbitrary to some degree and for some
purposes. "Race" refers to common descent and can be defined in ways
that are not wholly arbitrary. I believe that a physical
anthropologist can identify a skull as caucasoid, mongoloid, negroid
for example.
I agree that race by itself doesn't have many moral implications if
any. As the case of the Japanese baby adopted into an Icelandic family
shows, it doesn't necessarily imply community or common life. However,
most often common descent *does* mean some sort of cultural
commonality, since families transmit both blood and culture. There
have been cases involving catastrophic uprooting of part of a community
and its subjection to a radically different form of life, for example
black slavery. It's worth noting that even in that case some degree of
cultural continuity and community is claimed, I have no idea how
realistically.
> But some dream of fixed lines and ethnic "purity" anyway, a
> pernicious kind of utopianism.
I agree, certainly people have had and still have false and bigoted
ideas about race. It seems to me though that the most catastrophic
utopianism we have had in modern times has been the dream of abolishing
the distinctions and institutions that until now have articulated human
life -- ethnicity, class, gender, religious particularism, private
property, government, what have you. All those things can be shown in
a very unflattering light, and very likely most will play a greatly
reduced role if any in the Kingdom, but attempts to abolish them here
and now have failed and resulted in a great deal of suffering and
destruction. At present all respectable institutions and opinion
makers in important ways support just that kind of utopianism. To me,
that seems the chief thing to worry about at present.
> Now, however, we must deal with our present circumstances in a
> Christian way. I would rather that America offered her immigrants a
> healthy Christian culture into which they could assimilate. But our
> culture has collapsed (from within!), and in my mind assimilation,
> even if possible, is no longer even desireable -- not until we
> recover our sense of nationhood and reverse, with God's help, our
> deep moral and spiritual decay.
I have no special desire to have anyone assimilate into American
culture as it is now. On the other hand, there are lots of Americans,
and American culture is the culture they have, so the best thing for
them it seems to me is to have an enviroment in America in which
American culture or rather American cultures -- the country has never
been a monolith -- can stabilize and rebuild. An objection I have to
large-scale immigration, multiculturalism, what have you is that it
makes such things harder to deal with.
Babylon was both polyglot and corrupt. The two are not unrelated --
it's hard to purify corruption without saying what the community is
about, and that's hard to do if it's not a single community but dozens.
That's true even if the dozens of cultural communities are no more
corrupt individually than a single one would be.
> I know personally how hurtful the race-rhetoric found on the web can
> be, and I can see how it might harden, embitter, and radicalize a
> person.
Race is certainly a sensitive issue that touches people close to home.
I agree that inflammatory rhetoric is a bad thing. Are there things on
my site you particularly object to? At the end there are collections
of things some of which are extreme and inflammatory but I don't think
they look as if I'm presenting them as true rather than as examples of
tendencies of thought. Other things would I am sure upset many people
but that's inevitable if issues are to be discussed at all.
To my mind by the way the difficulty of racial issues is a reason to
oppose large-scale immigration. Would it really be helpful to make
America more multiracial and multicultural than it is now? The current
plan seems to make immigration part of an overall scheme for abolishing
race as a significant category, but that strikes me as utopian among
other objections.
> Of course you would "owe" them something, because they are your
> countrymen, and because they are your fellow men. But if you share no
> common life with them, no common faith with them, and no common
> heritage that is honored by them, then they might as well live on the
> moon. That they are "white" and "middle class" is, to my mind,
> utterly meaningless. I would consider my obligations to an eager
> patriot fresh off the boat -- especially if he be a Christian -- to
> be far greater.
Man is not disembodied. If my cousin, or a childhood friend, went
wrong it seems to me I would still owe him something special just
because of that connection. I share with him part of what makes me
specifically what I am -- grandparents, family memories, formative
experiences, whatever. Most of us feel a special loyalty based on such
things, and it seems to me life would be worse if we didn't recognize
such loyalties as binding at least up to a point. The same goes for
broader connections -- nationality, culture, ethnicity, and so on. I
participate in white middle American culture. That's what I and my
family and most of my friends grew up with, and participating in it was
an essential part of how I became an adult human being. It has serious
flaws but they tend to be *my* flaws -- I'm involved in them, and
they're related to my own flawed way of being a human being. Even if
middle American culture becomes very corrupt there will remain
important aspects of it and of its past that are part of what makes me
what I am. It is therefore hard for me to turn my back on it and on
those who are connected to me through it.
It's possible of course that at some point I could decide that my
brothers or cousins or fellow middle Americans are a bunch of
chowderheads and I don't want anything more to to with them. Under
some circumstances that would be the right choice but is seems to me an
extreme measure. You're also right that such loyalties are not
absolute and in some cases others can take precedence.
> I really appreciate you taking the time.
My motives I should confess are mostly self-regarding, to clarify my
own thoughts. If any of this is helpful to you I am pleased.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Aug 27 11:23:45 EDT 1998
Article: 12659 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: conservatism and evolution
Date: 27 Aug 1998 06:23:58 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 14
Message-ID: <6s3c3u$462@panix.com>
References: <6qhvc0$lmn$1@scoop.suba.com> <6qjvjr$s0g@panix.com> <902699015snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6qlj72$hhu@panix.com> <902790197snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6qp4je$h5e@panix.com> <902954837snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6qu3hj$3er@panix.com> <903042210snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6qvp75$omd@panix.com> <25551FA639DA88A0.5DA33C78F9BDFE5B.D3F3C221F4FB8F01@library-proxy.airnews.net>
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In <25551FA639DA88A0.5DA33C78F9BDFE5B.D3F3C221F4FB8F01@library-proxy.airnews.net> sethwill@swva.net (Seth Williamson) writes:
>The fact that [Dawkins] once said that anyone who denies the theory of
>evolution is either insane or wicked struck me as borderline crazy or
>something similar.
More like someone engaged in religious war. His foundational beliefs
have been put in question and he has great difficulty finding a
legitimate place in the world for the people who are doing it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Aug 28 09:28:13 EDT 1998
Article: 12663 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: conservatism and evolution
Date: 28 Aug 1998 07:03:05 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 10
Message-ID: <6s62p9$bk8@panix.com>
References: <6qhvc0$lmn$1@scoop.suba.com> <6qjvjr$s0g@panix.com> <902699015snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6qlj72$hhu@panix.com> <902790197snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6qp4je$h5e@panix.com> <902954837snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6qu3hj$3er@panix.com> <903042210snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6qvp75$omd@panix.com> <25551FA639DA88A0.5DA33C78F9BDFE5B.D3F3C221F4FB8F01@library-proxy.airnews.net> <6s3c3u$462@panix.com>
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In le@put.com (Louis Epstein) writes:
>(Hey Jim,no more palindromes?)
O, nada -- no! (Best I could come up with.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Aug 28 09:28:14 EDT 1998
Article: 12664 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: conservatism and evolution
Date: 28 Aug 1998 09:27:04 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 66
Message-ID: <6s6b78$p07@panix.com>
References: <6qhvc0$lmn$1@scoop.suba.com> <6qjvjr$s0g@panix.com> <902699015snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6qlj72$hhu@panix.com> <902790197snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6qp4je$h5e@panix.com> <902954837snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6qu3hj$3er@panix.com> <903042210snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6qvp75$omd@panix.com> <25551FA639DA88A0.5DA33C78F9BDFE5B.D3F3C221F4FB8F01@library-proxy.airnews.net> <6s3c3u$462@panix.com>
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I noticed the following on another list, and thought I would pass it on
because it seemed relevant to some of the issues that have come up.
On 8/26/98, X wrote:
>I hope that you will not once again think that I am being sophistical
>if I ask why this should be. Suppose it is the case that man himself
>is composed of "swirling empty atoms." Is he not man nonetheless? Why
>can there not be human excellence "by nature" that is by human nature?
>It is not clear to me why the swirling-empty-atoms thesis is
>necessarily antithetical to the idea of virtue, although it may
>sometimes be mistaken to be.
Not at all. The question is if man is nothing but "swirling empty
atoms," and atoms do not have any particular excellence, then how can a
particular combination of atoms have an excellence? If any particular
combination of atoms is accidental then no combination can be by
nature. If no combination is by nature then no combination has a
natural excellence.
It is true that some particular accidental combination of atoms may
gain the power to preserve itself and may increase that power, but can
such a preservation be the natural excellence of the combination if the
combination itself is an accident? Is not such a power just as
accidental as the combination itself? And if accidental then not by
nature? If all combinations of atoms are equally accidental, then it
is hard to see how a human arrangment of the atoms--or any combination
of atoms-- for some purpose could be said to be by nature rather than
an imposition of an order upon the atoms.
In a word, natural excellence requires teleology and if the the atoms
do not have a teleology then neither does any particular combination of
them.
In fact it is hard to see how the notion of nature can be retained at
all once teleology has been abandoned. For is not the nature of a thing
always understood at first in light of its excellence--of what it is
when it is when it is most itself? But once it is believed that man, or
any other combination of atoms, is an accident, then the "itself" of
anything, the "self" of a man, is arbitrary. (One wonders whether the
atoms themselves can be said to have a nature. Is not the "atom" itself
a construct of the human will for certain purposes? Do scientists even
speak of the nature of things anymore?) The "self" is a value one
commits oneself to rather than a nature which is completed or
actualized. And however authentic our commitment to a given value such
commitment is not fulfillment of a natural capacity but a free choice.
The choice would not be simply free if it were dependent upon a
pre-existing order. This is the price one pays for complete freedom.
Is every particular combination of atoms accidental? Or do the atoms
tend to certain combinations? That is to say, is it really true that
matter is made up of atoms which have no excellence? Or is it just
barely possible that the physicists in their dogmatic use of
mathematics to describe the order found in matter have missed, because
they never looked for it, the tendency--even a desire, an eros--
inherent in matter to become certain elements, the elements to become
life, and life to become man? Could it be that the excellence of
matter, it turns out, is the virtuous human being?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Aug 29 09:32:45 EDT 1998
Article: 12669 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: conservatism and evolution
Date: 29 Aug 1998 09:28:54 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 71
Message-ID: <6s8vmm$dg9@panix.com>
References: <6s6b78$p07@panix.com> <904335133snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net
X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.1 (NOV)
raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
> In article <6s6b78$p07@panix.com> jk@panix.com "Jim Kalb" writes:
I should point out that I did not write what I posted.
> > The question is if man is nothing but "swirling empty atoms," and
> > atoms do not have any particular excellence, then how can a
> > particular combination of atoms have an excellence? If any
> > particular combination of atoms is accidental then no combination
> > can be by nature. If no combination is by nature then no
> > combination has a natural excellence.
>
> This seems to me to rely on a slight equivocation in the word
> 'nature'. Cannot a combination acquire a nature if it acquires form?
> The path (or the early stages of the path) by which it acquires or
> achieves form may be 'accidental', but the form once acquired may be
> self-sustaining and therefore gives the combination a nature to which
> it tends or to which it reverts if disturbed.
I suppose the question then becomes one as to the status of "form" and
whether it's something that can correspond to or embody "excellence."
"Excellence" to me anyway suggests a standard other than the thing
itself, and other than the thing's persistence and replication. The
necessary kind of standard seems most comprehensibly to find a home in
a teleological system that is part of the fundamental explanation of
what the world is and why it is as it is. Such a system seems
inconsistent with the Democritan view.
One could I suppose be a Platonist who thinks of Forms as real
existents somehow organized to articulate the Form of the Good, and
also think of time, space and matter as empty swirling atoms that on
occasion configure themselves to embody Forms, thus producing concrete
things that manifest excellence. It would be odd, though, for the
realm of Forms and the material realm to be wholly disjoint, so that
the latter could be studied and understood wholly without reference to
the former. For example, for an excellent thing to last the qualities
of the swirling atoms would have to be such that configurations in
accordance with the Forms are stable configurations. So the atoms
would have to be at least in potentiality oriented toward the Good.
Also, you and I are concrete things, so if we are to know and talk
about the Forms it seems that the Forms must have a causal effect on
our thoughts and what we say (or type). Otherwise it seems that what
we think and say would not be "about" the "Forms." It's not clear how
that causality could occur on the swirling atom theory.
> If some combinations, for mathematical reasons, are self-sustaining
> and others are not, then we can say that the nature of mathematics
> determines the natures (or the possible natures) of the combinations,
> and that moreover the combinations _always exist in posse_ in the
> mathematical universe.
Assuming that to be so, what does this have to do with teleology?
Where does the "excellence" come in? The point of saying the world
consists of atoms, the void and mathematics it would appear is to
eliminate natural teleology. I don't see how you resuscitate it.
Also, I'm not sure of the theoretical point of all this. If the
universe is composed of empty swirling atoms and a formal element
provided by mathematics, why is that theoretically preferable to having
it composed of prime matter and the Form of the Good? Of creature and
creator? Are mathematical forms supposed to be more comprehensible or
more readily reducible to something we already know about than the
other formal principles? Just what are these mathematics anyway, and
how do patterns of swirling atoms like you and me manage to think and
talk about them?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Aug 29 09:32:46 EDT 1998
Article: 12670 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: conservatism and evolution
Date: 29 Aug 1998 09:32:28 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <6s8vmm$dg9@panix.com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>our thoughts and what we say (or type). Otherwise it seems that what
>we think and say would not be "about" the "Forms." It's not clear how
"Forms" should not be in quotes here. Sorry.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Mon Aug 31 16:26:04 1998
Subject: Re: message to a select group
To: schmoore@shentel.net (Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 16:26:04 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <01BDD34C.72AF2CA0@pm08a25.shentel.net> from "Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore" at Aug 29, 98 12:54:50 pm
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Hi Andy,
Sorry I didn't get through -- I tried (really, really I did!) and then
had to leave. What I'll do next time is program both numbers into my
phone so I can call each by pressing just one button.
What I would have said is that spin doctoring etc. is a consequence of
the democratic way of looking at things, so it's a problem that goes
deep.
The line of thought:
Democracy=>no absolutes, since if there were any absolutes that could
do us any good then someone identifiable would have to know about them
more than other people do, and that person wouldn't be equal to
everyone else and would be to some degree their natural ruler, contrary
to liberty and equality.
Equality, no absolutes, and equal counting of votes as a fundamental
moral principle=>one man's opinion is as good as another.
Equal value of opinions=>one way of arriving at opinions is as good as
any other.
One way of thinking is as good as another=>There aren't any legitimate
or illegitimate methods of persuasion. All persuasion is just
rhetoric, with no tropes privileged. If the contrary were true then
the way some people get their opinions would be better than the way
other people get their opinions, contrary to equality and for that
matter freedom of thought.
Majority rule as fundamental moral principle=>what most people think is
true, right, good, etc. should be accepted as such. "No absolutes"
means there's nothing that even in principle could trump the majority
anyway.
Therefore, to cause people generally to accept X as good and true, by
whatever means, is to make X really good and true, or as close to it as
you're ever going to get. Rhetoric, including spin doctoring and the
like, is thus the divine art that molds public consciousness and so
creates the social world, and the successful rhetorician is a godlike
man able to call worlds into being, sustain them, and destroy them. By
reference to what art or science, consistent with full commitment to
democracy, could such things be criticized?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Sep 1 08:58:11 EDT 1998
Article: 12695 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: "Conflict Resolution", Cuba & Colombia
Date: 1 Sep 1998 08:45:21 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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>It generically denominates a group of theories and techniques of
>psychological, political, social, anthropological, etc., nature, - which
>is fashionable in different academic centers in the United States and
>Europe - that as its objective is the solution of conflicts, through
>negotiation and dialogue, with the previous identification of common
>goals between the parties.
Does anyone know how widespread "conflict resolution" theory is in
Europe? It strikes me as specifically American, or at least
Anglo-Saxon, and liberal -- the political world as a matter of
interests, compromise, good-faith bargaining and pragmatic reason, with
fundamental principles so much taken for granted they become invisible.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Sep 3 08:44:43 EDT 1998
Article: 12708 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: conservatism and evolution
Date: 3 Sep 1998 08:40:49 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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blagsnatter@my-dejanews.com writes:
> In article <6s6b78$p07@panix.com>, jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) wrote:
I should note that I didn't write what I posted, but passed it on
because it seemed relevant to the discussion.
> > Not at all. The question is if man is nothing but "swirling empty
> > atoms," and atoms do not have any particular excellence, then how
> > can a particular combination of atoms have an excellence? ...
> The basis is fallacious: either a Fallacy of Composition, or of
> Division, depending on which way one wants to look at it.
"Fallacy of Composition" can't mean that analysis is impossible.
Notice the "nothing but." If a concatenation of non-excellent things
has excellence then presumably the excellence is attributable to the
form (arrangement or whatever), with the form an essential part of what
makes the concatenation what it is. So an adequate explanation of a
world that includes the excellent concatenation would include an
account of forms and how it is that some of them cause non-excellent
things ("swirling" -- that is, formless -- collections of "empty
atoms") to become excellent concatenations.
> > ... If any particular combination of atoms is accidental then no
> > combination can be by nature. If no combination is by nature then
> > no combination has a natural excellence.
>
> It appears the correct expression would be, '... If _every_
> particular combination of atoms is accidental then no combination can
> be by nature.'
The usage of "any" is sometimes ambiguous. Your wording is certainly
correct though.
> The second sentence of the quote must be true, as tautology, of
> course. But is "natural excellence" the point? The excellence of
> man would seem, to me, to be more of a super-natural question.
I'm not sure what's meant. One question that seems important is
whether man's excellence is something that can be rationally known,
that is, whether it can be known in a way similar to or at least
continuous with the way in which we know other things. The alternative
I suppose would be for it to be essentially a matter of faith or
optional postulation.
> > And if accidental then not by nature? If all combinations of atoms
> > are equally accidental, ...
>
> Is there some reason for disallowing an accidental nature? I don't
> know of any reason.
The notion seems to be that a thing could have an enduring quality (a
"nature") that just happens to come about. I suppose I would say then
that the thing does not have that "nature" by nature.
> The orderliness of the atoms would be a human interpretation of their
> arrangement. Order would be an inferred property of the arrangement,
> a property of human perceptions rather than a property of
> arrangements. Arrangement may be natural, but order is human.
It seems to follow from this that excellence is not by nature but
rather a property of human perceptions. I assume that excellence is
more like "order" than "arrangement." You seem to be taking the view,
in the terms of the original text, that the world consists of swirling
empty atoms, and that excellence is not by nature but by human
interpretation. If so, your view is consistent with that of the
original text.
> > But once it is believed that man, or any other combination of
> > atoms, is an accident, then the "itself" of anything, the "self" of
> > a man, is arbitrary. ...
>
> The self of a thing would still be itself, however it arose.
Not if the self is (in your terms) an order rather than an arrangement.
If it is then in your view it appears that the self would be a
subjective human interpretation of the thing rather than a quality of
the thing itself.
> A person is not going to beat the scientists on their own turf.
No doubt. I don't see though why scientists should be able to speak
authoritively on the limits or implications of science. Modern natural
science does not after all constitute a comprehensive science of
reality. It has nothing to say about mathematics for example.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Fri Sep 4 06:26:59 1998
Subject: Re: message to a select group
To: schmoore@shentel.net (Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 06:26:59 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <01BDD79C.9C8D0700@pm05a11.shentel.net> from "Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore" at Sep 4, 98 00:39:06 am
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> If you mean by the connection something much more tenuous, such
> as y has some tendency over time to foster x, then I would think your
> points valuable and valid.
This is more what I mean. One could certainly set up lots of different
logically consistent systems, and it took hundreds of years to get from
John Locke's view that for every man religious orthodoxy is what he
thinks it is to the present situation. I do think the connection is
greatly enhanced by the human bias toward systematic coherence, the
democratic bias against distinctions and toward simplification, and the
general aversion to any sharp break between what is most authoritative
politically and what is most authoritative simply.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
From jk Fri Sep 4 08:37:07 1998
Subject: More on the authority of the political order
To: schmoore@shentel.net (Andrew Bard Schmookler)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 08:37:07 -0400 (EDT)
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Hi Andy,
Some other thoughts on the difficulty of separating what is
authoritative politically from what is simply authoritative:
1. The political order demands a loyalty that trumps all others, and
can enforce the demand because it has guns, armies, prisons, electric
chairs, etc. If the political order says A and something else says ~A,
you're going to have big trouble if you don't go along with the
political order. In the long run that situation affects people's
understanding of the comparative weight of what they owe to the
political order and to other things.
2. The political order can demand self-sacrifice, up to and including
sacrifice of life, as in wartime. It is not impossible but as a
practical matter it is very hard to accept such a demand without
thinking of the political order as supremely authoritative.
3. In a multicultural capitalist welfare state we are connected to
the people we rely on in serious practical affairs only through the
political order and contract. "Capitalist" means that most things are
handled by agreement, which means that the issue of authority doesn't
come up, "welfare state" means we shouldn't have to rely on our
connections to family, friends and the like, and "multicultural" means
that with respect to our less immediate connections the political order
and contract are the only accepted principles of cooperation, since
other principles are either idiosyncratic or culturally biased. It is
very hard however to think of principles on which we do not and are not
entitled to rely (that is, principles other than those of contract and
the liberal political order) as supremely authoritative.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Sep 10 10:08:20 EDT 1998
Article: 12727 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Meaning of Clinton's disgrace
Date: 10 Sep 1998 10:06:34 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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It looks like we might actually get rid of the Clintons two years
early.
The Clintons perfectly represent important and in some ways dominant
ideals in our national life. Both have the kind of academic background
everyone seems to consider of supreme importance, the current
equivalent of a patent of nobility. Hillary provides the high-IQ
low-imagination zero-self-awareness moralism about general social
organization that is one side of the moral views favored by the most
respected authorities, while Bill provides the other side, the denial
of restrictions on impulse other than those imposed by one's personal
goals. Their personal life is irreproachable as well -- both have
high-powered careers in manipulative professions (law and politics),
they aren't obsessed with traditional sexual standards, they take
separate vacations and otherwise display their independence within
marriage, they have one child, a daughter, with a cute nontraditional
name who got into a fancy college, one could go on. They even hang
around with celebrities, and Tina Brown says Bill outshines Hollywood
on its own ground.
So it will be interesting to see the symbolic role events take on. I
expect a lot of the coverage to come down to a battle between those who
want to use the Clinton situation to debunk the complex of ideals they
represent and those who do not. We shall see.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Sep 11 07:26:57 EDT 1998
Article: 12731 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Meaning of Clinton's disgrace
Date: 11 Sep 1998 07:25:41 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 42
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amsmith9737@my-dejanews.com writes:
> The secularism, antimoralism, socialism and liberationism of the
> left, as well as the moralism and religion of the right seem to be
> window dressing that real "players" in the political, business, and
> media worlds discard when real power and wealth are at stake.
It seems to me that moral understandings do matter. People have to
explain the world and their actions to themselves and others, and also
find grounds for cooperation. The latter can not consist in mere self-
interest. Moral understanding is therefore an essential element of
power.
I don't object to much in your analysis. On the other hand no analysis
is complete, and the current situation will test whether the New
Class/media constellation is as fixed at the center of current
political life as it seems to be. Will the media allow the spectacular
self-destruction of New Class ideals in the persons of the Clintons to
be publicly understood as such? It does seem unlikely, but inquiring
minds want verification.
> Can one expect that a shift from "The New Republic" to "The Weekly
> Standard" or vice versa will make any difference?
No. I expect increasing alienation of the people from their rulers,
resulting in lots of apathy and some "fanaticism" -- singleminded
devotion to an outlook and way of life radically different from those
generally accepted. Eventually the rulers will become corrupt enough
and some group of fanatics cohesive and compelling enough for a
revolution.
> It may be part of the logic of technological society that those who
> can master technologies -- especially those of money and
> communications -- will always win out.
One can master communications technology by not listening. Therefore
the importance of fanaticism.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Sep 11 21:16:15 EDT 1998
Article: 12736 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Meaning of Clinton's disgrace
Date: 11 Sep 1998 16:54:12 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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The Starr Report is available, if you're interested and haven't gotten
a copy, at
http://members.xoom.com/JimKalb/starr_report.txt
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Sep 12 08:56:08 EDT 1998
Article: 12741 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Meaning of Clinton's disgrace
Date: 12 Sep 1998 06:29:16 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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amsmith9737@my-dejanews.com writes:
> Moral understandings do matter, but political actors tend to neglect
> ideologies and philosophies in the heat of battle.
And when the neglect becomes too extensive and habitual it weakens them
radically. The ruling class loses its principle of unity, since short-
term self-interest can't serve that function, and eventually the
political actors get replaced. That happens in spite of material
advantages, although of course changes like a revolution that displaces
a whole class can take a long time.
> I think the establishment has the power to coopt all rebels. Either they
> are already bought by power and possessions, or they can be bought by
> the granting of such goods. Moreover, the system confers respectability
> on those who accept it. It also attests to the mental stability of
> those who support it ...
What about natural selection? All rebels who can be coopted, no doubt
the vast majority, disappear. If there are any who can't, and who offer
a way of life and understanding of things more satisfying than what you
find on TV, they will survive and multiply. If the rulers are weak and
corrupt, and the country difficult and unrewarding to govern, they are
likely to tolerate and even come to rely on the rebels if the
"rebellion" doesn't take any directly antisocial form but is mostly just
commitment to a way of life different and more orderly than other
people's.
> The world today is "everything all at once". That means an infinite set
> of possibilities for everyone. The price of this is that one accepts
> the "everything all at once" of the world and doesn't invest too much in
> one's personal choices.
So successful rebellion seems to depend on a sort of separatism that
draws lines around the rebel community, absorbs members in its life and
repels outside influences. Otherwise the rebels will inevitably be
reabsorbed by the democratic multicultural consumer society. My point
is that if that's what it takes then that is probably what will happen
eventually since the DMC society has such serious longterm weaknesses.
Groups like the strictly orthodox Jews will inherit the earth. That's
not my ideal world, but it may be the best possible.
> "Conservatives" and Republicans play at being "radicals", and are
> beaten because their opponents characterize them as "extremists".
> They'd do better to take a reasoned, principled stand and say "Here.
> This is the center", rather than ape their opponents or gratify
> themselves by playing "radical".
I agree it's best to present one's views and for that matter understand
them oneself as a matter of simple good sense. I used "fanaticism"
partly as a defined term and partly out of recognition that if you
reject your opponents' basic principles and those principles are the
ones dominant you will appear intolerant, uncompromising and
unreasonable. Also, the basic principle of liberalism is openness to
all sorts of influences, acceptance of all sorts of impulses and
practices, etc. and rejection of that principle in favor of a more
defined and morally substantial way of life will seem a sort of
fanaticism from the liberal point of view.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Sep 13 09:22:51 EDT 1998
Article: 12745 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Meaning of Clinton's disgrace
Date: 13 Sep 1998 07:39:32 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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amsmith9737@my-dejanews.com writes:
> Internal contradictions have doomed regimes in the past, but logical
> or philosophical contradictions in themselves do not cause political
> elites to collapse.
The more extreme and pervasive the lack of agreement the greater the
problem. You spoke of singleminded concentration on very short-term
tactical concerns, spindoctoring and so on, which suggests a complete
lack of concern for consistency. That can cause problems quite quickly.
On the broader point, it seems to me that all regimes come to an end,
and internal philosophical contradictions are often relevant to their
fall. The democratic multicultural consumer welfare state for example
demands public responsibility for the well-being of individuals while
progressively evacuating the public sphere of moral content. That
seems to me a problem, both philosophically and practically.
> Social Security and immigration policy are founded on logical
> fallacies or contradictions.
They wouldn't exist and wouldn't endure unless they were tied to
fundamental moral principles of the regime, universalism and government
responsibility for individual material well-being. Pure coalitions of
interest aren't enough. The weight of interests is against
immigration, for example; the interests that succeed in forming
enduring and successful coalitions are those that can appeal to
fundamental regime principles.
> There is no "inevitability of gradualness" because when you reach a
> point where a given result should occur, the system has changed so
> much that that result is no longer inevitable. The "inevitable"
> collapse of the system is prevented by the defenses which the system
> has evolved in the meanwhile.
But then is it the same system? One might conceivably say that the
English system is the same now as in 1850, 1700, 1550, 1400 and so on
back to 1066, because there is no time you can point to and say "here's
where the old system collapsed." Nonetheless one can claim that there
were contradictions in feudalism or 19th c. Liberalism that made their
replacement by something radically different inevitable. Ditto for the
democratic multicultural consumer society.
> I think you need to look back to the experience of the 20's and
> earlier, when farm boys and girls growing up in a world which knew
> none of the toys of modernity couldn't wait to grasp for them when
> they were offered ... I don't think that most such rejectionist
> communities can be sustained (think of the communes of the
> 60's/70's). Rejection of the mass media and the DMC means a rejection
> of all of the toys of affluence, and very, very few people are ready
> for that.
You don't need most people not born into rejectionist communities to
reject modernity, and you don't need most RCs to survive. You just
need at least one RC to survive and consistently expand in comparison
with DMC society. Then time will do the rest. Naturally if there are
several rejectionist communities that evolve successful strategies, and
new ones tend to form, and they have high birth rates while the DMC
birthrate is less than replacement, and DMC life gets cruddier and
cruddier even with all the toys while rejectionist life is visibly more
satisfying to those who accept it, and net leakage is toward the
rejectionists who time reveals to live clearly better lives, then the
revolution in the state of society will come sooner.
> I don't think that ongoing rejectionist communities can be sustained
> in a society which has largely lost earlier forms of community and
> interaction.
It seems to me that such a society favors RCs. Man is a social animal,
and tends to do what enables him to live a tolerable life. If the
general public sphere is no longer something that can satisfy his
social nature -- if the civic forms of community and interaction that
have characterized European societies as opposed say to Middle Eastern
_millets_ or South Asian castes have been lost -- he will develop
something else capable of surviving under the new conditions.
> I think that TV and computers may have gotten into our consciousness
> to a degree that we will be very aware of the void if we let them go.
If one gives them up as an individual that may be true. Suppose though
their use in RCs is quite limited, because RCs that don't limit them
don't survive, and most members have been born to that while new
members, simply by choosing to join, show that they are willing to
accept a way of life at odds with their previous habits?
> Also, I'll reiterate my assertion that the capacity of the
> Establishment to certify groups as sane or insane, benign or
> dangerous is of the utmost importance. It is also very often misused
> in a most cynical fashion.
It's important. A problem might come for example when the state
decides that "children's rights" means the right to an education that
enables children "to choose their own values" -- in other words, the
right to compulsory training in individualistic moral subjectivism.
What RCs will have to rely on is the increasing corruption and
incompetence of the Establishment, and its likely willingness in the
end to accept anyone who pays taxes and lives in a way that doesn't
cause immediate trouble. On the first point, corruption and
incompetence, it seems to me the Clinton administration is only the
beginning. On the latter point multiculturalist ideology is helpful.
> But when, for example, German Rightists start writing about their
> country's history and neighbors I recoil and begin to wonder if,
> given what happened in recent history, there isn't perhaps some point
> to the censorship of the "center". I'd much rather have the
> "dictatorship of the center" or of the Establishment and be able to
> criticize it, than to overthrow it and replace it with what came
> before. Especially if what came before was a collection of radically
> self-aggrandizing nationalisms or racialisms.
That's not what came before though, at least not as a general thing.
The period of radically self-aggrandizing nationalisms or racialisms
didn't last long, and it seems to me grandiose territorial nationalism
has had its day because geography on the scale of say Germany is no
longer a useful principle of social cohesion. The "German People"
isn't likely to do anything ever again because now that geography is
increasingly irrelevant there's not enough to give them cohesion. And
I'm not sure that the transformation of the basis of the political
order from a combination of things that includes ethnicity and
nationality to pure universalistic ideology necessarily precludes
radical self-aggrandizement. Why expect the Establishment to stay
central when liberated from the social control provided by say
tradition or responsibility to a cohesive people? Most innocents
murdered in this century after all have been murdered in the name of
universalist ideology.
> If you abandon the nation to cultivate your garden haven't you left
> the public (or no longer public) square to the DMC and various public
> and private bureaucracies?
I think it gets left to something like weak dynastic despotisms.
That's the political form characteristic of radically multicultural
societies. The question I'm discussing is not what my utopia looks
like but what seems likely to happen as public life continues to die.
No public life means no democracy. At some point extensive
bureaucracies won't function any more because the bureaucrats won't
have the necessary common moral commitments. Without a bureaucracy to
look after people who have problems the consumer society ends because a
society in which people are not protected and looked after is not a
consumer society. So instead of a DMC we're left with M -- a
multicultural society, with multiculturalism no longer as at present a
principle enabling the governing elite to weaken all authorities other
than its own but rather a recognition that the governing elite is no
longer capable of doing much governing and so must allow the _millets_
to run their own affairs.
> Haven't you, like the late Roman's abandoned the public order in
> order to save your own soul?
What choice did the late Romans have? The neocons think you can pump
morality back into the public order. That seems doubtful to me.
Confucianism could work that way in China because of the hegemony of a
particular cultural tradition. I don't think that will be available to
us.
> What is to prevent orthodox Judaism from becoming another fashionable
> lifestyle or cult?
What works for people long-term will survive and prevail.
> I'd accept the open society as an alternative to a worse order, but
> I'm worried about where the enshrining of such ideas as an official
> ideology will lead us... And they will lead us -- where?
PC tyranny mitigated by corruption, of course. Liberalism is all very
well as a critic but it doesn't have the resources to run things on its
own. Nonetheless government is necessary. If liberalism is in the
saddle, and it can't govern legitimately because the principle that
equal satisfaction of individual desire is the highest good is simply
not enough to support government, it will govern illegitimately based
on unprincipled expedience and define its critics as mentally
unbalanced, dangerous hate-filled fanatics, demonic bigots, whatever.
> I've always been surprised by how many people who made careers out of
> seeming through Nixon, Reagan and Bush never had this guy's number.
In the absence of transcendental faith accepted in common intellectual
life becomes increasingly a matter of will to power. "Pragmatism"
means that truth in the end is what gets me and my friends what we
want. Under such conditions "seeing through" takes on a whole new
meaning.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Sep 14 07:46:27 EDT 1998
Article: 12755 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Meaning of Clinton's disgrace
Date: 14 Sep 1998 07:34:49 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
> OK, Singapore is a city-state.
Also, not that multicultural. The Chinese are the great majority and
are clearly in control. And not clearly a consumer society -- a
society that values money is not the same as a society that values
everyone getting and doing what he wants. Consider the difference
between oligarchy and democracy in Plato's _Republic_. It's the latter
that is the DMC. Plato thought the former evolves into the latter, so
if my theory (which incorporates Plato) works perfectly Singapore will
end up where we are now. They'll democratize, become more liberated,
etc.
> But an alternative (and more depressing) model of the AMC is found over
> much of Latin America, where it's existed for decades and seems to be
> pretty stable--there are coups and so on from time to time but they
> result in more of the same.
Some suggestions:
1. They're not really that multicultural. The Indians don't matter.
2. To what extent are they consumer societies and how long have they
been that way? I understand that TV, shopping malls and the middle
class are big down there now but the usual image presented in the past
has been low average income with a few rich people and many poor.
3. Things would be different if they were metropolitan rather than
provincial societies. It's interesting to speculate just how. I don't
think it's just a matter of material factors, material foreign support
for the status quo or opportunity to move capital out. The
justification for the social order has to run deeper in a metropolitan
society it seems to me. In the provinces people tend to feel the real
world is somewhere else.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Sep 14 07:46:29 EDT 1998
Article: 12756 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Meaning of Clinton's disgrace
Date: 14 Sep 1998 07:41:43 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
amsmith9737@my-dejanews.com writes:
> If things do begin to fall apart there may be problems, but it may
> simply call forth the deeper cunning of our political operatives.
What can I say? I suppose my basic attitude is that the foxes can
fiddle with things and patch them up for a while and maybe a long while
but not forever. There has to be something that goes deeper than
fiddling.
> "Regime" is a slippery word ... I wonder if you don't overestimate
> the discontinuity of our communal history. I wonder if we don't have
> to proclaim deeper continuities to work "within the [constitutional]
> system."
Actually I tend to think of our political history as fundamentally
continuous, as the development and generalization of liberal principles
and corresponding decline and suppression of various particularisms.
That line of development can't go on forever, which makes an eventual
crisis of the regime probable.
You are right that to work within the system you have to proclaim deep
continuities that go your way, and the analysis I'm presenting is not
helpful in that regard.
> I also begin to wonder just what you mean by the American "regime"
> whose principles countenance mass immigration and multiculturalism.
> When did this "regime" come to power? What are its "principles"?
> What do you mean by principles: the natural laws by which it
> functions or its moral ideals?
The moral ideals understood to be authoritative -- liberty and
equality, understood as the equal right to pursue whatever you feel
like pursuing. Those ideals have generalized and become more widely
applicable over time but I think the development has been internally
legitimate. John Rawls does not betray John Locke.
For example -- private property rights as a neutral framework for
pursuing goals have been supplemented by regulation and redistribution
to keep private rights from making the ability to pursue goals unequal.
A pure property system can be understood as a denial of the equal right
of minorities, poor people, stupid people etc. to pursue their goals.
Modern liberalism therefore seems to me a legitimate extension of the
original reasons for favoring a pure property system over say a system
based on throne, sword and altar.
The principles of the American regime as they stand now demand
multiculturalism because a culture is a complex of habits and values
and thus of goals, so to prefer one culture to another is to favor some
goals over others and so deny the equal right to pursue whatever one
wants to pursue. American principles now demand mass Third World
immigration because Zulus and Zulu habits and values must be treated as
equally good and equally American as the habits and values of 12th
generation New Englanders, and because it has the effect of ending the
hegemony of any particular culture and therefore promotes liberty and
equality as now understood.
Actually, the real advantage of multiculturalism from the standpoint of
regime principles is not so much that it makes Vermont Yankees and
Zulus equally able to pursue their goals within a neutral system as
that it means there is no culture that is authoritative for anyone.
Everyone can do what he wants and there are no accepted grounds other
than PC for criticizing him. Libertinism is fun and it means that the
regime's principles are the only source of social order, and
multiculturalism eliminates generally accepted objections to
libertinism. It's altogether appropriate that Clinton is the first
president publicly to treat an America in which there is no ethnic or
racial majority as worthy and inevitable goal.
> I had thought that the point of this rejectionism was to get away
> from the homogenity and uniformity of the DMC by a return to
> "diverse" communities like Orthodox Jews or the Amish, now it seems
> that rejectionists will form a counterestablishment or counterorder.
Their counterorders would have only internal validity within their own
communities. Public order would be minimal, the rule by force of
whatever small group is able to seize and hold power and get people
accustomed to its rule.
> Unless you are willing to renounce ALL of the "delights" of modernity
> including a "good" professional job, a "good" house in a "good"
> neighborhood, with "good" secular schools for your kids, then you are
> not really "rejecting" the system and have no chance of escaping it.
That's why it's hard for individual rebellion to be successful. There
has to be an alternative way of life established somewhere to adhere
to.
> Moreover, the desire to replace the system or outlive it may lead you
> to adopt its techniques which will make you resemble the elites which
> you abhore.
There is no desire to replace the system. Neither the Satmar, the
Amish nor the Gypsies want to establish a new public order.
> Until 1950 or so North America did have powerful Catholic and
> Evangelical countercultures, which were swallowed up in the post-war
> period by suburbanization, television, and mass secular education as
> well as by their own desire to conform and enjoy the pleasures of
> secular modernity.
Exactly my reason for thinking that under modern conditions a more
radical sort of separatism is necessary.
> This doesn't imply that you are wrong, that no return is possible,
> but you'd have to provide examples of where this has been done in the
> past.
In Rome a cosmopolitan and sceptical imperial order was replaced by a
contrasting order supplied by a rejected and rejecting minority.
> Again the experience of American "fundamentalists", Israeli Orthodox
> and Islamic militants (not that I'm lumping them all together)
> suggests that groups that are really motivated by faith will make use
> of the technologies which God has given them to get the message out.
> If you really believe your affirmation of that belief may overcome
> your "rejectionism".
Belief is not simply individual. Man is a social animal. Evil
communications corrupt good manners. If universal TV/computer
terminals make virtual reality renditions of _120 Days of Sodom_
immediately available to everyone at the click of a mouse there are
going to be lots of evil communications and it will be much harder to
maintain coherent and enduring communities of faith. On the other hand
going offline today means virtual secession from society. It's a
radical measure. We will see what happens to the groups you mention if
they don't do some such thing.
> Waco? Ruby Ridge? If the regime is that corrupt, what won't it
> stoop to?
A few instances of violent oppression don't prove much. It takes a lot
of work to maintain a comprehensive and minute system of social
control. Why bother if people pay their taxes and don't look like
they're into guns and stuff?
> I don't think that universalism has triumphed think of the Balkans
> and the Near East.
It seems that you are saying both that universalism triumphs (farm boys
in the 20's, Catholics in the '50s and 60s) and that it does not
triumph (techno-fundies, Serbs). My view is that (1) modern technology
that infinitely multiplies toys and distractions and makes every person
in the world equally present to every other person gives unprecedented
support to universalism, (2) universalism is unliveable, since it makes
a satisfying and comprehensible social and moral order impossible, and
(3) therefore, there will be a huge premium on arrangements that
restrain the natural effects of technology in a way that makes
particularism again possible.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Sep 14 11:14:26 EDT 1998
Article: 12757 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The Great Refusal (was The Meaning of Clinton's Disgrace)
Date: 14 Sep 1998 11:09:32 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
amsmith9737@my-dejanews.com writes:
> You seem to be very certain about your analysis and are an excellent
> debater.
I've thought about the issues and this is the best I can come up with.
An advantage of a well-defined theory presented clearly is that it
suggests further connections and lines of thought and offers a definite
target for criticism. I hope I've avoided mere debating points.
> Also I'm afraid I may not have used enough quotation marks and
> italics.
A difficulty with the low-context usenet format is that it's often
difficult to tell whether something is being presented figuratively, as
a half-humorous provocation, as bedrock _credo_, whatever. We must
bear with each other.
> Maybe so as not to be pejorative we might call this a desire to
> -- affirm and actually _practice_ -- a single way of life or vision
> of truth, since the issue is the old problem of the One and the Many.
> One rejects a world where everything is possible and nothing is true
> for one in which _something_ is true, immutable, eternal and beyond
> questioning.
It seems to me what's needed is to be oriented toward the One, and to
have some trustworthy knowledge of what that involves. It doesn't have
to be absolute singleness, and in fact can't be until we fully grasp
the One.
I should add that the subjective world each of us lives in necessarily
has something that fills the role of the One as well as the Many. To
commit to a world where everything is possible and nothing is true is
to commit to the truth of oneself -- the person just as he is right now
choosing among the possibilities -- as the _ens realissimum_.
> This may involve a certain "_narrowing_" or "_restriction_" of
> oneself as the price of this affirmation, for if one doesn't restrict
> oneself by excluding the mass media from one's life one becomes
> "co-opted" or "swallowed up" by the system.
There are a number of issues. One is eliminating distractions, so that
one can find place in his life for important things that don't announce
themselves with flashing lights and trombone blasts. Another is
finding community with others and maintaining the community over time,
a necessity since man is social. To achieve some things you have to
restrict others. To achieve health you may have to restrict gin and
hot fudge sundaes. To watch TV you have to spend time and attention
that you might have devoted to pumping iron or contemplating Southern
Sung landscapes.
To say "narrowing" is I think to speak of the matter purely from the
standpoint of the DMC. To use no hard drugs at all in connection with
recreational sex is no doubt in a sense narrowing, but to my mind
observing standards gives one entry to a larger world than that of
hedonism. There are many possibilities in us, and to realize one is to
suppress others. Which is the best? Which most truly realizes our
nature? These it seems to me are the issues.
> One affirms the "One" -- a rejectionist, religion and tradition
> centered life -- in the knowledge and hope that many will chose to
> reject the (post)industrial, mass consumption monoculture, thus
> leading to a real "diversity" (another word that can only be used
> within inverted commas) in the world.
Someone who likes the Many might realize that pure affirmation of the
Many makes no sense since manyness gets its significance only by
reference to more comprehensive principles. Therefore he might want
people to affirm the One purely for the sake of making the Many
significant. That I agree makes no sense and won't satisfy. It is I
think at best an intermediate stage for someone who is coming to
understand that the One must after all be at the center.
Eventually such a person might come to affirm the One because it is
necessary to affirm some conception of the One in any event, so a basic
and unavoidable goal in life is to affirm the best and truest One
possible. Since the DMC affirms no satisfactory One he might go
elsewhere and put himself morally at odds with existing society.
> In his writing on liberalism, Santayana, writes that he prefers
> homogeneity within societies and heterogeneity between them to
> societies which are internally "diverse" but lack any real
> differences or distinctions between them. The idea is clear, but its
> not so clear how this fits into the deeper/broader "One vs. Many"
> polarity.
Hierarchically. You start with the Many, and organize the Many in
accordance with particular understandings of the One. The particular
understandings of the One (a.k.a., particular mutually diverse but
internally homogeneous societies) then offer ordinary people an
adequate way of life and enable the sage (Santayana) who contemplates
them to attain an understanding of the One that transcends that of any
particular society.
Whether there actually exist sages who can transcend the traditions of
particular societies in the manner described is of course a question.
If such people do exist I'm not sure why they would publish, since
their position depends on the faith, valid within limits that are
invisible to the faithful, of ordinary people, and their views tend to
weaken that faith.
> [Note: I was not aware when I wrote this that you were considering
> one large rejectionist camp facing off against the existing order.]
I don't think I do. Did my last post make my views on the subject
clear?
> the more that I saw him on television, the more I came to view him as
> _a creature_ of television. He had become our "culture wallah"
> _[etc.]
I agree with all this. Still it's better I think to have him than not
have him because it is better to raise than not raise the
possibilities.
> "Sincerity" and "authenticity" are generally regarded by "values
> conservatives" as being rousseauvian, emotive words belonging to the
> theatre of feelings, rather that to the realm of Truth and Value, but
> I wonder if this isn't something of a pejorative, invidious
> distinction.
I think the point that they're bad as ultimate standards is well-taken.
> It seems unlikely that a multicultural society _could_ be fully
> democratic.
Obviously not. If there is no cohesive people to hold rulers
accountable responsible government can't exist. Rule by
unrepresentative elites becomes inevitable.
> I've got a libertarian streak. I don't want to legislate for others.
> I don't want to remake the world in the image of my own ideas and
> wishes.
Legislation is inevitably for others. The constitution of the DMC
establishes the social reality we live in. It is part of all of us.
It's not as if someone asked us when we born whether we wanted to have
liberalism ingrained in us. Americans didn't choose their libertarian
streak, it was chosen for them by the Founding Fathers, the Warren
Court, etc.
> Why now? And why me?
It seems to me you have to grow up and deal seriously with the world
eventually. After all you exist and have a natural function or natural
way of functioning, or at least must think of yourself that way which
comes to the same thing for these purposes. That natural functioning
includes having purposes, thinking of them as a system, and being
dissatisfied unless you can call them good. So why put things off?
> [Notice that I do not say "Why not you? Why are you mooting this idea
> over the Internet -- the center of the modern realm of the Many --
> and not acting on your desire?"]
Why not say it? You just did, after all.
There's nothing odd about proposing the One to the Many, and seeing how
it flies. In any event, I'm presenting my views as analysis, diagnosis
and prediction. If others can knock them down they certainly should.
I'm not urging anything. To think about and discuss moral issues is
not necessarily to come up with ways to justify everything you do and
have done. Naturally if you come to understand some analysis as
correct it ought to affect and eventually transform your own conduct,
but not necessarily instantaneously.
> And which god, which revelation to follow? Why close out options
> now, when I haven't made use of them yet?
You do the best you can. It's not a process that you can plan or
control. If you see something that makes your world and life radically
unsatisfactory, and that seems to offer something decisively better, and
you take it seriously and follow it and don't distract yourself from it,
it will eventually transform everything. Also, most people I think
eventually find toys and distractions wearisome.
> I suppose this is where the "leap of faith" comes in -- but the
> present condition of the world doesn't imply the necessity of making
> that leap either.]
To do or think anything whatever requires a leap of faith. Our
conclusions always outrun the evidence. The question for grownups is
which leap is best.
> [It's strange that the things which could be taken to prove the
> nonexistence of God, inspire faith in Him].
They are clearly things that matter for reasons that have nothing to do
with the feelings and impulses we happen to have, and without God
nothing matters that way. Also, to my mind such things make the image
of an abandoned and mortally suffering God compelling.
> But our modern Western affluent corner seems not to require a God.
Depends I think on constant distractions and on social training that
makes us less than we are for the sake of the functioning of the
hedonistic machine. Also, as a factual matter I don't think it will
last. The machine that lasts forever and makes all necessary repairs
and modifications on itself even though its minders fall into the habit
of sleeping or getting drunk on the job or not showing up at all
because the machine takes care of them too is I think nonexistent.
> People often seem to worship God because they want some fixed and
> unchanging point in the world: it becomes a question of whether they
> are worshipping "God" or fixity and permanence in itself.
If God is what remains the same when all else changes in the end there
may not be that much of a distinction.
> I can't help but wonder, if God (or our concept of him) _has_ changed
> over time, what is wrong with a "postmodernist" conception of God.
Since God is transcendent, superessential, whatever, our concept of him
necessarily changes. The odd thing about postmodernism though is that
it postulates a necessary, permanent and universal state of affairs,
contrary to itself. It's the dogma of no dogma, the literalness of no
literalness. Only constant distraction can make it seem plausible or
even comprehensible.
> This is why the idea of a coming bad time, a collapse of the system
> is so important.
True enough. No one really likes to get away with cheating, or find
that nothing could ever constitute cheating. We all want to touch
reality even though reality is also terrifying because we do not
control it.
> Why "privilege" the horrible end over the present continuity?
It's not just the end. Distractions grow tiresome, and modernity and
postmodernity depend on distractions. The present discontinuities are
concealed by obfuscating the gaps. Also, "be all that you can be" when
taken seriously transcends itself.
> Finally I'm interested in how this idea of a great refusal or
> rejection, which was so prominent on the "Left" in the Sixties and
> Seventies now finds it's home on the "Right". Are there structual
> similarities between Left and Right "rejectionism"? To what extent
> does the failure of the communes and "intentional communities" of
> thirty years ago suggest the failure of rejectionist communities in
> the future.
Both are rebellions against technocratic liberalism, the treatment of
the world as raw material for constructing a universal machine for the
maximum equal satisfaction of desire. The Left rebelled because the
discipline of technocracy inevitably suppresses some desires, the Right
because technocracy denies transcendent goods. Right rejectionism goes
deeper and has better prospects because it has a better grasp of what
is needed for an enduring non-liberal social order. Religious
intentional communities work better than non-religious, ethnic than
multicultural, sexist than nongendered. The communes of 30 years ago
chose all the latter features.
I don't know how useful the things I have said are to you. Each of us
has his own situation and purposes. I find your discussions quite
interesting.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Sep 15 09:09:37 EDT 1998
Article: 12763 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Meaning of Clinton's disgrace
Date: 15 Sep 1998 09:09:32 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 139
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
amsmith9737@my-dejanews.com writes:
> Then the regime is in some way parasitic and destructive of the
> people who provide its host.
Yes, but the people also exist by virtue of the regime. It seems that
Americans, including conservative Americans, can't help but be liberals
of one kind or another even though liberalism is destroying the
American people. Various things that stabilized the situation somewhat
-- limited government, limited understandings of the political,
aversion to coherent theory, etc. -- no longer serve their function.
> At some point isn't there a break between earlier and later
> "liberalisms"? Granted both liberalisms grew out of secularization,
> but are there alternative ways of secularity?
One can look at development either from the point of view of
transformation or from that of continuity. The latter impresses me
more. What has happened seems utterly logical to me, as well as to
those who accept it as a good thing. It's simply been the working out
of the principle that the good is the same as the desired. Maybe the
inevitability is an illusion but right now it doesn't look that way to
me.
> I wonder if the establishment won't come to recognize at some point
> that large scale immigration and multiculturalism threaten even its
> own power.
It's hard to know. There have been polyglot empires so establishment
power can survive large scale I & M. In China and Japan there have
also been episodes in which governments have successfully cut off
foreign influences but there the ideology was explicitly based on the
cultural tradition of a particular people, not likely to be a move
available to us. People talk of an American Proposition that is more
fundamental than any actual event or person in American history but not
of a Chinese or Japanese Proposition. America is said to be a nation
of immigrants, the land of the future, an unpaid promissory note, a
universal nation. That kind of national mythology limits what can be
done, especially when there are strong factions in the political and
symbol manipulating classes whose interest it is to insist on it.
> In some barely conscious fashion, liberals and Clintonites are aware
> that they are running on empty and are waiting for something to save
> them from simply being the party of multiculturalism.
True, but they'll have a long wait. They want communitarianism but
with vigorous enforcement of civil rights etc. from the center, and the
latter feature is absolutely essential. Lots of luck. In their case
communitarianism really *is* nostalgia.
> You mentioned one big rejectionist community in your earlier post.
Where was that? I never had such a thing in mind.
> I have to wonder to what extent your vision not only presupposes but
> demands multiculturalism.
It's a response to multiculturalism, so it presumes it. I would prefer
a territorial civic order because that has been the greatness of Europe
and I would rather be European than Levantine or South Asian but you
take what you can get.
> First non-Orthodox Jews can leave the fold. This can happen with
> religions, but its rarer with nations.
I don't see much future for nations of the European type. They rely
too much on geography for cohesion. Future principles of cohesion must
touch us closer to home.
> Secondly there are very few newcomers.
Lubavitchers get a lot of converts, from among Jews of course. That
may be a sign of what will be successful in the future.
> Also it's not clear that at some point, after people have become
> disgusted for long enough with modernity, they won't grow tired of
> traditionalism and look for innovation.
The new traditionalism will have far more solid defenses than the old.
They will be essential to its coming to be. All depends in the end
though on how successful modernity and postmodernity can be in building
an acceptable way of life. Will backsliders become role models or
object lessons?
> 1.Enough disgust with modernity may curtail its excesses and make it
> more attractive, though never so much as it was at is birth. At that
> point a new public order may be possible.
It seems to me that it is very difficult to tame modernity short of
radical measures. The abolition of space and immediate universal
accessibility of infinite distraction are difficult to tame without
profound discipline of some sort. Can a public order provide the
discipline under modern circumstances? Is a general feeling that
"enough is enough" sufficient?
> 2.Rejection of public order for private communities may be disastrous
> in ways that we cannot forsee.
That's the way most of the civilized world has lived most of the time.
> > In Rome a cosmopolitan and sceptical imperial order was replaced by
> > a contrasting order supplied by a rejected and rejecting minority.
>
> Even those who have become quite fed up with the modern
> mass-consumption spectacle and seek something more or different are
> suspicious of clericalism,
Constantine established Christianity and not clericalism.
> Moreover there is no guarantee that the survivor will be Christianity
> or even Judaism. You may not lose if you bet on Islam -- or maybe on
> a good day, Bahai.
Judaism is an experienced survivor in radically multicultural
circumstances, and Christianity grew up and triumphed under such
circumstances. Islam lacks those advantages.
> The fear of how things can be kept together once they have reached a
> certain degree of chaos may inspire scapegoating or repression.
Sure, but serious organized continuous efforts to eradicate groups and
tendencies that more and more are the source of what order remains are
less likely.
> It does seem logical that the new technologies tend to gut many of
> the characteristics that make a liveable society possible. But this
> fact in itself doesn't mean that very many people will become
> rejectionists.
All you need is for there to be some tendency to become so, for those
born to rejectionism to tend to stick with it, differential fertility
rates, and no other tolerable and generally applicable solution to the
problems of modernity and postmodernity. Then time and eventual shifts
in the correlation of forces will do the rest.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Sep 15 09:12:27 EDT 1998
Article: 12764 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Meaning of Clinton's disgrace
Date: 15 Sep 1998 09:11:39 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <6tlp2b$64v@panix.com>
References: <905724029snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <6tiv0p$2bg@panix.com> <905803267snz@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
raf391@hormel.bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
> > [Singapore will] democratize, become more liberated, etc.
>
> Possibly; it seems as likely that current liberal democracies will
> become more authoritarian, at least in some respects.
An obvious feature of the view I'm presenting is that on the whole it
accepts liberal triumphalism but calls the triumph a catastrophe.
> In Brazil, numerous negros and various European groups [etc.]
How much current immigration and how much integration? My impression
had been that most immigrants have been there for a while and either
assimilated or accepted a limited position in the local social order.
People know their place, rather like America before the 60s.
> in the 19th c the US was in some respects very provincial
It was no backwater though. It understood itself and to some extent
was understood by others as the tip of the wave, so its position was
quite different from that of South America today.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Sep 16 07:32:48 EDT 1998
Article: 12768 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The Great Refusal (was The Meaning of Clinton's Disgrace)
Date: 16 Sep 1998 07:32:02 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
amsmith9737@my-dejanews.com writes:
> In terms of the One-Many problem, it interests me as to whether the
> acceptance of the One, God, implies the rejection of the Many ...
It seems to me you can't have the Many -- you can't even recognize them
as the Many or say anything about them -- without the One to relate
them and refer them to. It also seems to me that absolute monism tends
to become atheistic -- Hinduism becomes purified as Buddhism or
Jainism. For one thing it proposes something a little too unadorned to
get a grip on; for another it makes appearances illusory, but if
appearance is illusory there's nothing to explain and no explanation is
necessary, so why not just assume there's nothing.
Christianity seems to suggest that to avoid that the One must be
conceived personally, and as active in the world it created and loves
and makes real, and to conceive the One as personal but not dependent
on the world the One must be conceived as several persons -- two is too
few, four too many, three just right for the necessary element of drama
without faction.
> If God "changes" over the course of the Old Testament, and between the
> Old and New Testaments, is he changing still?
The point of revelation is to change our understanding of God. The
point of incarnation is that it is complete revelation.
> I've begun to wonder if "liberal" Christianity may not capture more of
> this emphasis on individual freedom than a more orthodox form.
What constitutes freedom depends on what moral world you're in. The
moral world of liberal Christianity seems to tend toward the moral
world of liberalism, in which the good is whatever is desired. From
the standpoint of orthodox Christianity I think that constitutes
ignorance of the good, which is not liberating.
> How can we use "Occam's Razor" against secular ideologies and refrain
> from using it against religions?
It cuts every possible direction. On the other hand, one has to
consider how much one can cut away and still retain one's ability to
think and act coherently and rationally. One can do so after all only
in an adequate moral universe.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Sep 16 07:45:45 EDT 1998
Article: 12769 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Meaning of Clinton's disgrace
Date: 16 Sep 1998 07:37:53 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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amsmith9737@my-dejanews.com writes:
> But what if the system really is truly universal: then the internal
> and external barbarians lose forcefulness and conviction along with
> the rest. It may be that the world will end in a whimper after all.
> If this is the case, perhaps a way of life not so very different from
> "rejectionism" may be the fate of the system itself and the true
> rebels may be those who try to bring forth new energies -- which may
> even be more material and individualistic than spiritual.
>From this point of view I suppose I'm predicting that a universal
system will generate an "outside," and the "outside" will be the
interior of separatist communities. The reason that will happen is
that circumstances will give such communities enormous advantages if
they can exist at all. In my view material and individualistic
energies depend on a reasonably coherent spiritual setting, and it is
the latter that is being destroyed.
> what makes you think that the centifugal forces of society are
> necessarily stronger than the centripedal ones? Are you leaving
> homeostasis -- which I believe refers to the tendency of a system to
> maintain itself at a certain level and in a certain mode of
> functioning? And what of inertia?
Homeostasis and inertia mean the process will likely be slow. It took
300 years to get from John Locke to where we are now. On the other
hand, technology may accelerate events. The centrifugal forces of
course include the omnipresence and infinite diversification of
electronic communications and consumer society toys and diversions. I
don't see the centripetal forces capable of balancing that.
> I thought you had said that there need not have been a multiplicity
> of alternative communities and that one would be enough.
I was trying to find the bare minimum needed for my theory to work. In
fact, if there is one I would expect there to be many others. The
whole point of the theory is abandonment of the public, since the
public no longer exists, and turning inward. There is therefore no
overall principle of unity and no reason to expect unity in rejection.
> [Levantine or South Asian societies] have been generally passive
> steady-state societies, at least for several centuries. If we have
> no vitality that may be what we will get, but it's something I'd go a
> long way to avoid.
So what do you propose to do? The neocons, the communitarians and the
Christian Coalition all have ideas. Will you join one of them or will
you strike out on your own?
> Shades of Robert "The nation-state is finished" Bartley, the former
> WSJ editor!
Some say we are headed for "one world," others that "one world" can't
work. I strive for reason and compromise and agree with both. Life
will nonetheless go forward somehow, the difficulty is foreseeing just
how that will be. I present one possibility that seems persuasive to
me.
It's perfectly true that public order is more orderly than tribal
order. I prefer public order. On the other hand public order requires
extensive common moral understandings and commitments and I don't see
what will support those in the future. The European nation state is
becoming as utopian as the _polis_. It's worth noting that the nation
state was not born in tolerance, by the way. By the year 1500 the Jews
had been expelled from all European states on the Atlantic seaboard.
> It seems to be your idea that the multinational/transnational
> corporation will wither away. ...
It seems to me that the success of bureaucracy depends on common moral
understandings and commitments. The multinational corporation can not
exist in a vacuum. It depends on a common public moral order that it
is part of. If that disappears what then? Would a multinational with
Bill Clinton's cabinet as a top management team and the rest of the
company the same only stupider and less educated be successful?
> Intellectuals can make the most radical committment -- for about a
> week -- then they become the best backsliders (too rebellious, too
> cussedly contradictory, too vain and too eager for stimulation).
Augustine and Jerome were intellectuals. Intellectual life can't exist
in a vacuum either. It depends on common moral commitments experienced
as binding and indeed inevitable -- a.k.a. recognition of common goods
and a common moral order. You mentioned the death of high culture. I
don't expect Richard Rorty's philosophy to promote a second growth of
100 flowers. When it becomes possible to carry on coherent productive
intellectual life only within rejectionist communities and only at the
cost of acceptance of a particular discipline that's where the
intellectuals will be found.
> You've almost gotten me to prefer the active, "progressive",
> "dynamic" "Western' states to inert, enfeebled, sometimes panicky
> multicultural empires whose people have become so beaten down that
> they have lost all initiative.
Westerners prefer the West. Everything comes to an end though. One
point is that the inertia of a society in which life is carried on in
inward-turning groups is to a large extent an external appearance.
> Your thought is "very 1930's": A belief in a period of barbarism
> followed by the coming of a purified new order which will save
> civilization.
It's a belief in progressive barbarization to which the response will
be development of new forms that will enable somewhat civilized life to
continue. Not at all the same thing. If there's no or virtually no
public order how can there be a "purified new order" or a "saved
civilization"?
> It's not clear to me that those seeking internal "peace" and an
> escape from disorder might not choose Islam.
You seem to be approaching all this technologically. There's a
problem, I need a system of rules to get my life in order, what's the
most direct and efficient way to deal with it? Is the cost of some
proposal too high for me or other particular individuals? There's
something I want, to preserve Western Civ or whatever, what's the
theory that tells me how it's going to be done? To my mind it's more
sensible to approach things from the standpoint of the development and
relations of systems.
The problem Islam has as I see it is that (as you observe) it is not
well adapted to being a minority religion in a hostile environment, and
the effect of modern communications is to put all religions permanently
in that position, at least until there is only one worldwide religion,
a condition I believe impossible.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Sep 16 20:32:29 EDT 1998
Article: 12776 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Meaning of Clinton's disgrace
Date: 16 Sep 1998 20:32:23 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 14
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References: <6tna8t$lk1$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6to7uh$io6@panix.com> <6tp3du$muu$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
amsmith9737@my-dejanews.com writes:
> this does seem to be oversimplified.
It seemed to me some of your comments were not on what I wrote but on
other ideas you reject. I'm sure my comment on your comments failed to
hit the mark to at least the same extent. Very likely to a greater
extent, since what I said was admittedly not particularly thoughtful.
So my apologies if I mischaracterized your views.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Sep 17 18:27:09 EDT 1998
Article: 12777 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Meaning of Clinton's Disgrace
Date: 16 Sep 1998 20:34:26 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 19
Message-ID: <6tplei$us@panix.com>
References: <36003DA3.5BE0F1AA@msmisp.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.nfs100.access.net
X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
cjahnes@msmisp.com (Carl Jahnes) writes:
> You say, "To my mind, it is more sensible to approach things from the
> standpoint of the development and relation of systems."
> How is approaching it all as you say _not_ approaching understanding
> these things technologically?
I was contrasting (in my own thoughts, if not clearly in what I wrote)
an analysis aimed at achieving some end with one that tries to
understand how something works in abstraction from any end. It's true
I wasn't proposing an understanding that rises above mechanism and
efficient cause, but even efficient cause can be considered from a
theoretical rather than technological standpoint.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Thu Sep 17 03:51:25 1998
Subject: Re: your mail
To: d
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 03:51:25 -0400 (EDT)
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Status: RO
Thanks for your note. It does seem to me feminism has a lot in common
with communism. Both are forms of bureaucratized egalitarianism that
try to do away with human characteristics fundamental to every social
order. Both make public life a lie that must be maintained by force.
Since the United States is now a fully ideological state it's very hard
to get rid of though.
The interesting point is how it came to this. After all, we don't have
a secret police and "sexists" aren't jailed. I think the answer is a
combination of conformity, which is what you get in a society based on
contract and majority rule because "what people think" becomes the
highest authority, and the electronic media, which put public
discussion and political life in the hans of a very small class.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Fri Sep 18 06:54:39 1998
Subject: Re: your mail
To: d
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 06:54:39 -0400 (EDT)
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Status: RO
> When I talk to people about this, and explain in detail what it is
> that I despise about this whole thing, they always politely laugh and
> look away.
People don't want to get involved in something -- even a line of
thought -- that will put them at odds with the world around them. In
American in 1998 the world around us is mostly constructed by TV and by
big institutions that don't have a good way to deal with sex
differences because they're too complicated, too subtle, too
fundamental to talk about easily, and the feelings surrounding them are
too strong. What's wanted are people who are like good raw material
for an industrial process -- basically all the same, with a few
differences there are easy to grade, deal with and manipulate.
> Even if I can get the truth across to them, they say that things
> aren't so bad, no one's getting seriously hurt, and it'll all blow
> away.
Not true. The relations between the sexes in America are in terrible
shape. Look at divorce statistics, the number of people living alone
or shacking up temporarily, trends in child welfare. Anything that
seriously hurts anything as absolutely fundamental as the relations
between the sexes hurts a lot of people seriously. And it won't all
blow away because it's fundamental to the kind of society we are
becoming.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From jk Sun Sep 20 04:41:02 1998
Subject: Re: your mail
To: d
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 04:41:02 -0400 (EDT)
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24]
MIME-Version: 1.0
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> I like to point out that this country is based on the right of free
> speech.
It's a basic problem. In countries that have kings it always turns out
that there are a thousand things the king can't do. A lot depends on
what he does, so in spite of his formal power controls grow up that he
can't do much about but must give in to. So if you apply the same
principle to a country in which popular opinion rules it turns out that
popular opinion can not be allowed to be free. And if everyone is
equal that means private opinion can't be free either, since a single
man can't claim rights that aren't shared by everyone. Tocqueville
observed that in America there was less freedom of opinion than
anywhere else in the world.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Sep 22 04:44:22 EDT 1998
Article: 12782 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Last Post-pt1:paleoconservatism, nationalism
Date: 17 Sep 1998 22:18:40 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 41
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
amsmith9737@my-dejanews.com writes:
> All the same, I have to wonder how the "reactionaries" of a.r.c.
> react to the venom of snobbery.
If we're all involved in a common catastrophe I'm not sure snobbery is
an issue.
> By my lights, though, much of what I've seen here seems to be the
> product of overdetermined models, and of searching the distant
> horizon for the logically necessary and historically/structually
> inevitable results of such models, while lies closer to hand or in
> the middle distance.
I think it's useful to ask oneself what is most likely to happen and
develop that line of thought. It sharpens the issues and focuses the
mind. It produces something that can be criticized. It suggests what
the decisive issues are likely to be. It liberates one from the
consensus view, normally that changes will continue more or less in the
same direction as now but then will trail off because otherwise things
would go too far.
It's worth adding that so far as I know nobody really agrees with the
views I've been presenting. Everyone has his own concerns.
> Then again, speaking as someone who was surprised to find out that I
> was a _de_ _facto_ secularist, I may very well be finding out that I
> am in fact a "liberal" (though one of the oldest and most honorable
> variety) or a "pluralist".
There can't be many Americans who aren't all three. We don't know how
to be otherwise. On the other hand, one can step back and ask whether
that's going to have to change. To go back to the original question
quoted above, if you begin to wonder whether there's something
fundamentally wrong with what you have become it's hard to be a proper
snob.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Sep 24 08:16:23 EDT 1998
Article: 12808 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Presidents: The Best and the Worst
Date: 24 Sep 1998 08:14:52 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <6udd3s$17f@panix.com>
References: <6u8euq$kol$1@netnews.upenn.edu>
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In <6u8euq$kol$1@netnews.upenn.edu> "John Carney" writes:
>Do the rest of you a.r.c.ists have any nominations for the best and
>worst presidents?
Good question! One difficulty answering the question is what to make
of the United States Federal Government. It is now a messianic
ideological state based on hedonism, universalism and atomic
individualism. The _summum bonum_ is everyone gets whatever he happens
to want, and if you don't accept that as the s.b. you're a dangerous
bigot and something has to be done about you. To what extent was that
outcome implicit in the whole enterprise? To the extent it was, the
better the president from the standpoint of the institution he served
the worse.
I suppose it would be natural for an a.r.c.er to view as particularly
bad the presidents who have most forwarded the [transformation/
realization of the promise of] the United States, for example Lincoln,
who I think was the first explicitly to proclaim it an egalitarian
ideological state. To pick out the good presidents is harder, because
it requires a comprehensive analysis of events quite at odds with the
approaches generally accepted.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Sep 24 14:30:59 EDT 1998
Article: 12812 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Presidents: The Best and the Worst
Date: 24 Sep 1998 14:17:33 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 48
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In <360a6636.0@news.wworld.com> "Lord of Shadows & Sinners" writes:
>>The _summum bonum_ is everyone gets whatever he happens to want
>Not exactly true. The ideal is that everyone is free to make choices
>so long as those choices don't cause real harm to other people.
The distinction disappears if (1) "free to make choices" includes the
right to a social environment that doesn't burden those choices, with
social environment conceived as something that can be constructed
consciously and comprehensively, and (2) the "everyone gets" in the
first formulation is understood to mean that when there's a conflict it
is resolved on the basis of some combination of efficiency (i.e.
maximizing satisfactions) and equality. Then "free to make choices"
will pretty much mean "get what you want, to the extent it can be
arranged" and "real harm" will be a violation of the "everyone" in the
first formulation.
I think accepted thought generally satisfies (1), as demonstrated for
example by the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act by an
utterly lopsided margin on the apparent grounds that it's such a
morally wonderful piece of legislation, and also (2).
>The reality is that almost all the freedom we claim to have is a
>shadow.
I agree there's a big problem, that if the highest good is taken to be
people getting what they want then you'll end up in a situation in
which people don't at all get what they want. For one thing people
want a good that's better than the summation of all the particular
things that come to mind as things to want. That's why Americans today
say that everything particular (their own congressman or whatever) is
good but everything in general stinks. For another, "giving 'em what
they want" as the highest ideal means the rulers won't respect the
people and the people will have no interest in honor or sacrifice, all
of which makes freedom impossible.
>The presidents of the last 30 years have had more influence on the
>"dumbing down" of Americans, and their subversion, than all the rest
>combined.
I can't help but think of it as a matter of the overall situation
rather than the particular men in office.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Sep 27 18:07:04 EDT 1998
Article: 12832 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Presidents: The Best and the Worst
Date: 27 Sep 1998 04:31:36 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 64
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tonywf@my-dejanews.com writes:
> The expansion of the United States was a product of bigotry,
> particularly as that expansion concerns this continent's indigenous
> population and African slaves.
Don't understand. Are you saying that the United States would not have
expanded if the continent outside the U.S. had been absolutely
uninhabited, because the motive of bigotry would have been lacking?
That the growth of the U.S. was basically a matter of the spread of
slave society, so if there hadn't been slaves no one would have
bothered and we'd all still be east of the Alleghenies?
> I've always wondered how anyone from the paleo-conservative right
> could talk about the U.S. federal government as if it were
> administered by a bunch of multiculturalists. There was nothing
> individualistic about the feds' behavior at the Trail of Tears,
> Wounded Knee, or for that matter its treatment of Leonard Peltier.
You seem to overlook the matter of historical development. Paleos
generally view the U.S. federal government today as different from what
it was in earlier times. I myself stress continuities but recognize
that discussion is needed to show them. Certainly I've never heard a
paleo claim that multiculturalism was federal policy at the time of the
T of T. Also, your identification of multiculturalism with
individualism needs some discussion of its own. As the words are
usually used in American politics the two are rather at odds. MC
usually means that people get treated administratively in accordance
with category, individualism that they do not. As to Peltier, I know
very little about him. In any event, "multiculturalism" doesn't mean
justice and it's not a coherent goal so while his particular case might
prove something it seems unlikely to me.
> Lincoln opposed the inclusion of Texas in the American Union.
> Lincoln also opposed the Mexican-American War, which expanded the
> U.S. at the expense of about half of Mexico's land. Was Lincoln an
> egalitarian? By today's standards, no, he wasn't.
He was willing to abstain from territorial imperialism, it's true. He
was also a great centralizer, and reformulated the basis of American
public life on far more ideological grounds. That was my point. It's
not to be expected that the man who sets the course will follow it to
the point his successors reach 130 years later.
> What some call democracy was a historical land-grab by ethnic
> cleansing that cemented itself through the Anglo-Saxon economic model
> of laissez faire capitalism.
It seems odd to analyze one's own society wholly by reference to past
relations to thinly populated and poorly organized adjacent societies.
Also, where does current immigration and civil rights policy fit into
your Anglo-Saxon ethnic cleansing theory?
On a different but perhaps related issue: what is your view of the
expropriation of the estates of landed aristocrats by landless
peasants? Does it change things in favor of the aristocrats if there
are racial and cultural differences between the two? What is your
reason for thinking that the case of the American Indians and the far
more numerous European settlers is so radically different?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Sep 29 20:34:40 EDT 1998
Article: 12841 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Presidents: The Best and the Worst
Date: 29 Sep 1998 13:12:03 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 97
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In <6uk4b0$90s$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> tonywf@my-dejanews.com writes:
>Lincoln opposed the inclusion of Texas in the American Union. Lincoln
>also opposed the Mexican-American War, which expanded the U.S. at the
>expense of about half of Mexico's land.
I just noticed the following, from the San Francisco _Examiner_, and it
seemed relevant to the issues so I thought I'd post it. The author is
an open and notorious paleoconservative.
The point of the article seems to be that Mexico's claim to the
territories that are now the U.S. Southwest was more a bare legal claim
than anything else. As such, it was based on the Spanish claim to the
same territories. I'm not sure how much stock you'd put in the latter.
The various groups of Indians, I suppose, had more substantive claims
at the time, but since none of them were the aboriginal inhabitants of
the lands they occupied in 1848 or for that matter 1492 I'm not sure
why their claims should be thought better than the present United
States claim.
California, the Golden State, was not "stolen' from Mexico
MICHAEL WARDER Sept. 4, 1998
THIS LABOR Day weekend in Sacramento, California begins to celebrate
the Gold Rush and the drive to statehood. It will be a two-year
observance, leading up to the Sesquicentennial in the year 2000. The
weekend events will also usher in a statewide debate on the history of
the Golden State. Some Chicano activists will allege that the U.S.
"stole" the Southwest, including California, from Mexico. A reasonable
look at the history gives lie to these assertions.
California statehood really began with the 1848 Treaty of
Guadalupe-Hidalgo signed by the U.S. and Mexico. By this act, America
increased its territory by two-thirds, including California and the
land of six other Southwestern states, while Mexico was cut in half. In
the history of our two countries, this surprisingly little-known treaty
is a staggering event.
Despite the huge amount of territory involved in the treaty, only about
80,000 Mexicans lived in the whole Southwest. Furthermore, Mexico
exercised little control over the territory. It was a country in
turmoil. From 1821, the end of Spanish rule, through 1847, Mexico
endured 50 military regimes, five constitutional conventions, three
constitutions and most of the 11 different terms of leadership under
the tragic president and general, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.
In addition to the political instability, the racial and ethnic
cleavages in the Mexico of this era are important to understand. When
Santa Anna ended his last term in 1854, it marked the end of the rule
of the conquistadors' descendants, those of Spanish descent born in
what was then called New Spain. Called criollos, this group ruled
Mexico after the overthrow of Spain in 1821. Prior to that, from 1521,
Spaniards ruled directly under the authority of the crown.
The Spanish language and Catholic faith, perpetuated by the Spaniards
and criollos, prevailed by conquest over the various Indian dialects
and religions. The revolution in Mexico that began in 1810 was against
Spain. It was led by the criollos with strong support from the Indians
and the growing numbers of mestizos, those Mexicans of mixed Spanish
and Indian ancestry. Their battle cry was "Death to the Spaniards! Long
live the Virgin of Guadalupe!" It was not "Yankee go home!" nor an
Aztec war cry.
The immediate cause for the Mexican-American War was a $3 million debt
to America for damages done by Mexicans to Americans. The government of
Mexico had agreed to pay, but was repeatedly in default. The American
annexation of Texas in 1845, independent of Mexico since 1836, and the
related Texas border disputes, were additional causes. But perhaps the
real motivator was America's desire for California. The Mexican
government spurned a cash offer of $25 million. President James Polk
and others believed that if the U.S. did not acquire California, Great
Britain or others might, since Mexico was unable to govern it.
Mexico drew first blood in an attack on American troops in disputed
territory in Texas and the war was on. Less than two years later,
American troops entered Mexico City and the treaty was signed. Despite
winning the war, America paid $18 million for the territory. The U.S.
also lost 13,000 lives, largely due to disease. And the rest, as they
say, is history.
Our constitutional democracy, the rule of law, private property rights,
freedom of religion, and the other characteristics of American
government have been enormously appealing to our neighbors to the
South. Over the past 150 years, the moral and legal authority of the
U.S. to govern the acquired territory is, by any reasonable measure,
unassailable. The treaty was, on balance, a good one for all concerned.
Californians should be proud of their history and the creation of a
place that so many have found so attractive.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry
interests -- in one word, so anti-poetic -- as the life of a man in the
United States." (Tocqueville)
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