From jk Fri Dec 4 10:56:33 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,alt.politics.homosexuality Subject: Re: Mikhail on the theory that sex is icky Distribution: world References: <1992Nov30.213628.17940@husc3.harvard.edu><1992Dec1.165353.17982@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Dec3.170200.7181@sun0.urz.uni-heidelberg.de> In <1992Dec3.170200.7181@sun0.urz.uni-heidelberg.de> gsmith@lauren.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de (Gene W. Smith) writes: >I think Kant is especially interesting here. What Kant didn't like >about sex was that it involves taking someone else as not being an end >in themselves, but merely as a means for pleasure. Now, supposing >that you accept this as a valid argument, how do you get around it >when you need to? >The answer is sex in a relationship. If we have a relationship where >each person gives themselves to another in a non-exploitative way, >then we are not making the other person into something other than an >end in themselves. Can you tell me where Kant develops this argument? I find it interesting without feeling I understand it. One possibility that occurs to me is that in order to avoid mutual exploitation ("I'll let you use me as a means to your pleasure if you do the same") it is helpful for the relationship to have an objective purpose beyond the relationship itself. The connection to having children would provide such a purpose. > Gene Ward Smith/Brahms Gang/IWR/Ruprecht-Karls University Out of curiosity, what is the Brahms Gang? (I think I've seen it in other .sigs as well.) From jk Fri Dec 4 11:13:08 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.feminism Subject: Re: What's Innate and What Ain't and So On (was: Re: Entry level salar Distribution: world References: <92335.195549RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> <1992Dec1.055156.10900@netcom.com> <1992Dec3.182502.21490@s1.gov> In <1992Dec3.182502.21490@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes: >". . . Surveying the worldwide distribution of matrilineal >horticultural populations, David Aberle (1961) found them generally >located outside of, or bordering, forested areas, and in areas >where large domesticated animal were absent. In the ecological >niches of matrilineal-uxorilocal systems, population pressure on >strategic resources is minimal. Warfare is infrequent or totally >absent, as are its psychological and social results - aggression, >competition, strong differentiation between public and private, >devaluation o women, and female infanticide. . . Why do women enjoy >high status in matrilineal, uxorilocal societies? Descent-group >membership, succession to political positions, allocation of land, >and overall social identity are all based on links through females. >Women thus become the focus of the entire social structure. >Although positions of public authority may be assigned to older >males, actual power an decision making may be concentrated in the >hands of senior women." This is quite interesting. It seems to show that societies in which women tend to become the focus of the social structure are societies in which there is no need to take decisive collective action on serious issues (no population pressure on resources, no warfare). In such societies the differentiation between public and private is weak, apparently because the central functions of the public sphere (defense of the society and arbitration of competing claims to scarce resources) aren't much needed. Even in such societies, however, formal public authority is in men's hands To me, this passage is a striking confirmation of the claim that in all societies the public sphere is predominantly masculine and the domestic sphere predominantly feminine. In a society in which there aren't many problems that can't be dealt with within the domestic sphere, women play a more central role in what goes on than elsewhere. However, the vestigial remnant of the public sphere -- formal political authority -- remains in men's hands. From jk Sun Dec 6 20:40:19 1992 From: jk To: payner@netcom.com Subject: Re: Sex vs procreation, was (Re: Repression and Pornography) Newsgroups: alt.feminism,alt.sex References: <1992Dec2.230627.17511@panix.com> <1992Dec4.154108.4311@netcom.com> <1992Dec5.153055.1378@panix.com> <1992Dec6.184709.12481@netcom.com> In alt.feminism you write: >Generally, we have a desire for sex -without- procreation. >Obviously, sometimes children are desired, but these times seem to be >the exception rather than the rule. Some people are troubled by the idea of sex completely divorced from procreation. I suppose the question is whether such people have archaic hangups, or whether those who aren't troubled have been lobotomized. I have more sympathy with the former group, but haven't worked out a position well enough to post one of my usual 150-line rants on the subject. >Were the cultures studied all contemporary, or were historical cultures >studied as well? I believe contemporary -- the study was done by anthropologists rather than historians. From literary sources it seems clear to me that romantic love existed in ancient Greece and ancient China, for example. >I do appreciate the input, it has been years since I read about this. Do take a look at the _Times_ article if there is a library near you which would have it. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Rem tene; verba sequentur." (Cato) From jk Sun Dec 6 20:45:08 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.feminism Subject: Re: Separate but Equal? Distribution: world References: <1992Dec3.154309.17785@midway.uchicago.edu> <1992Dec3.230115.21360@panix.com> <1992Dec4.175522.29878@midway.uchicago.edu> <1992Dec6.191621.15347@netcom.com> In article <1992Dec4.175522.29878@midway.uchicago.edu> mec6@midway.uchicago.edu writes: >Can we say that the >burdens and advantages of being a housewife are "roughly equivalent" >to the burdens and advantages of being the primary breadwinner? How >do we measure that? Who's going to measure it? If there's no way to compare the relative burdens and advantages of the two, then neither sex has grounds to complain about unfairness if one is expected to fill one role and the other is expected to fill the other. From jk Mon Dec 7 10:06:17 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.feminism,soc.women,soc.men Subject: Re: Gender differences - Sophie Germain Distribution: world References: <92341.150659RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> <92341.201123RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> In quilty@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Humberto Humbertoldi) writes: >NORMAL evidence for >a conclusion ALWAYS involves controlling for conflating variables. If this were true, there would be very few conclusions about human beings or human society that we could legitimately draw. We need to draw such conclusions in order to act at all in (for example) politics. Is it your view that there is no such thing as political rationality? From jk Mon Dec 7 10:11:59 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: soc.women,alt.feminism,soc.men Subject: Re: Entry level salaries (was: Re: Elle MacPherson causes rape?) Distribution: world References: <1992Nov24.031056.7566@lynx.dac.northeastern.edu> <1992Nov24.175617.1801@netcom.com> <1992Nov24.224539.5053@ils.nwu.edu> <1992Dec6.223912.28141@serval.net.wsu.edu> In <1992Dec6.223912.28141@serval.net.wsu.edu> joerd@wsuaix.csc.wsu.edu (Wayne Joerding - Economics;S20000) writes: >And, I hope that the activities of building house >and such gave her the same type of experience at spacial visualization, >cause and effect, and other skill important for science and engineering. Did you feel it was more important to develop in your daughter the skills important for science and engineering than other capacities (for example, her esthetic sense and social skills)? If so, why? From jk Mon Dec 7 10:20:35 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.feminism Subject: Re: Separate but Equal? Distribution: world References: <1992Dec4.175522.29878@midway.uchicago.edu> <1992Dec6.191621.15347@netcom.com> <1992Dec7.014514.9789@panix.com> <1992Dec7.034038.1587@midway.uchicago.edu> In <1992Dec7.034038.1587@midway.uchicago.edu> mec6@quads.uchicago.edu (rini) writes: >jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes: >>If there's no way to compare the relative burdens and advantages of >>[sex roles], then neither sex has grounds to complain about unfairness if >>one is expected to fill one role and the other is expected to fill the >>other. >Except for the general unfairness of having arbitrary expectations at all. The issue, then, is whether sex roles are arbitrary, or whether they are justified because they make life better for most people. From jk Mon Dec 7 10:36:47 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.feminism Subject: Re: Separate but Equal? Distribution: world References: <1992Dec4.175522.29878@midway.uchicago.edu> <1992Dec6.191621.15347@netcom.com> <1992Dec7.014514.9789@panix.com> In quilty@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Humberto Humbertoldi) writes: > It's not hard to compare these things at all. Just look at >relative numbers of hours worked by "housewifes" versus >"breadwinners". Just look at distribution of real disposible income. >Just look at poverty and malnutrition rates. In all of these >"breadwinners" are clearly favored in standard of living. My understanding is that the disparity in hours worked is even worse in the case of two-income couples. On the other points, you seem to be comparing men and women generally rather than husbands and wives living in households in which one is the breadwinner and the other the housewife. In the latter situation it seems unlikely, at least in a Western society, that (for example) the housewife would be malnourished but not the breadwinner. >None of this is particularly very hard, >in principle, to examine. For a very good series of articles on the >subject, see Zillah Eisenstein (ed), _Capitalist Patriarchy and the >Case for Socialist Feminism_. Thank you for the reference. This spring I hope to have more time to devote to these issues, and take a look at the ZE book then. It seems to me that there are often serious difficulties in principle in comparing the pleasures and pains of differing kinds of lives, such as the life led by a breadwinner and that lead by a housewife. Attempts to do so are of considerable interest, though. From jk Tue Dec 8 10:42:06 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.feminism Subject: Re: sex-role stereotypes (was Re: Challenge to Robert Sheaffer) Distribution: world References: <1992Dec5.110306.21929@panix.com> <1992Dec5.174329.9418@midway.uchicago.edu> <1992Dec6.031104.27555@panix.com> <1992Dec6.054709.2326@panix.com> <92341.074953RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> In <92341.074953RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> writes: >Could someone tell me what stereotypes ARE? I understand the word to relate to the collection of expectations that people generally have regarding persons or things of a particular kind (office parties, lumberjacks, children, French restaurants, men) that don't necessarily correspond to the actual characteristics of each individual of the kind. From jk Tue Dec 8 16:31:20 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.feminism Subject: Re: sex-role stereotypes (was Re: Challenge to Robert Sheaffer) Distribution: world References: <1992Dec5.110306.21929@panix.com> <1992Dec5.174329.9418@midway.uchicago.edu> <1992Dec6.031104.27555@panix.com> Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes: >[T]here are many people who don't want to live the lives prescribed by >[traditional sex-role] stereotypes; and such people are going to be >desperately unhappy if they are forced into stereotypical roles. This >resentment, and lack of flexibility within a society, makes that society >more brittle and less able to adapt to changing circumstances (e.g. >technological impacts on working patterns). Thus, even if the >stereotypes you advocate were widely and strongly held, there would be >movements against them; and feminism (for example) would be reinvented. >If you try to force it to go away, you'll end up with the kind of anger >that was present when women were trying to get the vote; and either the >stereotypes will start breaking down, or you'll have a repressive >society. This sort of thing is difficult to predict. Whether sex-role stereotypes exist or not, there will be social role stereotypes that people will be expected to conform to that fit some people's inclinations far more than others'. If role stereotypes are weak society may be more flexible in some respects, but it may be less efficient in others (the weakening of the stereotype that people should earn their own living and look after themselves and their families is an example). In addition, the weaker or the more abstract role stereotypes are the more people there will be who don't know what they're up to, and such people create problems of their own. So no matter what the situation is with regard to sex and other role stereotypes, there will be problems and some people will be desperately unhappy. The issue you raise is which sets of problems would permit social stability without tyranny. Here I think that it is important how people understand their problems. If people believe that their problems are caused by the doings of other people that could be changed by political action, society is likely to be unstable. If they believe that their problems are caused by people they know personally or by things that are part of the natural order they are less likely to revolt. So to me it seems more workable politically to base social duties (that's another term for role stereotypes) on traditional family relations than on overtly political things like those that make up the modern welfare state. As to how to get there from here -- the obligations that people accept as legitimate depend greatly on their general understanding of the world. Feminism didn't appear in an ideological vacuum. It required a lot of consciousness-raising, and feminists sometimes look back at previous waves of feminism that eventually receded and worry about backsliders among the younger generation today. So there is some prospect that what consciousness raising has done further consciousness raising could undo. To the extent anti-feminists are able to persuade people that there are natural differences between the sexes and that our society will be happier if like previous societies it accepts and builds on those differences, people's views as to what is acceptable could change. From jk Wed Dec 9 16:57:54 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.feminism,soc.women,soc.men Subject: Re: Sophie Germain - Gender Differences Distribution: world References: <92343.182407RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> Why shouldn't I get off-topic like everyone else? In quilty@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Humberto Humbertoldi) writes: >I know perfectly well -- as I see do you -- that hardly any >interesting intellectual achievement originated in Europe. This is true in the sense that since everything that happens can always be attributed to earlier developments elsewhere, nothing has originated anywhere since the Big Bang. >You don't >specifically mention the Arabs in the above -- but why not mention >here that nearly the whole "European" tradition of Philosophy and >Literature would have completely died in the "middle" ages had it not >been for the preservation and elaboration of the thought of >mediterranean antiquity by the Arabs. What do the Arabs have to do with the preservation of the European tradition of literature? I never heard that they had any particular interest in Virgil, for example. As to philosophy, the European philosophers of the Middle Ages certainly owed a great deal to Arab writers but not enough to explain your "completely died" remark. For example, we don't owe the texts we now have of the Greek philosophers to the Arabs. (We might have had to wait longer for some of them if the Turks hadn't taken Constantinople, so maybe the Turks contributed to European philosophy in that sense.) > And obviously, EVERYTHING >interesting originated in China, and what little didn't start there >came from India. Is this comment meant seriously? From jk Wed Dec 9 17:20:13 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.feminism Subject: Re: why poor women are obese Distribution: usa References: <1992Dec9.165938.15284@cs.cornell.edu> I've decide to go on an off-topic binge. In <1992Dec9.165938.15284@cs.cornell.edu> jean@cs.cornell.edu (Jean M. Petrosino) writes: >Check out the politics that surround this issue--it is more expensive it eat >properly, and to know how to eat properly. I'd suggest that anyone interested in this issue go to a food store that a lot of poor people patronize and see what's sold there. My own experience is that such stores tend to sell more junk food (beer, soda, corn curls, Slim Jims) and less cheap-but-nourishing food (gallon containers of milk, 20-pound sacks of potatoes, cabbages) than I would have expected. I'm not sure why knowing how to eat properly should be expensive. In America in 1992, information is the cheapest thing there is. In addition, most traditional diets that I know of seem nourishing enough. Does anyone know of any studies of diet and nutrition by social and economic class? From jk Thu Dec 10 16:21:32 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.feminism Subject: Re: Mysogynist Bullshit Distribution: usa References: <1992Dec10.142534.16313@cs.cornell.edu> In <1992Dec10.142534.16313@cs.cornell.edu> jean@cs.cornell.edu (Jean M. Petrosino) writes: >And >by the way, can any of you men tell me why high heels are considered so >attractive? Why not ask the people who buy them and wear them? From jk Fri Dec 11 06:41:44 1992 From: jk To: mec6@midway.uchicago.edu Subject: Re: Separate but Equal? Newsgroups: alt.feminism References: <1992Dec8.110927.27573@panix.com> <1992Dec10.193817.18786@panix.com> <1992Dec10.234129.27323@midway.uchicago.edu> In alt.feminism you write: >>They would be assigned to women because they would be the only roles >>that would exist. >That's what I call a "leap of logic." You deleted the language immediately following, that filled in the leap. Why? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Rem tene; verba sequentur." (Cato) From jk Fri Dec 11 11:21:32 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.feminism Subject: Re: Separate but Equal? Distribution: world References: <1992Dec8.110927.27573@panix.com> <1992Dec10.193817.18786@panix.com> In muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes: >[I]f there is only one set of roles, and they are assigned to >everyone, then there would be no "unfairness" towards people because of >their sex, yes? That's certainly my view of it. I would be quite happy >if our society simply said "these roles need to be fulfilled, and >everyone is required to try to make sure they are." A couple of possibilities: 1. Suppose there really are innate differences between men and women, so that most men are now and always will be better suited for the traditional male role and most women for the traditional female role. Now suppose a society abolished the traditional female role and provided that the functions formerly performed by wives and mothers would be carried out by functionally rational hierarchical organizations of the sort men tend to act through. (For example, childcare would be provided by daycare centers rather than by Mom, who would be a fulltime paid worker like everyone else.) Then it would make sense to say that the society is unfair to women because of their sex, because the roles established by the society don't give most women the opportunity to make use of their special capacities. (Compare Plato's _Republic_, in which male and female Guardians had the same role -- war, government and philosophy -- but the men were usually better at it; contrast the matrilineal societies Loren Petrich recently mentioned, in which women are more prominent than in most societies because there is very little need for the activities belonging to the public sphere.) 2. Suppose most men and most women would be happiest in a society that had appropriately-defined sex roles, but some would not. Then a society with no sex roles would be unfair to the majority with respect to sex roles, because it would sacrifice the interests of the majority in favor of that of a minority. From jk Fri Dec 11 11:31:10 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.feminism Subject: Re: Women in Mathematics: One Final Thought Distribution: world References: <1992Dec10.003006.2661@netcom.com> <1992Dec10.234736.9523@netcom.com> <1992Dec11.043431.4423@midway.uchicago.edu> In <1992Dec11.043431.4423@midway.uchicago.edu> mec6@quads.uchicago.edu (rini) writes: >So, let's see: from [Sheaffer's] argument (I only changed a couple of nouns >here) smart boys who study hard in school should expect to be failures >in the job market, right? I think his point is that the job market looks for whatever it looks for, so smart boys who study hard but find they don't succeed as much as oafs have no particular grounds for complaint. There may be important things that oafs are better at than smart and studious boys. Of course, if the smart boys do succeed, that's OK too. From jk Mon Dec 14 15:22:21 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: panix.chat Subject: Re: Still have to pay NY taxes for items bought in NJ? Distribution: panix References: <1992Dec14.183836.2881@panix.com> In <1992Dec14.183836.2881@panix.com> smeyer@panix.com (Seth Meyer) writes: >What's this about NY residents buying in NJ to avoid 2.25% extra >taxes, having to pay NY taxes as well? I've even heard stories of NY >tax collectors writing down NY liscence plates seen in NJ parking >lots! NY imposes something called a "use tax" that requires people who buy a thing outside of NY and then bring it into the state to pay a tax equal to the difference between the sales tax they paid where they bought it and the higher sales tax NY would have imposed. The tax is pretty generally ignored by consumers except in the case of automobiles, where the registration procedure gives the state a convenient means of enforcing it. Every once in a while the state is able to enforce it, though. I once knew someone who bought an antique through a Connecticut dealer who had to pay the tax because the dealer's ex-wife gave the New York authorities the dealer's customer list. >What about us Jersey people who have bought items in NY? Are we >entitled to get money back from the state of NY? No such luck, at least if you take possession of the item in NY. If you buy it in NY but have them ship it to you in NJ you don't have to pay NY sales tax. You would be legally required to pay NJ use tax, but there's no good way for NJ to enforce the liability and very few people would pay it. From jk Tue Dec 22 19:59:56 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.feminism,sci.skeptic,soc.women,soc.men Subject: Re: Dr. Goldberg Replies to "Patriarchy" Debate Distribution: world References: <1992Dec14.202915.12466@s1.gov> <8w56VB1w164w@cellar.org> <1992Dec22.191603.5991@s1.gov> In <1992Dec22.191603.5991@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes: >[Brian Siano's research: matters are a lot more complicated than one >sex ruling the other . . . Does this observation apply to feminist claims as well as to criticisms of feminism? From jk Wed Dec 23 17:31:10 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: rec.arts.books Subject: Re: Cultural Appropriation and the New Age Distribution: world References: <1h69a2INNjqr@flop.ENGR.ORST.EDU> In <1h69a2INNjqr@flop.ENGR.ORST.EDU> irwinke@storm.CS.ORST.EDU (Keith Irwin) writes: >I'd like to know what people think about New Agers (ie, Europeans and >Euroamericans) appropriating the spirituality of various indiginous and >small scale cultures. What does it mean to appropriate someone's spirituality? Is there only a limited amount to go around? From jk Wed Dec 23 21:35:33 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: rec.arts.books Subject: Re: Cultural Appropriation and the New Age Distribution: world References: <18844@mindlink.bc.ca> <1992Dec23.192222.10975@netcom.com> In <1992Dec23.192222.10975@netcom.com> tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox) writes: > In yuppie shops in Berkeley, you will find "primitive" artwork from >Central America, Armenia, and Asia, much of it straightforwardly part of the >religious practice of the people who made it (this includes paintings on >leather, cement statuary, tapestries, various icons, etc.). > The work is usually divorced entirely from its original context and >is in fact being offered for the esthetic pleasure of the urban dweller with >(often significant) disposable income. The same thing is true of most of the things you see in museums, at least the objects made before modern times. Does that bother you as well? From jk Thu Dec 24 03:16:44 1992 From: jk To: help@anon.penet.fi Subject: Curious How does the anon service work and how can I use it? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Rem tene; verba sequentur." (Cato) From jk Thu Dec 24 07:30:34 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory Subject: Re: Communitarianism & Body Parts Distribution: world References: <1992Dec24.060446.7642@ncar.ucar.edu> <1992Dec24.071450.12320@ncar.ucar.edu> In <1992Dec24.071450.12320@ncar.ucar.edu> gary@isis.cgd.ucar.edu (Gary Strand) writes: > "People should come to see organ donation `as a social duty, as an act on > behalf of our fellows and the community...that is to be routinely expected' > and that would reduce `the wastage of a precious human resource,' said > the Communitarian Network." > [source _Boston Globe_, p. 17, 22 December 1992] Does this necessarily mean that the writer thinks it should be compulsory? There are lots of things that I view as "social dut[ies] . . . to be routinely expected" that I don't think should be legally required. (Examples -- common courtesy, helping out at the scene of accidents, public service in general.) From jk Thu Dec 31 15:36:13 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Re: SF + PC Distribution: world References: <1homreINN4si@agate.berkeley.edu> <1992Dec30.125203.17331@panix.com> In msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris) writes: >I think Pound >liked Sappho and the Confucian Odes. I think Pound was a knowledgeable >critic and great artist in his own right. So, this means that I weigh his >expertise highly. I suspect he found something commonly poetic about >Sappho and the Shih King. If there are other experts who are >as widely read as Pound who think the same (an example might be Kenneth >Rexroth), then I would say that there is something quite objectively >beautiful which is common to Sappho's poetry and to the Shih King. >Whether this beauty is transcendent or not, or universal (recognizable, >say, to poets of all thinkable schools of poetry), is another question. You say that Pound was "knowledgeable" and a "great artist" with "expertise" that you weigh highly. You also speak of something being objectively "beautiful". Does it make sense to speak that way if the poetic merit of a work consists solely in the likelihood that a member of a particular community that devotes a lot of time and attention to poetry would praise it? (I take it that would be the alternative to saying that poetic merit is something that transcends the judgements of any reader or group of readers.) Possibly your point is that Pound had knowledge and expertise regarding the standards of the community he identified with, and produced works that were good by those standards. If so, I don't see why anyone who doesn't happen to belong to that community should care, unless he (i) is an anthropologist, or (ii) believes that the community in question possesses an understanding of poetic merit that goes beyond its own arbitrary standards. I realize your chief goal was to argue against the idea that poetic merit can only be a matter of subjective judgement. It seems to me that pointing out that it might be a matter of arbitrary community standards instead isn't that much of an advance. Maybe I'm being overly touchy, though. From jk Thu Dec 31 15:39:51 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.books Subject: Re: SF + PC Distribution: world References: <18974@mindlink.bc.ca> <1homreINN4si@agate.berkeley.edu> <1992Dec31.080324.10336@netcom.com> In <1992Dec31.080324.10336@netcom.com> tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox) writes: > Of course it's circular. You must terminate your explanatory >regress by something other than an appeal to authority if your explanation >is to have any weight at all. Do you think claims as to poetic merit are more circular than other claims? If so, what are some examples of non-circular claims? From jk Thu Dec 31 19:41:49 1992 From: jk Newsgroups: rec.arts.books Subject: Re: Homeschooling (was Re: Education and the Environment by Gregory A. Smith) Distribution: world References: <1992Dec31.152903.25127@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> <31DEC92.17162343@vax.clarku.edu> <1hvedcINNdg4@agate.berkeley.edu> In <1hvedcINNdg4@agate.berkeley.edu> spp@zabriskie.berkeley.edu (Steve Pope) writes: >And what really bugs me is that the people who are killing >public education by pulling their kids out of public >schools have the audacity to blame the problem on >"liberal educators with their social agendas" and >other imagined demons. Your view that it is the parents who are pulling their children out of public school who are causing problems with public education is surprising. Parents who don't want to rely on the public schools have the choice of private schools, which are enormously expensive, or homeschooling, which is enormously time-consuming. Do you think parents would be making those choices unless they thought they had very good reasons? The problem with public schools is not too little financial support -- from 1960 to 1980 constant-dollar expenditures per pupil doubled (source: National Center for Educational Statistics, _Digest of Educational Statistics: 1983-1984). So it appears to be the way the resources are being used that is at fault. If that's right, the view that professional educators may be among the ones creating the problems may be less of a fantasy than you seem to think. From jk Wed Jan 6 04:44:40 1993 From: jk To: rcrowley@donne.zso.dec.com Subject: Re: Homeschooling Newsgroups: rec.arts.books References: <1i2sbaINNd2j@shelley.u.washington.edu> <1993Jan4.203556.7692@ninja.zso.dec.com> B.A. Botkin compiled _A Treasure of American Folklore_, published in 1944 with a forward by Carl Sandburg. It's since been republished -- my copy was printed in 1983 by Bonanza Books. It's about 900 pages long. I think he also published collections of the folklore of New England, of the South, and so on, all in similar formats and with the same publishers. I've also seen those reprinted. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago." (Hazlitt") From jk Wed Jan 6 14:41:03 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: panix.upgrade Subject: Re: Ksh users and the Sun- READ THIS if you use ksh References: <1993Jan5.145752.11566@panix.com> In <1993Jan5.145752.11566@panix.com> alexis@panix.com (Alexis Rosen) writes: >ps- to make bash your login shell, just type "chsh mylogin bash" at the >shell prompt. "mylogin" is your user id. Do you have to do anything to your startup files? I have a bunch of aliases in my .kshrc file that bash ignores even when I rename it the .bashrc file. From jk Wed Jan 6 20:32:14 1993 From: jk To: jhawk@panix.com Subject: Re: Ksh users and the Sun- READ THIS if you use ksh Newsgroups: panix.upgrade References: <1993Jan5.145752.11566@panix.com> .bash_profile with a source .bashrc worked perfectly. Thanks for the advice. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn." (Montaigne) From jk Thu Jan 7 10:09:49 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: This Group There has been no traffic on this group at my site for the past several days. Does that show that the participants have chosen silence as their weapon in the struggle against modernity, or does the explanation lie deeper? From jk Fri Jan 8 12:51:16 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: apparently a dilemma References: <1993Jan8.062824.12094@news.vanderbilt.edu> In <1993Jan8.062824.12094@news.vanderbilt.edu> rickertj@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu (John Rickert) writes: > Being a (Burkean) conservative, I am opposed to revolution. On the >other hand, things seem to be approaching a condition in which revolution >appears to be the only available recourse, given my deeper beliefs. More >specifically, I have little hope in the culture in the United States today, >and it appears to have taken hold so tenaciously that the usual means will >not be of much avail. What sort of revolution do you have in mind? Surely not the extralegal seizure of power by an armed Burkean elite, followed by the forcible implementation of their political and social program. Pascal's comment that tyranny is the attempt to get in one way what can only be gotten in another is very much in point on that idea. If don't like the way of life you see around you, my suggestion is that you and likeminded people develop a better way of life. It's still possible in this country as a legal and practical matter to live differently from the majority (consider the Mennonites, the Hasids or the New York homosexual community). If your beliefs about how people should live are valid, doing so would benefit you and your family and friends immediately; it also might possibly work as a way of beginning a general reform of culture, which political revolution clearly would not. Maybe your point, though, is that a radical break with your society (for example, choosing to associate mostly with people who disagree with the goals that are publicly accepted as authoritative, cutting your connections with big organizations, homeschooling your children, or whatever) seems somehow unBurkean. It's certainly not what Burke would have considered ideal, since he thought that man was a social animal and he didn't like ideological factions. On the other hand, he took facts very seriously and recognized that necessity can sometimes justify revolution of one kind or another. For Burke, I think, society is the condition of achieving the goal of human nature but it is not the goal itself and it does not create the goal. So I suppose my advice is to cheer up and join with other people in living as well as you can under the conditions you have to deal with. "Living well" may include politics, but in matters of culture it is not primarily politics. From jk Fri Jan 8 17:34:54 1993 From: jk To: mail-server@cs.ruu.nl Subject: Index >From comp.sys.atari.st Fri Jan 8 11:40:40 1993 >Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st >Path: panix!cmcl2!yale.edu!spool.mu.edu!uunet!mcsun!sun4nl!ruuinf!atari >From: atari@cs.ruu.nl (Atari-ST Software) >Subject: Re: Editor??? >Sender: network-news@cs.ruu.nl >Message-ID: <1993Jan8.104611.6336@cs.ruu.nl> >Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 10:46:11 GMT >References: <1993Jan7.142811.20499@fwi.uva.nl> <1993Jan7.211440.6408@newshost.lanl.gov> <1993Jan7.215054.29914@csi.uottawa.ca> >Organization: Utrecht University, Dept. of Computer Science >Lines: 79 In <1993Jan7.215054.29914@csi.uottawa.ca> cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne) writes: >>In article 20499@fwi.uva.nl, storm@fwi.uva.nl (Richard G.C. Storm (I89)) > >For PD stuff, there's lots of stuff out there: > >Emacs clones >vi clones >origami (a "folding" editor - before I got Sudden View, I used > Origami. It is pretty nice.) >Alice - a German editor, very similar to STeno (the GEM Desk > Accessory). I probably should upload a copy... > >Check on atari.archive.umich.edu, in /atari/Editors. There's got to >be something there that you'll like. Also available in The Netherlands! ________________________________________________________________________ We, Computer Science department, Utrecht University, are running an anonymous FTP server on one of our systems. In addition to the FTP service we're also running a mail server, for those of you without direct Internet access. --> How to get 'EDITOR-INDEX' via anonymous FTP: Site: ftp.cs.ruu.nl [131.211.80.17] Login: "anonymous" or "ftp" Password: your own email address (you@your_domain) file: /pub/ATARI-ST/editors/INDEX --> How to get 'EDITOR-INDEX' via e-mail from our mail-server: NOTE: In the following I have assumed that your mail address is "fred_flintstone@stone.age.edu"; of course you must substitute your own address for this. | Please use a VALID DOMAIN ADDRESS. | Use 'hip!hop!user' if you must. | Never use an address which has both '!' and '@' in it. | Bitnetters use user@host.bitnet Send the following message to mail-server@cs.ruu.nl or the old-fashioned path alternative uunet!mcsun!sun4nl!ruuinf!mail-server begin path fred_flintstone@stone.age.edu (SUBSTITUTE _YOUR_ ADDRESS) send ATARI-ST/editors/INDEX end The path command can be deleted if we receive a valid from address in your message. If this is the first time you use our mail server, we suggest you first issue the request: send HELP A complete "ls-lR" listing of the archive is kept in the top-level directory, it will be updated every night. To get it, issue the command: send ls-lR.Z That's all for now. If you encounter problems using the FTP service and/or the mail-server, feel free to drop me a line (by e-mail, please). Regards, - Ate - -- Ate Brink, Systems Administrator Moderator of the Atari archive at the Utrecht University (ftp.cs.ruu.nl) Email: ate@cs.ruu.nl atari@cs.ruu.nl Use this if you want to upload a program to the archive From jk Fri Jan 8 17:38:24 1993 From: jk To: mail-server@cs.ruu.nl Subject: Indices begin path jk@panix.com send ATARI-ST/editors/INDEX send ls-lR.Z end From jk Sat Jan 9 10:22:56 1993 From: jk To: s1mbm@isuvax.iastate.edu Subject: Re: Dickinson (was Re: Paglia) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books References: <6JAN93.16594170@vax.clarku.edu> <1if7vvINNds8@aludra.usc.edu> ,<1993Jan8.183017.23003@ecrc.de> The poem you quoted is one of my favorites too. It's hard to make converts by argument, though. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn." (Montaigne) From jk Sat Jan 9 20:57:48 1993 From: jk To: rickertj@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu Subject: Re: apparently a dilemma Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter References: <1993Jan8.062824.12094@news.vanderbilt.edu> <1993Jan8.175345.26614@panix.com> <1993Jan9.065659.28424@news.vanderbilt.edu> In alt.revolution.counter you write: >If I could make an excuse, which is something >generally to be avoided, I would say that it was pretty late at night when >I made the post, and now it is not so clear to me what prompted it. It didn't seem all that unclear to me I read it. One motive for being a conservative is the thought that the world goes beyond anything any of us can figure out, so it's necessary for a good life to take advantage of the knowledge implicit in social usages and habits that arise over time in order to get beyond what we are able to do individually. Then you look at the world around you and you see that the social usages and habits that are becoming more and more dominant are motivated by a rejection of the notion that there's anything of value in the world that goes beyond things that small minds can apprehend immediately -- things like physical pleasure or at least comfort, and social position or at least equality. It can be depressing, to put it mildly. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn." (Montaigne) From jk Sun Jan 10 09:12:36 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: apparently a dilemma References: <1993Jan8.062824.12094@news.vanderbilt.edu> <1993Jan8.175345.26614@panix.com> <1993Jan9.065659.28424@news.vanderbilt.edu> rickertj@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu writes: >If I could make an excuse [for "revolution" posting], which is something >generally to be avoided, I would say that it was pretty late at night when >I made the post, and now it is not so clear to me what prompted it. The post seemed to express a state of mind that is comprehensible enough to me. One motive for conservativism is the thought that since the world goes beyond anything any of us can figure out, the good life requires us, in order to get beyond what we are able to do individually, to take advantage of the knowledge implicit in social usages and habits that arise over time. It's just as well that's what the good life requires, because it's a practical impossibility to avoid basing most of what we think and do on faith that what other people think and do is valid. Unfortunately, when we look around us in America in 1992 it seems that the social usages and habits that are becoming more and more dominant are motivated by a rejection of the notion that there's anything of value in the world that goes beyond things (like social position and physical pleasure, or at least comfort and equality) that the smallest mind can apprehend immediately. You begin to wonder exactly what it is that conservatism is supposed to conserve. It can be upsetting, to put it mildly, and the thought that dominant social trends are not the only or the most important things that exist is not always as consoling as it no doubt should be. The point of conservatism, after all, is that society is important even if it's not ultimate. From jk Sun Jan 10 14:43:14 1993 From: jk To: deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu Subject: Re: Hello! Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter References: <1993Jan10.105130.29523@news.cs.brandeis.edu> >Gentleman! I seem to have stumbled on to an interesting group. Hi, David -- it was good to read your post. The group's quite new, and I just joined a few days ago myself. I'll be posting something publicly in response to some of your points, but thought it was worth while welcoming you more personally. >Frankly, computers drive me nuts (i.e., they refuse to think like me!). You'll get used to them. Like they say, you have to deal with technological mass society using the stuff that's available in technological mass society. >I frankly cannot find any merit in monarchism or reactionary (no insult >intended) Catholicism. However, I'd be glad to discuss these issues, as >I suspect that we share similar views on many issues. Judging from the >other newsgroups I've looked at, this is (potentially at least) an island >of sanity in a sea of political correctness and vitriolic name calling! I'm not a monarchist or Catholic, or even much of a Christian. If you want to have a discussion that's not completely brain-dead, though, it's good to find people who are aware of what some of the issues are and aren't shocked to find that people disagree about them. I would say the same about discussions with European New Rightists. On USENET, the alternative to P.C. seems to be libertarianism, which is quite popular among computer and other technological types. A.r.c. is the only forum I've seen here where discussion from a non-liberal and non-leftist perspective seems possible. (Of course, one very good thing about USENET is that you can post anything practically anywhere, and you're likely to get some sort of response. I find even that better than simply talking to myself.) >Have you heard of G.R.E.C.E., Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye, or >Michael Walker and his magazine, The Scorpion? This publication can be >reached at: Michael Walker, Lutzowstrasse 39, 5000-Koln-1, Germany. A >very in-depth intellectual journal, practically the only source in >English of European New Right thought. If interested, you could also >read Tomislav Sunic's book, "Against Democracy and Equality: The >European New Right", Peter Lang Pub., 1990. Sunic's book doesn't do the >subject justice, in my opinion, but it's a good start. I'll check out The Scorpion, at least if the NYPL gets it. I believe Sunic has published in _Chronicles_, although I don't recall that I was particularly impressed by his piece. Is there anything you'd recommend in German? >P.S., since some of you like to sign off with quotes, here's of few >of my own favorites: You should look into the wonders of the .signature file. A whole world of computing excitement lies before you . . . Jim -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn." (Montaigne) From jk Sun Jan 10 14:45:43 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Hello! References: <1993Jan10.105130.29523@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >Totalitarianism exists where the attempt is made to force one absolute >truth, one good, one idea, one God, as the only truth [ . . . ] >Essentially the ENR (the term New Right was coined by their enemies) >is pagan in spirit, and passionately pro-European [ . . . ] The ENR >would argue that the past 2,000 years has been a slow process of the >de-paganizing of Europe. Sounds like someone has been reading Nietzsche. One question: what do they identify as the lost non-Christian and non-totalitarian Europe to which they owe allegiance? For example, are there any pre-Christian European thinkers that the ENR particularly likes? Any particular pre-Christian European societies? Why did Europe become Christian if Christianity is unEuropean? >I believe that the process of social disintegration has gone so far >that breakdown and revolution are inevitable. Moreover, the logic of >liberal totalitarianism (and remember, American conservatives are >simply right- wing liberals) is such that I doubt that any group which >tries to resist assimilation into the mass culture will be allowed to >exist [ . . . ] True, the authority of the State to do this is always >under attack. But the collapse of State authority and instability will >only lead to a greater, stronger tyranny. Anarchy = Tyranny. I have more sympathy with this view than I would like, and sometimes find Plato's account in Book VIII of his _Republic_ a compelling description of what we are seeing. There, you no doubt remember, he describes how society devolves from a mythical perfect order to a military aristocracy based on honor, and then to a commercial oligarchy based on profit, a democratic consumer society based on freedom, equality and hedonism, and finally to a tyranny. The process moved fairly quickly in the small states with which Plato was familiar, but has moved very slowly in Western society as a whole. The fear, of course, is that the vast scale and slow speed of the transformations we are seeing makes them all the more complete and irresistible. From jk Mon Jan 11 11:50:14 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: ENR References: <1993Jan11.001202.7408@news.cs.brandeis.edu> In <1993Jan11.001202.7408@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu writes: >In many ways, our modern >political ideologies are secularized Christian heresies. No doubt, but heresies are not the same as the thing itself. One can think of religion as something that does not dominate the world but instead provides a transcendental point of reference that enables us to make sense of the world and our action in it, and find those things good. Somewhat similarly, the concept of "truth" doesn't dictate anything and doesn't refer to anything that we can altogether grasp, but it gives a reference point for organizing and making sense of our understanding of things. Modern political ideologies are rather different. >I should point out that ENR's "paganism" does not necessarily mean the >revival of ancient religions - I am aware that some are doing this - u >but rather, they mean by paganism a certain mentality, a "new hellenism" >which can provide menaing and spiritual impetus to a rejuvenated Europe. I would be interested in knowing more about which Greeks they have in mind. People find affinities between Plato, the tragedians, various post-Socratic philosophers, and Christianity, and Simone Weil would have said there are affinities between Christianity and the Iliad. Maybe all those people are wrong, of course -- I don't have a fully-developed theory on the subject. >(Karl) Popper accused Plato of being "the first totalitarian". Not sure >the ENR would agree. Plato, in the Republic, is fixed on the one aim of >building a strong, stable state, but there is no hint of the messianic >desire to make the whole world adhere to his blueprint. An interesting >problem. Plato considered his republic possible, but just barely. He understood the difficulties of politics, which the totalitarians think can be obviated through the use of force. So I wouldn't call him a totalitarian. >I'm not sure if the transformations you mentioned are taking place as >slowly as you might think [ . . . ] What I had in mind (using the language of economics) was feudalism -> capitalism -> consumerism -> [?], a series of transformations related to those Plato describes, and that have taken hundreds of years. There are no doubt other ways of thinking about the matter. From jk Mon Jan 11 15:10:54 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Time to break up the US? (was: Re: apparently a dilemma) References: <1993Jan8.062824.12094@news.vanderbilt.edu> <1993Jan11.024218.21875@athena.mit.edu> In <1993Jan11.024218.21875@athena.mit.edu> norris@athena.mit.edu (Richard A Chonak) writes: >Has anyone given any thought to the possibility of breaking up the US into >several countries of more reasonable size? It's hard to imagine much support for this. Abstract American nationality is one of the few things we Americans have in common that rise above day-to-day concerns, so people hang on to it tenaciously. It would be odd in this newsgroup to criticize a proposal on the grounds it is not immediately practicable, though. Quite possibly, arguing for such a measure would be a way of dramatizing the need for public values, such as those you mention, that go beyond what we now have: >Here are some possible benefits (just off the top of my head, so to speak): > -- each new nation would be more homogeneous in culture and values > -- the break-up would be an instant step toward greater subsidiarity > -- no more flag-worship: the new nations would identify patriotism > more with place and people, less with 'democratic' ideology Quite possibly the proposal would seem sensible as part of an overall program designed to advance the sorts of things you mention. As such, it might have the virtue (apart from any practical benefits if actually carried out) of drawing attention to your cause. From jk Tue Jan 12 10:08:10 1993 From: jk To: mm68@unix.brighton.ac.uk Subject: Re: Mail-Server Help Needed Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st References: <1993Jan11.114912.4644@unix.brighton.ac.uk> In comp.sys.atari.st you write: >I have been trying (in vain) to get the mail server at >atari@atari.archive.umich.edu >to send me the Heat and Serve C Compiler with the mail body containing the >line >send languages/sozo133i.zoo >which I was told of by someone, but I keep getting no such directory >and a BART error from the server. Can anyone help? >Also, does anyone have any other addresses for good atari software via >mail-server or ftp? You should say "send Languages/ . . . " All directory names have initial capitals. The FAQ for this newsgroup (the part about software) lists archives with mailservers. If you have trouble getting it I should be able to send you a copy. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn." (Montaigne) From jk Tue Jan 12 10:30:05 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Time to break up the US? (was: Re: apparently a dilemma) References: <1993Jan8.062824.12094@news.vanderbilt.edu> <1993Jan11.024218.21875@athena.mit.edu> In drw@euclid.mit.edu (Dale R. Worley) writes: >Another thing that Americans have in common is The Constitution, and >the cluster of political values it is based on. Since we have so >little else on which to base our sense of "nationhood" (especially >because we are an immigrant nation), The Constitution is held sacred >here to a degree that Europeans find hard to believe. Unfortunately, >it seems that counter-revolution (as far as I can tell what you people >mean by the phrase) would require doing away with the Constituion, and >many of the political values under it. Depends on what you mean by "the Constitution". If you mean the body of doctrine currently applied by the Supreme Court, you are right. That doesn't seem the relevant meaning, though, since doctrine has changed radically from time to time while reverence for the Constitution has remained largely unchanged. People's political goals differ. But there aren't many goals that would be inconsistent with text of the Constitution (possibly with a few amendments), together with some body of doctrine that bears a relationship to the text of the Constitution similar to that borne by current constitutional doctrine. If constitutional values are stated appropriately, almost anything can be gotten out of them and the process need not even be in particular bad faith. So I don't agree with your final sentence. From jk Thu Jan 14 11:22:48 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.bbs.internet Subject: Re: Internet Access in NYC References: <16B4D534.AVERNON1@ua1vm.ua.edu> In andras@well.sf.ca.us (Andrew Raskin) writes: >> ><< panix >> >> >name ----------> PANIX Public Accss Unix >> >dialup --------> (718) 832-1525 'newuser' >> >fees ----------> $19/month or $208/year + $40 signup It's worth noting that you can get UNIX, email and news (no ftp, etc) at 2400 b.p.s. for $10 a month or $100 a year and no signup. >Panix is a public access unix which I used for a while before changing >accounts. The single biggest problem with panix is that Alexis (hi >Alexis!) is a dunce and I still feel ripped off for ever giving him my money. This comment is simply extraordinary. I don't know what leads Mr. Raskin to say this, but it makes him sound like a crank. >If you login to panix you find out that the Sparcstation 2 is there >sitting in a room, and panix is running on a Mac because they have not >figured out how to hook a Sun into the network. I'm writing this from the panix sun. >Panix always has stupid problems with simple things that should work right >but never do, the second problem I had while there was that nothing is >secured properly. Not that I or any other user I know of has ever noticed. I would urge anyone who wants USENET or UNIX access in NYC to try panix. There are hundred of satisfied users here, largely because of the remarkable job Alexis has done running the system. From jk Fri Jan 15 11:03:22 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Nation? Constitution? Where? References: <1993Jan13.063755.21640@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <1993Jan14.045026.9606@athena.mit.edu> In drw@euclid.mit.edu (Dale R. Worley) writes: >If "Americanism" is a matter of genetic descent, then >immigrants are automatically non-American, as are their descendents to >the n-th generation. Under the present form of Americanism, someone >who is willing to "play by our rules" can be admitted as an American. I don't think anyone has suggested a genetic test for being an American. The suggestion, I believe, is that a national community, like other communities, is something that arises over time among people who live together. It requires more than a willingness to play by a set of formal political rules, but doesn't require ideological or genetic conformity to some fixed standard. The idea, as I understand it, is that our patriotism as Americans should be attachment to the land and people of America. Such attachment requires a certain degree of cohesiveness among the people, which takes time to evolve, but not purity in accordance with some set criterion. >"America for the American people!" doesn't sound so bad, but remember >that that's pretty much the same as "Germany for the German >people!"... Is the Hitler argument a strong one for you? _Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer_ is a call for a mass society organized in accordance with simple and thoroughgoing logic. That's the opposite of what the counterrevs I know of want. From jk Fri Jan 15 11:18:06 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Hierarchical government References: In drw@euclid.mit.edu (Dale R. Worley) writes: >Interestingly, the US government is much more hierarchial than many >other countries. True, and from my standpoint that's a good thing. On the other hand, we have less regional diversity than most other countries. (Compare what you see in a 500 mile auto trip in the U.S. to what you'd see in a trip of the same length in Europe.) >BTW, what do you counter-revolutionaries think about elections? Are >they a good way to select the officers of government? Saying "you CRs" is sort of like saying "you leftists". Once you get out of the mainstream there are a great many possible positions. By and large, I like elections. They're a way of making government officers answerable to someone other than themselves. They make the government more stable by making the people feel part of it. By giving serious public responsibilities to the people they give the people the opportunity and the obligation to rise to those responsibilities. From jk Fri Jan 15 11:44:40 1993 From: jk To: norris@mit.edu Subject: Re: Nation? Constitution? Where? Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter References: <1993Jan13.063755.21640@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <1993Jan14.045026.9606@athena.mit.edu> I just replied to Dale Worley's comment on your most recent post because I couldn't keep quiet. I hope I got the view you were presenting right, although I tried to fudge my attributions of opinion. I should say that I've enjoyed reading your posts. This newsgroup seems to be turning into a very useful forum for discussing political views that are neither conventional, left-wing, nor libertarian (up to now the three possibilities on USENET). Do you know what happened to the integrists? I used to be on an integrist mailing list (COUNTEREV-L) that never had any traffic. Maybe they're all monks who have taken a vow of silence. I wish they'd return -- at this point the more perspectives we have the better. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Alles Erworbne bedroht die Maschine, solange sie sich erdreistet, im Geist, statt im Gehorchen, zu sein." (Rilke) From jk Sat Jan 16 10:13:35 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: What's this counterrevolution stuff, anyway? References: <1993Jan13.162612.29852@panix.com> <15JAN199316281080@mivax.mc.duke.edu> seth@mivax.mc.duke.edu (Judge Not) writes: In article , jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes... >[I]n the absence of religion we get chaos and tyranny, neither of which >are our true element. > >Is there an objective measure of our true element? Our true element is the element in which what is best in us can florish. That measure is as objective as other matters regarding what we should and should not do. >Does your true element correspond to mine? I don't know you, but I would think they are very likely to correspond in fundamental respects at least. >Do I have the right to force my element on you? What should be done if people's true elements differ in important ways depends on circumstances. If "Judge Not" is a pen name for Mr. Dahmer, who until recently was living in his true element, then I do think I have the right to force my element on you. A less extreme case is someone whose true element is Viking Iceland. If most other people find that their true element is the 20th century Swedish welfare state, then that someone is out of luck. On the other hand, if your true element is metalwork and mine is woodworking, maybe we can work something out. >In the absence of religion we only get atheism. "Only" suggests atheism has no consequences. Why shouldn't one's fundamental understanding of what the world is like have consequences? >Chaos and tyranny can exist quite well in religion, as past Popes have >shown (I use pope for an example since I was born catholic; my intent >is not to discredit catholicism). My claim was that atheism is sufficient for chaos and tyranny, not that it is necessary. >There are many well-ordered societies without choas, tryanny, religion >or "political hierarchy". Usenet is one. Usenet does not bear the responsibility for dealing with suffering, death, human failure and self-destructiveness, economic scarcity, or the ability people have in other settings to get their way by force. It also doesn't aim very high -- people who get overly caught up in it are sometimes told to "get a life". What's sufficient for a small fragment of society like Usenet need not be sufficient for society as a whole. (BTW, there *is* a hierarchy in Usenet -- I, for example, do not have the power my systems administrator does.) >In the absence of hierarchy you get freedom. For human beings, "freedom" makes sense only in a social world since almost everything we want, from hamburgers to winning the Nobel Prize, depends on society. But the social world includes people who are quite different from each other and whose intentions may conflict. Sorting out the conflicts and establishing long-term and complex forms of cooperation requires some sort of hierarchy, it seems to me. So freedom requires hierarchy. From jk Sun Jan 17 09:55:47 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: comments References: <1993Jan17.021355.29793@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu writes: >The universal culture that Mr. Martin sees is in fact the product of >the world market, run by and for multinational corporations whose only >interest is to maximize their power and profits, regardless of the >damage this does to the environment or the living cultures of humanity. Any institutional power multinational corporations may have doesn't seem particularly important to me. The important thing is the market itself as one of the two institutions (the other being the bureaucratic state) that are reorganizing all of life in accordance with hedonistic individualism and instrumental rationality. I should admit that like a lot of right-wingers I don't have a very good theory about how to deal with the market. You can view the market as simply a collection of practices and institutions that have arisen because over time people have found them practically useful in day-to-day life and that continue to exist only because people continue to find it useful to order their lives in accordance with them. From that standpoint, I think, conservatives should find the market good. On the other hand, people have weaknesses, like treating means (success in the market) as ends (the good life). How to deal with that particular weakness is a serious problem. Mere good intentions don't last. Luke-warm hippies turn into dedicated yuppies. Many individuals and even whole communities (like the Amish) have found a religious solution and that may be the only real answer, but it's not one that political measures can contribute much to. Part of the problem, of course, is that the desire for market success leads people to try to promote this weakness in others by advertising and so on. (Plato comments on this aspect of the problem.) >I might add that G.R.E.C.E. and the European New Right are opposed to >"the American way of life" which closely corresponds to the kind of >"global village" Mr. Martin is advocating. The "values" of this "west- >ern" culture, are in fact the negation of values and culture and are >nothing more than the worship of hedonism, consumerism, fad "ideolog- >ies", the fetish of the market and "democracy", uncritical acceptance >of universal and egalitarian ideals, unrestrained capitalism, and a >loss of attachment to ethnic loyalties, cultural amnesia, and the >"massification" of the people leaving them in state of incredible >ignorance, easily manipulated by the media and the admen, themselves >victims of a vociferous and hypocritical moralism. This way of speaking is all very well in its place as long as it's borne in mind that other conceptions of Western culture and the American way of life are possible. It is the task of CRs to promote such other conceptions. >That we are not equal should be seen in a positive, not a negative >light. We are talking, of course, about two kinds of equality: >physical/mental equality, and equality of rights. The first kind can be >demolished easily: no one is equally strong, equally smart, equally >brave, equally healthy, equally industrious, etc. Because this is so, >we work together best as a hierarchical whole - but not simply through >cooperation, rather through cooperation and authority. To put it >bluntly, the strong dominate the weak and the clever dominate the >strong. It's worth noting that hierarchies are not absolute and inequalities include differences other than stronger/weaker on a single scale. The owner is no doubt at the top of the hierarchy in a building project, but he's also absolutely dependent on the other people involved to get anything done. The architect is in charge of design but his design has to be something the owner likes and the chief contractor can deal with. He has to rely on engineering standards to tell him what can and can't be done and may be recognized as the artistic inferior of the man who carves the ornamental stonework around the doors and windows. From jk Tue Jan 19 07:13:41 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Efficient markets-->fragmented enterprise (was Re: distributism) References: <1993Jan19.004302.4866@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu writes: >Certainly the number of people who are self-employed or who are working >for family operations is much less than it used to be, though again it >would be nice to see some solid, reliable stats. Depends on how far back you go for the "used to be". The percentage of the workforce employed by large corporations is noticeably less than 20 years ago. Part of the reason for the change is the trend toward employment in the service industries, in which there are fewer economies of scale than in manufacturing, and part is the increase in the efficiency of markets as a means of coordinating economic activity due to improvements in communication and information handling. ("Outsourcing" of parts by manufacturers is an example of how such improvements can lead to the fragmentation of productive activity among multiple small enterprises.) >In any case, it seems to me that "the market", no matter what the >composition of the participants may be, tends to reduce, as we agree, >the kind of republican virtues needed for our society to work, _but_ I >would argue, the kinds of people this process produces are less likely >to want (or be able) to run their own businesses, and more likely to >accept the uniformity, but stability, of a large employer. The market can be viewed as a machine for turning anything and everything into money, and I think the recent developments I mentioned have made it a better machine for that purpose. As a result, those who have become fascinated with the process of turning things into money make lives out of playing that game at as high a level as they can. These are the entrepreneurs and high-stakes careerists, and there are more of them now than in the recent past. I would agree that the majority is more interested in a stable income, and I expect a lot of politicking to revolve around whether to give market forces and consequent fragmentation and instability free rein (which would maximize money) or to impose controls in the interests of stability (which to the extent the controls worked would let most people enjoy their money more and also protect established business interests from entrepreneurial upstarts). Competition from foreign producers nudges us toward the former outcome and the desires of most people toward the latter. In either case, republican virtue loses, because if you have a first-rate machine for turning everything into money then everything has a price, and people tend to think of things that way because it is convenient to do so. From jk Tue Jan 19 07:15:59 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Monarchism References: <1jfis8INNqeg@mirror.digex.com> rcheek@access.digex.com (Richard Cheek) writes: >[D]emocracy is in need of a stabilizing element. Such would see the >national interest as being identical to its own, that would be of such >wealth that it would be above, generally speaking, simple corruption, >and that might operate as a neutral (mostly) referee in societies >struggles among its various interests. Such an office it seems is >clearly a monarchy. A lot of people see the Supreme Court as playing this role in the United States today. The justices aren't rich but they're financially secure and rarely have further personal ambitions so that simple corruption has never been a problem. Those who don't like what the Court has been doing for the past 50 years or so should consider that the problems may be cultural rather than institutional. >It is interesting to note the contrast in how modernist handle defeat >and hostile organizations vrs that of conservatives. When the modernist >is deafeated, he quickly forms alliances with theose factions that >might be inclined to deal with him, the conservative typically pouts >and drops membership. The modernist will accomodate what he can't >resist openly and fight what he can, one issue at a time, getting >around to each issue in its own time, as he nibbbles away at his >opposition. Conservatives tend to go for the whole pie or nothing at >all, usually ending up with nothing at all. The modernists have always believed history is on their side, so that defeats are only local and temporary and anything that shakes things up will end with things sorting themselves out for their advantage. The conservatives have agreed that history is against them, so once they've lost something it's dead forever and they might as well drop out of the struggle. From jk Wed Jan 20 15:39:35 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: More on the free market The recent discussions here about distributivism, multinational corporations, and so on have led me to puzzle a little over the relation between the free market and the modern political and cultural trends under discussion. That relation goes deep and is hard to grasp completely. The most systematic account is the Marxist theory that man is fundamentally a producer whose social relationships and understanding of the world develop in accordance with the requirements of the current means of production (for example, the state of technology). The Marxist theory is defective, though, because it leaves too much out: man is not only, or even most fundamentally, a producer of economic goods. Even though I don't have a systematic theory, I'll offer some thoughts to anyone who's interested: For a long time a fundamental trend in the West has been the liberation of desire from social and personal restraints. The political manifestation of that trend has been the pursuit of liberty, understood as the liberty of the individual to do whatever he happens to feel like doing, and of equality, understood at first as the equal absence of formal restraints on the will (e.g., everyone who wishes to do so is equally allowed to sleep under bridges) but now increasingly understood as the equal absence of material restraints on the will (i.e., equalization of life chances). The free market has contributed to this trend in several ways: 1. By leading to more efficient production and distribution of transferable goods, thereby multiplying the objects of need or desire that can be obtained and enjoyed without regard to anything social other than the payment of money. Instead of relying on family and friends for the necessities as well as the pleasures of life, people can set up in their own condos, and amuse themselves by drinking beer while watching their VCRs. 2. By making it profitable for producers to undermine restraints on the desires of their customers through advertising and so on. 3. By its success in doing what it set out to do. An enterprise that is outstandingly successful, like modern science or the modern free market, gains prestige and attracts and focuses the efforts of many of the most energetic, capable and articulate people in society. As a result, the outlook and standards characteristic of the enterprise become dominant in society at large. In the case of the market, that outlook includes the sense that all goods are convertible into money, which means that no good and no desire is by its nature better than any other. However, the free market also imposes certain restrictions on the liberation of desire because the market needs producers as well as consumers. Producers have to pull themselves together in order to produce, and doing so requires discipline and the sacrifice of immediate gratification to long-term goals. It follows that the trend toward liberation eventually requires the state to step in to correct what are felt as the deficiencies of the market (e.g., repressive social arrangements and unequal outcomes). The state, though, will find it difficult in the long run to do so on any large scale because at some point its actions will start interfering with production, either directly (through taxes, regulations and the like) or indirectly (through undermining the discipline that makes production possible). At that point a crisis will occur, the likely outcome of which will be some form of tyranny due to the inability of the people to agree on any other attainable outcome. Comments? From jk Thu Jan 21 10:09:25 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Nation? Constitution? Where? References: <1993Jan13.063755.21640@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu writes (in a post that only reached my site just now even though it was sent over a week ago): >An 'abstract nationality' is the negation of nationality. Consider the >USSR. Or Rome. It's interesting how much of a hold an abstract nationality can have on people, though. "Civis Romanus sum" was a proud claim, and the idea of the Roman Empire remained compelling long after 476 A.D. And I read somewhere that even prisoners in Soviet labor camps found it very hard not to respond to appeals based on their still being "Soviet persons". From jk Fri Jan 22 10:12:35 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: rec.arts.books Subject: Mastodon Poetry (was Deconstructing Angelou) References: <1jmvhtINNoft@morrow.stanford.edu> <106040@netnews.upenn.edu> In article <1jmvhtINNoft@morrow.stanford.edu> francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes: > ... the mastadon, the dinosaur > who left dry tokens of their sojourn > here on our planet floor ... It's good to see an addition to the genre of mastodon poetry. The only other example I know of is a parody of _The Waste Land_: "You have no guide nor clue, For you know only puce snakes and violet mastodons, Where the brain beats, and a selzer is no anwer, a vomit no relief . . ." I seem to remember a few paleolithic and earlier references in Kipling ("When the Cambrian measures were forming, we were promised perpetual peace . . ."), but I don't think he specifically mentions mastodons. Can anyone suggest any other examples? From jk Fri Jan 22 22:24:02 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Nation? Constitution? Where? References: <1993Jan21.235301.10403@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu writes >Let me be more specific about my examples: Rome itself started out as a >real, organic people who were very proud to say "Civis Romanus sum". By >the time "Rome" had become completely abstract and universal, it was >simply a system of government and a set of shared language(s), >culture(s) and vague ideals. Eventually, every- body in the empire >became a citizen - precisely at the moment when Roman citizenship had >become a meaningless concept. It would be interesting to know more about this. It is my impression that the complex made up of Roman government, language, culture and ideals kept their magnetism for a long time. Many barbarians very much wanted to be part of the Roman world, for example. China may be a similar case -- the magnetism of a similar cultural and political complex lay behind the expansion of China from a comparatively limited area in the valley of the Yellow River to its present extent. My understanding is that Chinese civilization and culture and the Chinese empire have always had a very close connection -- our word "China" comes from the Chin dynasty that united China in the 3rd century B.C., and the Chinese term for a Chinese person is "man of Han", after the Han dynasty, while in Canton the expression is "man of Tang", after the later Tang dynasty that first made Canton part of China. >I certainly would not reject such universal ideals out of hand, but I >would like to make the point that such universalisms tend to erode the >foundation of particular loyalties on which the universal (or at least >partially universal) loyalty is built. It seems to me that we need both universalism and individualism, but neither should be at the expense of the things in between. How you do that is the great problem. Probably it is best if the universal element in society remains ideal (like the concepts of "Greece" before Alexander, "Christendom" in the Middle Ages, and "Europe" in early modern times) while our practical life and loyalties remain with things that are closer to us. Maybe it crushes the human spirit for the universal element in society to be something that has too much practical reality. (Again, it would be instructive to consider Rome and China, the universal empires of their day.) Remind me to bring all this stuff down to earth some day . . . From jk Sat Jan 23 20:27:52 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Nation? Constitution? Where? References: In cla04@seq1.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes: >How about 'Yugoslav' as an abstract nationality that failed? It certainly seems to have failed. Maybe abstract nationality works in the case of a state with claims to universality (Rome, China, USA, USSR), at least until the basis of those claims is generally repudiated (USSR). >GOD BLESS LANCASHIRE >Univ. of Keele, >Staffs ^^^^^^ Do you feel in exile at Keele? From jk Mon Jan 25 15:44:06 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: Abortion (was Vegetarianism) References: <1993Jan24.140528.3259@cnsvax.uwec.edu> In <1993Jan24.140528.3259@cnsvax.uwec.edu> nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu (David Nye) writes: >It [abortion] can't be [wrong] because one is preventing or >destroying a potential human for the same reasons -- the IUD prevents >the fertilized ovum from implanting and therefore must have caused far >more potential humans not to have developed than abortion. My impression is that most people who regard abortion as wrong from conception have major problems with the IUD. As I understand it, the objection such people have is not an objection to destroying potential life. Rather, the idea is that once the ovum is fertilized a particular human life has come into being and it is wrong to destroy that particular actual life, at least without a very good justification. My life, one might say, is the same particular human life that I had when I was two, and still earlier in my mother's womb all the way back to conception. So if there's something wrong about murder that transcends utilitarian concerns, one might believe that the wrongness has to do with the fundamental wrongness of destroying a particular human life as such. >Unfortunately, since the soul is a supernatural concept, there is >nothing which natural science can tell us about it, much less prove its >existence. If someone regarded the taking of a particular human life as the feature that made abortion bad, but identified human life with human sentience, then by "soul" he might simply mean sentient human life, say that abortion becomes bad when the child is "ensouled", and find natural science relevant to determining when that is. From jk Mon Jan 25 15:58:27 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: rec.arts.books Subject: Re: Mastodon Poetry References: <1jmvhtINNoft@morrow.stanford.edu> <106040@netnews.upenn.edu> <1993Jan24.220725.18380@grebyn.com> In <1993Jan24.220725.18380@grebyn.com> fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster) writes: >Now it's going to come up sooner or later anyway, so we might as >well decide from the start: will we allow poems containing references >to either of the two types of extinct woolly pachyderms? I'd be inclined to, although of course some critics hold that a mastodon is to a mammoth as tragedy is to melodrama or comedy to farce. > happy mastodon/mammoth poetry hunting, I'm having trouble. I did electronic searches of both _Paradise Lost_ and the Bible (available by ftp from SIMTEL), and discovered that neither Milton nor the Psalmists mention either animal, at least explicitly. I've not given up, though. From jk Tue Jan 26 11:03:03 1993 From: jk To: akiy@siva.cs.titech.ac.jp Subject: Re: Paradise Lost Newsgroups: rec.arts.books References: In rec.arts.books you write: >I was wondering if anyone out there had any pointers/tips on reading >this massive work. I'm no English person and I haven't read the >bible, which I'm sure are some disadvantages. Should I stoop so low >as to buying a Cliffs Notes? Or are there any good companion books >out there that explain the allusions and overall "meanings" to help me >on my journey? C.S. Lewis wrote a very readable introduction to Paradise Lost (I think it is actually called "Introduction to Paradise Lost"). I wouldn't disdain Cliff's Notes either -- anything is justified if it helps you get by the references to things that a 20th Century Japanese would have no reason to have heard of, and the difficulties of Milton's diction and syntax (early readers complained that Milton "wrote no language"). I would also look at Samuel Johnson's life of Milton in his _Lives of the Poets_ for some background about the man. Once you get by the difficulties, it's a great poem with grand conceptions and magnificent and powerful language. Reading it when I was 19 was one of the formative experiences of my life. It had never occurred to me that anything so splendid could exist. Good luck. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Alles Erworbne bedroht die Maschine, solange sie sich erdreistet, im Geist, statt im Gehorchen, zu sein." (Rilke) From jk Tue Jan 26 14:17:02 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: Abortion (was Vegetarianism) References: <1993Jan24.140528.3259@cnsvax.uwec.edu> <1993Jan25.231311.46762@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> In <1993Jan25.231311.46762@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> hippee@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes: >The only question for me concerns the apparent choice which one has when >one becomes "infected" with this particular parasite [an unborn child]. >I would, however, beg to remind anyone who would challenge on these >grounds that would remove the lice from their hair, the worms from their >dogs, and the ticks from their cat. Your reminder would dispose of the matter if it were unreasonable to believe that the unborn child is of more value than a louse, a worm or a tick. Is that your view? From jk Wed Jan 27 12:16:50 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: panix.restaurants Subject: Re: Newsgroup: "panix.restaurants" created. Keywords: restaurant restaurants Distribution: panix References: <1993Jan26.233922.10522@panix.com> In jsb@panix.com (J. S. B'ach) writes: >)Favorite Indian food in the East Village -- Mitali. >) >Favorite in the West Village--Mitali West Why not try Jackson Heights? The Jackson Diner is wonderful, and I'm told there are others that are equally good. From panix!jk Wed Jan 27 12:19:42 EST 1993 Article: 4885 of talk.philosophy.misc Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc Path: panix!jk From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) Subject: Re: Abortion (was Vegetarianism) Message-ID: Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences References: <1993Jan26.165502.3349@cnsvax.uwec.edu> Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 14:07:18 GMT nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu (David Nye) writes: [I had written:] >>As I understand it, the objection such people have is not an objection >>to destroying potential life. Rather, the idea is that once the ovum is >>fertilized a particular human life has come into being and it is wrong >>to destroy that particular actual life, at least without a very good >>justification. >You deleted the stuff about how I couldn't see any practical difference >between removing the ovum before and after fertilization. I still >don't. I thought you were comparing removal before and after implantation (hence your IUD discussion). >The sperm and ovum were just as much alive before fertilization. The >only difference is that the ovum now has some new chromosomes. I don't >see anything magically different about that. The difference is that neither the sperm nor the unfertilized ovum can be understood as the bearer of a particular actual human life, while the fertilized ovum can. It's possible for me to identify myself with what I was when I was a 2-year-old, when I was a newborn, when I was a 9 or 6 month foetus, and so on all the way back to conception, because most of my fundamental characteristics and propensities were fixed then and my subsequent development can be understood as a process of unfolding and further determining what was already there. It's much more difficult for me to identify myself with the unfertilized egg that after fertilization became me because the unfertilized egg could have developed normally into a man or a woman, a Eurasian, white or mulatto, a brilliant mathematician or a congenital idiot, and so on. In addition, it seems that the unfertilized egg was no more me than the sperm that eventually fertilized it, and until conception there was no particular reason to tie the two together. >>If someone regarded the taking of a particular human life as the feature >>that made abortion bad, but identified human life with human sentience, >>then by "soul" he might simply mean sentient human life, say that >>abortion becomes bad when the child is "ensouled", and find natural >>science relevant to determining when that is. > >I have no objections if you want to redefine "soul" that way, but the >standard definition is "the immortal part of man, separate from the >physical body", which implies that is is strictly supernatural. In your original post it seemed as though you were trying to describe the possible arguments against abortion and why you thought they didn't work. My intention was simply to restate the argument in a way that didn't require anything supernatural (which seemed to be your objection to to arguments tying the impermissibility of abortion to sentience). -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Alles Erworbne bedroht die Maschine, solange sie sich erdreistet, im Geist, statt im Gehorchen, zu sein." (Rilke) From jk Wed Jan 27 16:01:26 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: Abortion (was Vegetarianism) References: <1993Jan24.140528.3259@cnsvax.uwec.edu> <1993Jan25.231311.46762@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <1993Jan27.044244.2582@news.eng.convex.com> In mfragass@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Michael Fragassi) writes: > But then, the issue becomes whether one believes preservation of this >potential is more important than the quality of the life of the mother and the >child-to-be. Here you seem to suggest an argument for abortion based on the quality of life the child would have had if he had not been aborted. There's something puzzling about that line of thought in any but the hardest cases (e.g., some congenital defect that would make the child's life short and painful). Is that really the sort of argument you have in mind, or are you thinking instead of benefits to the quality of life of other children (such as brothers and sisters who would be burdened in some way by an additional sibling) or society at large? From jk Thu Jan 28 10:25:41 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: Abortion (was Vegetarianism) References: <1993Jan24.140528.3259@cnsvax.uwec.edu> <1993Jan25.231311.46762@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <1993Jan27.150732.46798@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> In <1993Jan27.150732.46798@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> hippee@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes: >My position is that a human life is no MORE worth any other. The objection to restrictions on abortion about which people usually feel strongest that such restrictions are restrictions on human autonomy. Is it also your position that human autonomy is worth no more than (to use your examples) the autonomy of a louse, tick or worm? If so, on what do you base your apparent opposition to such restrictions? Not on human welfare, I assume, unless you are similarly concerned about the welfare of lice, ticks and worms. >The point, >however, does not hinge on this. Instead, the point is that the individual >who is doing the living on someone else (the parasite) should have the >permission to do so or face the prospect of an attempt by the host to be >removed. Would it be relevant if the relationship of absolute dependency (the parasitic relationship) were the reasonably forseeable consequence of the host's voluntary actions? It seems to me that in that case the host's knowing and voluntary conduct could do the work of consent, and her obligations could depend on the nature and value of the parasite. For example, if someone does something that makes a tapeworm dependent on her, too bad for the tapeworm. On the other hand, if someone knowingly and voluntarily does something that has the reasonably forseeable result that I am dependent on her for my very existence for 9 months, it doesn't seem unfair to say that she has to put up with me for that period. From jk Thu Jan 28 14:58:35 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: Abortion (was Vegetarianism) References: <1993Jan24.140528.3259@cnsvax.uwec.edu> <1993Jan25.231311.46762@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <1993Jan27.044244.2582@news.eng.convex.com> <1993Jan27.152539.46799@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> In mfragass@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Michael Fragassi) writes: > As to _why_ they reject that ethical standard, is basically because of: >[ . . . ] their belief in special "sanctity" of human life >(which is not necessarily the same as having the soul, but does hinge on a >belief in a Creator of mankind) [ . . . ] I'm not sure that belief in a creator of mankind is relevant to belief in the special sanctity of human life. Presumably, the creator of mankind would also be the creator of everything else. And many people don't believe in a creator of mankind but nonetheless have moral objections to treating taking a human life as something to be weighed in the ordinary scales of cost/benefit analysis. Such objections seem to be based on the view that the value of a particular human life transcends other values and therefore has a sort of sanctity. From jk Fri Jan 29 22:13:26 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Random thoughts on the American Dream Summary: It's a dumb idea As promised, random thoughts: The United States is a country that exists because people chose to come here, so people think it is a country with a purpose. Since one name for that purpose is the "American Dream", conceptions of the American Dream shed light on what we agree is important. It appears from recent discussions that the American Dream has become the dream of career and consumption. We believe that happiness consists in a steadily rising social position, in moderate pleasure, and above all in comfort. Such an outlook is natural in a peaceful and prosperous country with a diverse population, with no aristocracy or established church, and with political institutions based on consent and economic institutions based on property rights and exchange. In such a country it is difficult to accept any goals as superior to those that people in fact are generally inclined to pursue in day-to-day life. The conventional conception of happiness that arises in such a society is likely to have nothing refined or demanding about it. Many people find such an conception of happiness unsatisfying and try to do better without having a very clear idea of what would constitute an improvement. These attempts take several forms. Some people pursue adventure -- experience that is not constrained by social conventions. Others idealize equality -- the principle that career and consumption must be equally accessible to everyone. However, neither adventure nor equality remedy the defects of the American Dream. Adventure leads to disillusionment because it leads nowhere. On the other hand, thoroughgoing egalitarianism destroys everything it touches because to exist is to be distinguishable from other things, while the more limited idealization of equality we are familiar with in America leads to weariness because of its promotion of mediocrity and its pettiness. Of course, when not taken seriously adventure and equality have their rewards. The pose of adventurousness is advantageous because it presumes that one's goals are superior to what others are satisfied with. Presenting oneself as an egalitarian has similar advantages because it undercuts any presumptions of superiority other people may may have while putting oneself in the position of dictating how the world should be organized. The problem is that since these rewards are fraudulent they are the rewards of waya of life that are even less noble than the pursuit of the American Dream. The radical flaw of the American Dream is that it locates the good within experience rather than valuing experience for pointing to a good outside itself. Its deficiencies are the deficiencies of experience considered without regard to what it is experience of. Since our experience of other people is determined more by how they treat us than what they are, the American Dream is of social position rather than of love. Since what we experience most immediately if our experience of things is good is pleasure rather than the contemplation of reality, the American Dream has no room for truth or beauty. Experience is not of itself, but is of something that is not experience. It follows that to devalue what is not experience is in the end to devalue experience. Making experience intense does not make it into a self-sufficient good, nor is equalizing experiences a compensation for what experience in itself lacks. It follows that the American Dream should be abandoned. Although it may be viewed as the natural consequence of the American political, economic and social order, we are not doomed to keep pursuing it after we have realized its hollowness if we can see something better to put in its place. What must be put in its place is a conception of goodness, truth and beauty as goals that are transcendent but not wholly inaccessible. The difficulty with such a change is that transcendence is rather at odds with a democratic capitalist order based on actual desires, on counting, and on efficiency. But "actual desires" can include anything, even the desire to know God. The search for transcendence could transform even a society such as ours if we first accept it in our individual lives and build it into our family life and our friendships. And even if the effect on society generally is small or nonexistent, the attempt can transform our own lives. From jk Sat Jan 30 07:42:20 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: panix.questions Subject: Re: Is This A Long .signature Work-around? References: <1993Jan2.013709.19365@panix.com> <1993Jan4.151247.14763@panix.com> In eravin@panix.com (Ed Ravin) writes: >In article <1993Jan4.151247.14763@panix.com> fnord@panix.com (Cliff Heller) writes: >>When someone is especially abusive, for example, 3+ screenfulls of quoted >>text followed by a 1-3 line statement that boils down to "yeah, me too", I >>usually e-mail a constructive flame. >Which, of course, just wastes more bandwidth, disk space, etc. Part of >being a good sysop is knowing when to keep your mouth shut. Right >Alexis? Is this a sensible objection? 3 screenfuls times 40,000 USENET sites is a lot of bandwidth and disk space. An email flame that's half a screenful long times 2 sites (the offender's and the flamer's, assuming he keeps a copy) is much less bandwidth and disk space. If there's even 1 chance in 120,000 that the flame will deter a single future offense, it seems worth the investment of system resources. From jk Sat Jan 30 20:47:44 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: More Americana -- "I am an individual!" The overwhelming response to my last article and the insistent demands for another lead me to post the following discussion of another aspect of American society, the demand that we all be treated as individuals. It is often said that each of us has a right to be treated as an individual; that is, in accordance with qualities we possess individually that are relevant to the purposes of the judgment. In connection with employment decisions by employers this right is understood to require that people be evaluated based on individualized determinations of what they can do rather than characteristics that have no necessary functional relevance. For example, most Americans believe that a person applying for a job as a garage mechanic should be judged based on demonstrable ability to do the job, rather than hired because he is an Eskimo and Eskimos generally are talented mechanics, or rejected because she is a woman and women are usually less committed to the job or the other mechanics would feel more comfortable working with a man. The justice of such a demand for individual treatment is thought to be undeniable because it is based on the desires for equality and freedom, which are assumed to be fundamental social goods that we all desire and therefore should permit each other to have. If our treatment by others, and therefore our opportunities and our position in society, is determined only by what we can do, then we are free to choose whatever life we wish with no limitations other than those imposed by our own abilities, willingness to work and luck. Or such is the belief. This aversion to treatment as a member of a group is far stronger today than in the past. At one time people might have been inclined to accept or demand the treatment customary for people with their position in society. However, a system of social position is determined by what people take seriously, and not all constellations of social preferences result in a system that provides most people with a satisfactory role in life. Social position today is increasingly determined by function in a rationalized system for producing and distributing exchangeable goods. As a result, traditional social roles such as "wife and mother", that carried with them a broad range of rights and duties that taken together could serve as the basis for a good life, are no longer taken seriously, and the rights and duties attached to them seem arbitrary and unjust. The social roles that are now taken seriously, such as "assistant vice president for marketing", are too abstract to support a general understanding of who one is and how one should act and be treated. In the absence of a system of social categorization that people feel comfortable building their lives on, people reject treatment as members of a categories. In spite of its apparent inevitability in modern society, the demand for individual treatment raises both practical and theoretical difficulties. One practical difficulty that it is often difficult to specify the qualities relevant to a purpose and to determine objectively whether someone has those qualities. For example, most responsible jobs can be done well in many different ways, and the qualities needed for success, such as good sense or imagination, are difficult to demonstrate objectively. In such instances, the correctness of hiring decisions can not be verified since there could be any number of explanations for any particular decision. One response to this difficulty is to judge the correctness of the hiring decisions of an institution by looking at the over-all pattern of hiring. For example, if only 15% of the mathematicians hired by a state university system are women and only 1% are black, such disproportions might be thought to be proof that hiring decisions are based in part on sex and race. If so, one solution would be to give the hiring process a corrective bias, perhaps by means of a requirement of proportional hiring or quotas. An obvious objection to crude means such as quotas is that in the name of individual treatment they treat people as members of categories. To the extent such means are rejected, though, enforcement of anti-discrimination rules requires the extensive formalization of procedures that is required to make the basis for employment decisions verifiable. The responsibilities of each position and the knowledge and skills required to carry it out have to be clearly defined. In addition, the qualifications for a position and the criteria for performance have to be limited to what is objectively demonstrable. Since it is impossible to measure a person's contribution to an organization in such a mechanical fashion, such measures have the effect of rewarding the wrong people for the wrong things and so are bad for morale and efficiency. They have the further effect of surrounding dealings with members of protected groups with defensive measures, thus hindering their integration with the operations of the organization. There is also no guarantee that they substantially better the lot of members of protected groups. The theoretical problems with carrying out the demand for nondiscrimination are still more important than the practical problems. One such problem is that the right to be treated as an individual means nondiscrimination in employment only if, for example, it is wrong to establish a garage partly for the purpose of providing employment for Eskimos or giving men who prefer the company of their own sex a congenial place to work; otherwise, one's status as an Eskimo or a woman would be relevant to the purposes of the employment decision. It is not at all clear why such purposes are necessarily wrong. In some circumstances discrimination on the grounds of characteristics like race may be wrong. For example, if government regulation or a web of law and custom makes it difficult for those discriminated against to establish a decent way of life for themselves some sort of remedy is proper, and under some circumstances an antidiscrimination rule might be the best remedy available. However, it is doubtful that such circumstances are common in present-day America. Moreover, if such an oppressive degree of discrimination were general it is hard to see how the remedial laws would get adopted. Most importantly, a general demand for individual treatment and nondiscrimination is inconsistent with the social arrangements that are necessary if people are to live decently, at least if to be treated as an individual is to have one's membership in any group smaller than society as a whole that people generally take seriously -- and that is what the groups defined by characteristics like ethnicity, sex, religion and family are -- treated as socially irrelevant. For such a demand to be satisfied, one can have no rights or obligations with respect to any such group or its members. One cannot even treat the members of one's own group more favorably than others without engaging in discrimination. Under the view of morality such a demand presupposes, our right in society is to pursue our own goals consistent with our obligations to society in general, and our obligations are exhausted by our obligations to society at large -- to obey the law, and to the extent one participates in governing society, to bring about and maintain a state of affairs in which there are no significant subordinate social groups that are not open to all and subservient to the particular goals of the members. Such a view of society and morality has had its supporters at least since _The Social Contract_ was first published, but it can lead only to disaster. Loyalties start by being parochial. Accordingly, a society in which parochial loyalties are forbidden could not long exist because it would soon become a society in which there was no loyalty of any sort and degenerate into a war of all against all. Finally, it is worth noting that the motives for opposing discrimination are not necessarily noble any more than the motives for engaging in it are necessarily malicious. In practice, to demand restrictions on discrimination is to demand that others be forbidden to deal and associate with whom they choose, that they be required to demonstrate acceptable motives for choices in such matters, and in all likelihood that they be required to treat preferentially people from certain protected categories defined by the government. In the absence of very special circumstances, such a demand is simply tyrannical. From jk Sun Jan 31 08:38:45 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Random thoughts on the American Dream References: <1kf1j7INN5av@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> In <1kf1j7INN5av@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> norris@athena.mit.edu (Richard A Chonak) writes: >A good posting, Jim. Thanks! >"...Protestantism itself had become part of the engine of secularism. It >had lost its own Christian sacramental tradition and was coming to society >with a thought system that was simply more of the same desacralized >cultural message that had been in the rest of society....A nation that is >based on a religion that cannot tell you what is sacred in a communion >chalice in one generation cannot tell you what is sacred in a human uterus >in the next generation." Mr. Deane's friends in the European New Right would agree with you, and would add that Protestantism is the logical outcome of Christianity just as the American Way of Life is the logical outcome of Protestantism. How do you deal with that claim? The Protestant reformers thought they were restoring early Christianity, and there is some precedent in the New Testament for anti-sacramentalism. I'm thinking specifically of the rejection of Jewish dietary and similar laws, and of passages like Romans 14, where Paul rejects in principle the view that any of the things of daily life (foods offered to idols, days of the week) need be treated as particularly pure or impure. I suppose the answer might be an appeal to the authority of tradition. But the Gospels can be critical of tradition as well. (See Matthew 15 and Mark 7.) (I should say that I don't have a good position on any of this stuff and don't know enough to contribute much to a discussion. Even a few snappy one-liners on the issues would be helpful as points of reference, though.) From jk Sun Jan 31 08:47:41 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: The End of Thought (but not of long posts) The midwinter sale on statements of my personal views on everything imaginable continues! (For some reason, the Clinton transition team didn't ask me for any position papers, so I find myself with excess stock on my hands.) So here's my theory about why people are so dumb today: The nature of modern society has resulted in a deterioration of thought. Thought requires taking both truth and diverse beliefs seriously. In a society in which people typically do not have a definite position or responsibilities, people take only their own comfort and advancement seriously and therefore do not think. Instead, people adhere either to the view that all beliefs are equally valid (democratic openness) or to the view that the beliefs of one's own group are the standard of truth (sectarianism). Democratic openness is more common since making distinctions among beliefs serves neither the desire for comfort nor the desire to get on in the world. If one does adopt definite beliefs he will very likely become a sectarian. The usual social function for the belief in a standard for truth other than the beliefs of one's own group is that it permits cooperation between opponents, but if there are no opponents whom one must take seriously and who take one's own beliefs seriously this function need not be served. The ruling elite of a modern society adheres to sectarian democratic openness. It is sectarian because it needs definite views in order to act, and it embraces democratic openness because it has no basis for choosing anything more substantive and because its position requires its views to reflect the principles on which its society is based. "Sectarian democratic openness" -- the view that all views are equally valid, but the views of one's own group are the standard of truth -- seems contradictory, and logically it is, but people try to live with it anyway because they see no alternative. Other features of modern social life also have their effect. For thought to have weight and solidity, it must reflect knowledge that is both extensive and intensive. A life of security and comfort as a cog in the social machine results in knowledge that is superficial, one-sided and narrow. Substance of thought also requires breadth and depth of shared experience, which are not compatible with purely consensual social relationships. Thought requires courage and independence, which are rare qualities in a society in which most people are dependent on large organizations for their social position and livelihood. It requires that leisure exist and be treated as important, which is impossible today because only the process of social production and the struggle for a commanding position within that process is taken seriously. Finally, thought can be clear only by reason of the systematic understanding of the world that it expresses. Systematic understanding calls some things true and others confused or false, and implies an elite of those who systematically understand. Democracy rejects systematic understanding in favor of feeling, which makes no such invidious distinctions, and therefore rejects thought on principle. The deterioration of thought can also be considered under the aspect of the decline in the clarity and richness of language. The technical complexity of modern life means that language is used more and more to deal with things of which people do not have concrete experience. Because people do not speak well about things they don't know much about, the result is that language becomes less exact and expressive. In addition, modern society, in which few things are fixed and consent is the master principle, gives fundamental importance to persuasion rather than thought and so leads people to use the language of advertizing and propaganda. With the disappearance of any connection to social reality other than the pursuit of success, thought has turned on itself and become self-destructive. More specifically, the task of thought about morals is now the destruction of individual moral responsibility and therefore of morality, of thought about politics the destruction of the division of power and therefore of politics, of theories of knowledge the destruction of objective inquiry and therefore of learning, and so on. What then should be done? Schemes to save the world from itself never work, and in particular you can't force people to think. Although mindlessness may have social causes, politics is too crude an instrument for the damage to be repaired very directly. Nonetheless, it is possible for each of us to love knowledge and pursue it even if circumstances are not favorable and other people do not see the point of what we are doing. Thought, including our own thought, is not wholly the creature of society but rather can relate to something absolute beyond society. That, after all, is why it's important. From jk Mon Feb 1 11:21:49 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: Preparing for the comming collapse of the federal governm References: <93029.40790.J056600@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM> <728437505snz@keris.demon.co.uk> <1993Jan31.185653.17363@sequent.com> <31JAN199319075812@venus.tamu.edu> <1FEB199304060469@venus.tamu.edu> In <1FEB199304060469@venus.tamu.edu> ebb7683@venus.tamu.edu (BLACKMAN, EDWARD B) writes: >>A treaty which violates the Constitution is not valid, >That's arguable. The Constitution itself says that it, and treaties made >in accordance with it, are the "supreme law of the land". If a treaty made >in accordance with the Constitution contradicts the Constitution, there's no >way to know which is right, since the Constitution doesn't have a provision >providing for a means to a resolution in such a case. The wording is odd. The C. says that the C. itself and laws made "in pursuance thereof", and treaties made "under the authority of the United States", are the supreme law of the land. That might be read to mean that treaties can override constitutional provisions but laws can't. I have no idea whether that reading is supportable. From jk Mon Feb 1 15:53:29 1993 From: jk To: TROTTEJE@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu Subject: Re: censorship left and right Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter References: <1993Feb1.163807.18891@news.vanderbilt.edu> In alt.revolution.counter you write: >Mr. Kalb's recent posts on the subjects of the American Dream and the Decline >or rather, the Death of Thought, were splendid. Thank you -- it's pleasant when something one has written is praised, especially when the person giving the praise demonstrates that he can write himself. >Perhaps, Jim, you would >elaborate on the claim (to paraphrase) that genuine thought requires gen- >uine depth of experience, something not generally available in a consensual >society? I will do so publicly, I hope within a day or two. (Thank you for the question, by the way. It's an interesting issue.) -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth." (Blake) From jk Mon Feb 1 17:08:58 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: panix.restaurants Subject: Re: PLEASE DON'T MOVE TRAFFIC TO nyc.food (was Re: PLEASE MOVE...) Distribution: panix References: <1993Feb1.205933.27413@panix.com> In <1993Feb1.205933.27413@panix.com> des@panix.com (Don Samek) writes: >What's _wrong_ with panix.restaurants!? Nothing, but why not open the discussions up to other people in NYC? From jk Mon Feb 1 22:10:51 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: censorship left and right References: <1993Feb1.163807.18891@news.vanderbilt.edu> TROTTEJE@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu (Jackson Trotter) writes: >Mr. Kalb's recent posts on the subjects of the American Dream and the >Decline or rather, the Death of Thought, were splendid. Perhaps, Jim, >you would elaborate on the claim (to paraphrase) that genuine thought >requires genuine depth of experience, something not generally available >in a consensual society? If we deal with things only to the extent we consent to them we come to know them only insofar as they conform to our desires. But thought is the attempt to understand something that is real and therefore does not depend on what we want. So thought is called forth by having to deal with things we don't consent to. >I for one wonder whether the objection to government funded art which >deeply offends the sensibilities of most Americans is the same as >policing speech. But then again ... I don't think so. If the American people want to patronize art, then like other patrons they should be able to support the art they like best. If they delegate to someone the choice of what to support they ought to be able to revoke the delegation if they don't like the choices that are made. An objection to congressional oversight of NEA grants might be made on the grounds that politics has no place in judgements of artistic merit, but such an objection would seem disingenuous under the circumstances. People who think art should be political and who pooh-pooh "disinterested judgements of merit" shouldn't be shocked when art becomes political. From jk Mon Feb 1 22:15:06 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: panix.restaurants,nyc.food Subject: You're in nyc.food!(was: PLEASE DON'T MOVE TRAFFIC TO...) Distribution: panix References: <1993Feb1.205933.27413@panix.com> mara@panix.com (Mara Chibnik) writes: >jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes: > > >Nothing, but why not open the discussions up to other people in NYC? > >How long have you lived in NYC, Jim? 15 years. >If we tell all of Them about Our best places, they'll get all crowded >and we won't be able to keep going there. So go to places no one would ever go to on a bet. Like a good (comparatively) cheap French restaurant in Brooklyn. There have been three in the time I've lived here and they've all folded because they couldn't get enough business. (OK, I'm being cranky, but it's only a couple of months since the last one tanked and it's still a sore point.) On a more positive note: there's a Filipino restaurant I like on the east side of 8th Avenue between 39th and 40th street. $5.50 gets you two entrees (say you're having a "combination"), rice and soup. No lines to get in. Bring your own beer and watch your purse (an admirably slick thief stole a friend's while we were there). From jk Tue Feb 2 13:16:33 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Is Christianity, in the end, Protestantism? (was Re: Random thoughts on the American Dream) References: <1kf1j7INN5av@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <1kktdbINNrlk@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> In <1kktdbINNrlk@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> norris@athena.mit.edu (Richard A Chonak) writes: >Well, I do hold (b): that the American way of thinking is the result of >the predominance of Puritan Protestantism in its origins. I keep >promising myself to dig up Prof. John Rao's article about Americanism >as based on secularized Puritanism: still individualistic and >anti-authoritarian, but now rejecting the idea of revealed knowledge or >even the existence of any absolute truth. I'm not sure Puritan Protestantism really have all that much to do with the fundamentals of how things have turned out in the West, of which America is only part. If you want to see a depiction by a great writer of a world in which there is no revealed knowledge, or absolute truth, or truth of any kind, or even thought or language, read Samuel Beckett. If you want to see materialistic and hedonistic individualism logically worked out, read de Sade. If you want to see a call for the abolition of all institutions between the individual and the state, read Rousseau. If you want to see hatred of exploitation (which in the absence of an objective morality is simply the desire to destroy anything and anyone that interferes with having one's own way) made into the fundamental principle of politics, read Karl Marx. None of those guys were Puritan Protestants. (Rousseau was from Geneva, but I seem to recall that they didn't want anything to do with him.) Obviously, America's particular history and circumstances color everything that happens here. But the basics are the same here and elsewhere even though emphasis may differ. Since in some respects things have developed farther here than in other places there is a temptation to blame whatever features of modernization people don't like on us. That's a mistake, though. If France weren't ready on its own for Disney World and Italy for liberalized abortion, those things would have flopped there. From jk Tue Feb 2 13:22:04 1993 From: jk To: norris@mit.edu Subject: Re: Is Christianity, in the end, Protestantism? (was Re: Random thoughts on the American Dream) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter References: <1kf1j7INN5av@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <1kktdbINNrlk@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> Hello, Richard! In alt.revolution.counter you write: >[On the strictly religious point: I tend to doubt that the line from St >Paul to Zwingli is truly a straight one, mainly because I see the >sacramental principle as rooted in the doctrine of the Incarnation, and >thus a permanent part of the Faith. From what we know about the early >church, it's hard to argue that they were anything other than >authoritative teachers and liturgical worshippers. But that's a topic >for e-mail rather than this group...] Interesting points, which I will mull over. I know too little about this to discuss it. Is there anything you would suggest reading? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth." (Blake) From jk Tue Feb 2 13:35:55 1993 From: jk To: comjohn@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz Subject: Re: More Americana -- "I am an individual!" Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter References: <1993Feb1.224256.5622@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> Thanks for your comments. When you write something you never know how it will be read, so it's a pleasure to read a subsequent post that fills out and extends what you wrote yourself. Hope to hear from you again in a.r.c. if time permits you to participate. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth." (Blake) From jk Tue Feb 2 15:39:00 1993 From: jk To: norris@mit.edu Subject: Re: Is Christianity, in the end, Protestantism? (was Re: Random thoughts on the American Dream) Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter References: <1kf1j7INN5av@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <1kktdbINNrlk@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> I just reread my post in response to your most recent one and wondered whether the tone might be overly argumentative. If so, I'm sorry -- it's easy to get carried away by one's own rhetoric. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth." (Blake) From jk Wed Feb 3 11:16:54 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Is Christianity, in the end, Protestantism? (was Re: Random thoughts on the American Dream) References: <1kf1j7INN5av@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <1kktdbINNrlk@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <1993Feb3.020218.10289@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> In <1993Feb3.020218.10289@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> comjohn@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Mr. John T Jensen) writes: >[I]sn't the point that [ . . . ] de Sade, Rousseau, and Marx are >essentially foreign to the _Geist_ of the west, though (God help us!) in >recent years, as the West has gradually abandoned its Christian (not to say >Puritan) roots, the influence of these men has increased? Are they so foreign to the spirit of the West? They were Westerners and have been very influential in the West. Also, for me at any rate it's hard to imagine them appearing anywhere else. Their thought has a certain adventurousness and cold-blooded determination to reduce everything to a rational system based on a few clear principles that I don't think you often find elsewhere. (Are the Chinese Legalists an exception?) Admittedly, the Western tradition includes a lot of things that conflict with each other, so what you may be saying is that writers like the ones I mentioned leave out things that are essential to the value of that tradition. To use a religious analogy, we could call them heretics within the Western tradition, and add that their heresies have been enormously successful. From jk Wed Feb 3 17:45:42 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: More Americana -- "I am an individual!" References: <1993Feb3.154058.17498@news.vanderbilt.edu> In <1993Feb3.154058.17498@news.vanderbilt.edu> rickertj@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu (John Rickert) writes: [Discussion of kinds of value: credentialed value, true economic value given perfect information, intrinsic value as a human being] > Now these categories may overlap, but I do think none can be entirely >absorbed into the other, at least not in a practical sense. But the >conflicts that can arise between them, such as the third and the first, >or the second and the first, generate a number of the problems which >Mr. Kalb discussed. These different senses of "value" are indeed relevant to the issues I discussed. One way in which they enter the situation is that people who have an uncertain grasp of their own intrinsic value as human beings tend to overemphasize value that is recognized by other people and demonstrated through exchange (in other words, economic value). Once economic value is taken to be the measure of human worth bitter arguments begin over whether economic values are "just". One response to such disputes (the socialist response) is to try to equalize the economic value of persons. Another common response is to try to prove such values are just by making them correspond to credentials. From jk Wed Feb 3 17:51:32 1993 From: jk To: ray@netcom.com Subject: Nietzsche Nitpick Newsgroups: talk.abortion,talk.philosophy.misc,misc.test References: <93026.005450KEL111@psuvm.psu.edu> <1993Jan27.074149.2571@netcom.com> <1993Jan31.011022.22986@netcom.com> In talk.philosophy.misc you write: >Friedrich Nietszsche That's "Nietzsche". -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth." (Blake) From jk Thu Feb 4 06:40:29 1993 From: jk To: oppedahl Subject: Mara's Post Mara Chibnik writes: >Everyone else: the answer was pretty obvious-- even to Carl-- and >I have no intention of answering it here or discussing this >project further except with women. For whatever it's worth, the answer isn't at all obvious to me. Does she have any reason to think it was to you? (I don't care what the answer is, but I was somewhat interested in her reaction to your question.) -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth." (Blake) From jk Thu Feb 4 12:42:53 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.objectivism,alt.politics.libertarian Subject: Re: .....capitalism and "taking care of others" References: <1kr9qqINNhon@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> In <1kr9qqINNhon@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> tyadav@athena.mit.edu (T.Y.) writes: > Secondly, if TCOO is a genuine human need (moral or otherwise) I would > think that individuals would CHOOSE to do it voluntarily. Why does one > need the govt to FORCE everyone to do that? Can't charity be run by > free enterprise, competitively like a service industry ? [Note: "TCOO" means "taking care of others."] One point to consider is that the things people take care of are affected by generally accepted views of who is responsible for what. Minimal government does not mean there are no social standards that people take seriously. (One complaint I have about activist government is that it reduces the importance of such standards.) So to the extent government is clearly not responsible for (say) feeding the hungry, but people nonetheless don't want other people to starve, the view is likely to become generally accepted that each of us has some personal responsibility in the matter and charitable giving is likely to increase. From jk Fri Feb 5 06:11:06 1993 From: jk To: jfb@macsch.com Subject: Re: Good arguments for atheism Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated,alt.atheism References: <1993Feb4.011015.23659@draco.macsch.com> Some comments on your article in alt.atheism.moderated: >* One should not adopt beliefs unnecessarily. This does not disallow >core assumptions about the universe such as the validity of the laws of >logic or the rejection of some sophist claims or the constancy and >uniformity of the laws of physics. These assumptions, however, seem >necessary in order for reality to be intelligible. For believers, though, their belief in God is not an add-on. It is something without which reality is unintelligible. God is either absolutely fundamental or he is nothing. >Either God cannot be observed in which case there is nothing that one >can observe that can make the term God mean anything. Or God can be >detected by some test that can give some meaning to the term God. >This meaning however will reduce the concept of God to something >intelligible [ . . . ] Here you seem to be taking the view that the meaning of terms is exhausted by correlative physical observations. That can't be right -- for example, the meaning of statements of core assumptions about the universe is not exhausted by any set of observations one might make. >* There can never be any evidence that is sufficient to show that God >exists or that necessitates hypothesizing the existence of God. This >follows from the skeptical principle that says that extraordinary >claims demand extraordinary evidence. "Extraordinary claims" are those that are surprising given our fundamental understanding of the world. For a believer the claim that God exists is not an extraordinary claim. >An all powerful God can eliminate all evil and suffering. The expression "all powerful" is not wholly clear. Is God's presumed inability to make a rock so big he couldn't lift it a limitation on his power? More to the point, if the world contains anything that is not God that thing must be imperfect in some sense. For all I know it is that imperfection that we experience as evil and suffering. >God is good because he conforms to some external standard of good that >is in some sense greater than God. Therefore, God cannot be the >ultimate being. God's will is free in the sense that it perfectly expresses his nature, which is goodness itself, not in the sense that he does things on a whim. So he needs no external standard for his actions to be good. >The actual history of Christianity shows that Christians are guilty of >intolerance, forced conversions and genocide on a massive scale. Would people have acted better if they had not been Christians? The events of the past 70 years or so suggest the contrary. >* Christianity is founded on certain miraculous historical events. I would say that it is mostly founded on its capacity to make sense of our lives and the world in which we live. >* The Bible on which Christianity is based claims that God is good. The >God of the Bible, however, is morally repugnant. We know from reading >the Bible that the Christian God orders mass murder, approves of >slavery, approves of the repression of women, and establishes brutal >laws. This testimony is self contradictory and absurd and therefore >ought to be rejected. The Bible similarly contradicts other claims >about God including his alleged omnipotence and omniscience. The Bible records how people came to know God. What's written there is naturally affected by what the people involved were like as well as what God is like. Maybe an analogy would help: if Marco Polo says some things about 13th century China that sound odd, the possibilities include the following: (1) Marco Polo didn't know anything about China because China didn't exist and never has existed; (2) China existed and Marco Polo spent a lot of time there, but he had his own quirky way of interpreting what he saw that we have to try to correct for; and (3) Marco Polo was right about China and we should listen to what he says even though it sounds odd to us because of our own hang-ups. -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth." (Blake) From jk Fri Feb 5 10:45:05 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: panix.chat Subject: Re: Standardization? Distribution: panix References: In carlf@panix.com (Carl Fink) writes: > Considering what the staff go through, I'm surprised they don't call >us "pains". I always preferred "the panicked". From jk Sat Feb 6 06:59:59 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Aristocracy No single way of life can fully develop all human virtues. Accordingly, a society that can draw on the particular strengths of people from a variety of social classes can be stronger and better governed for it. One problem with American society is that it is uncomfortable with the idea of social class and differences among people generally. Our talk of celebrating diversity goes along with denying or (when denial is impossible) attempting to eliminate the significance of such differences. One consequence of our suspicion of differences among people is that our society lacks an aristocratic element. That absence is our loss. The value of an aristocracy is that it can serve as a source of cultivated and self-possessed men whose attainment of positions of power results from something other than a consuming desire to rise in the world, and whose public careers have a larger element of public spirit and a smaller element of individual self-interest than is common in America today. Such men add something specific to public life that it is difficult to get in other ways. The necessary outlook is most likely to be found among those who are born into definite and respected positions in society and are unlikely to rise or fall very much as a result of their own efforts. Such men are aristocrats; the defining characteristics of an aristocracy are that family is a title to membership and lack of personal distinction no reason for expulsion. The principled objection to aristocracy is that it is irrational; the self-interested objection is that it is painful to be excluded. The former objection is met if a society is a better place for its members generally with an aristocracy than without. Position and honor are justified by their social function, and it is not a demand of reason that they be conferred solely by reason of characteristics that are specific to individuals. The self-interested objection is not specifically an objection to aristocracy, but rather is an objection that will be made in any society by people who are envious of that society's elite. It is not obvious that such people will be fewer or the pain of exclusion less in a pure meritocracy or quota democracy than in a society that has an aristocratic element. To what extent could aristocracy exist in America? To some degree and in some places we have had one in the past (think of the Adams family). The aristocratic principle is contrary to the equality that has uniformly been declared to be part of our national creed and that is increasingly becoming legally enforceable here. But it is not impossible that it could return. It seems to be something that constantly tends to arise in society, and to the extent we eventually become dissatisfied with our national creed and stop fighting aristocracy it we might yet see it again. From jk Sat Feb 6 14:29:52 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Culture, tyranny and stuff Yet another addition to the series of articles setting forth my personal views on a variety of subjects, this time on certain aspects of the relationship among community, culture and politics: A good life requires participation in a way of life that is shared with other people. The shared way of life may have arisen in any of several ways. Most often it will have simply grown up among people who live together. Ethnic communities are of this type, and the difficulty of leaving such a community shows the depth and breadth of what is shared. A common way of life may also arise more consciously, as in the case of a community with a way of life based on religious doctrine. Such a community may be fragile initially, because doctrine will not be applied or understood in the same way by people whose habits and ways of life differ. Later, the requirement that a member leave the community if he comes to reject community doctrine may continue to cause fragility. However, to the extent that the habits and way of life of a community become thoroughly permeated by religious doctrines that provide a satisfying way of understanding oneself and the world, the community's way of life will be much more stable than that of a mere ethnic community. Doctrine helps maintain a community because it is the communal element in thought, and thought that is stabilized by doctrine may help a community respond to changing circumstances or outside influences in a way that permits it to retain its integrity. Primitive communities with custom but no doctrine readily lose their integrity, while the Jews and the Parsees have retained theirs for thousands of years because they are religious as well as ethnic communities. Modern economic conditions and methods of communication have greatly reduced the cohesion of communities based on either ethnicity or religion. Today's ruling class prefers to base its rule on rational hedonism and treats ethnicity and religion as nothing more than vehicles for communal self-assertion. The predominant view in the West is that ethnicity and religion are irrational because they are not universal, and that they have the vices of irrationality -- excluding what ought to be included, forbidding what ought to be permitted and requiring what ought to be optional. In short, from a modern perspective they are exclusionary, repressive and tyrannical, and may not justifiably serve as the basis of social order. If ethnic and religious bases for social order are rejected, an attempt may be made to base it on universal values such as liberty and equality. Since such values do not have enough content to provide a basis for an entire way of life, such an attempt is likely to take a pluralistic turn -- to promote the creation of communities based on the common values that particular people happen to have within a larger political and social order that, although not a community, is universally acceptable because it is universally beneficial. Such a solution is not likely to be practicable in the long run. The benefits conferred by a pluralistic political and social order must be benefits that are desired by almost everyone without regard to taste. These will be the benefits comprised in prosperity. But it is unlikely that a social order viewed by its members merely as a source of material benefits can long endure. Such an order is likely to be destroyed from the outside or inside. The threat from the outside is obvious -- any society must be defended against foreign enemies, and men sacrifice themselves only to defend what touches them deeply. The threat from within is less obvious but no less real. A pluralistic society is justified to its members by its ability to confer material benefits on all; however, in practice these benefits will vary greatly among the communities of which the society is composed because the material well-being of each community depends on its way of life and its members' natural endowments. As a result, the social truce that is the essence of a pluralistic society is likely to be broken by fights over the distribution of such benefits. It may be possible to compose such disputes for a time, especially if prosperity is generally increasing. The measures necessary to do so, however, will require ever more extensive government action to redistribute wealth among the communities. Such action has the natural effect of destroying the life of the separate communities that make up the society and were originally the setting in which the good life could develop. As a result, the pluralistic society of many communities will become a soulless unitary society. Since people cannot bear to live in such a society, they will feel an irresistible impulse to attempt to turn it into a community through the adoption of values beyond material well-being, and pluralism will collapse. It is unlikely that such an attempt to turn a pluralistic society into a community will be successful. Values cannot be adopted by fiat; people must recognize them and incorporate them of their own volition into their way of life. Pluralism evolved because people could not agree on values, and the jealousies that lead to the collapse of pluralism will not make such agreement more likely. Furthermore, a state bureaucracy forced to choose values beyond material prosperity and security is unlikely to choose anything other than compulsory equality or state power, both of which are inconsistent with community and both of which lead to tyranny, which thus appears to be the final stage in the evolution of pluralism. From jk Sun Feb 7 07:10:40 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: panix.chat Subject: Re: Peak activity? References: emlee@sun.panix.com (Edward M. Lee) writes: >I recall that at MIT, [peak activity] was more like Sunday, before >classes on Mondays, although you can depend on quite a few people >online even on Christmas. It seems Panicoids are slightly more mainstream than MITsters, then. The only time I've ever been the sole user online here was this past Christmas, at about 7:30 in the morning. From jk Sun Feb 7 07:13:03 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.philosophy.meta,sci.skeptic Subject: Re: Consciousness and morality and all that References: <1993Feb5.213527.17962@midway.uchicago.edu> <1993Feb6.210846.1012@midway.uchicago.edu> pelton@ecf.toronto.edu (PELTON MATTHEW ALAN) writes: >Any moral system is ultimately based on a set of assumptions that >aren't supported. Eventually, you just have to take the axioms of an >ethical system as given. Which means that none is any more or less >arbitrary than any other. They can't be judged, then, on their >correspondance to Truth, since they are all ultimately backed by >Nothing. The only real criteria for ethical systems are practicality, >usefulness, effectiveness, and correspondance to genuine human >emotions. Here you say that all moral systems are equally arbitrary, and also that there are real criteria for choosing among them. That seems inconsistent to me. Suppose, for example, there were one moral system that came out best on your "real criteria". What would be wrong with saying that system corresponded to moral truth? From jk Sun Feb 7 15:08:31 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc Subject: Re: SOMETHING NEW FOR THIS GROUP: CHINESE PHILOSOPHIES Distribution: References: <2B74B5E2.8723@news.service.uci.edu> eaou079@orion.oac.uci.edu (Francisco Szu-Chien Su) writes: >Let's discuss, first of all, Confucius' thoughts, and let's imagine how >Plato or any other Western philosophers would respond to Confucius' >philosophy. Any of you who are familiar with Confucius, what do you >think of Confucius' argument of the "proper language" and the ways one >should follow to become a "gentleman"? In addition, what do you think >Plato, Aristotle, or any other Western philosophers would respond to >Confucius' thinking? I think Confucius was more practically minded and much less interested in abstract philosophical issues than most Western philosophers. To compare his views to those of the philosophers you mention: 1. One can think of Plato as a radical and Confucius as a conservative. In his _Republic_, Plato views his ideal society as something that needs to be constructed in accordance with a plan rationally worked out _de novo_. He views his own society and tradition as essentially flawed, so creating the good society would be a very difficult task requiring (if it can be done at all) a lot of very high-handed conduct. Confucius, on the contrary, views his ideal social order as something that in a sense already exists and could be made fully actual by letting things be what they already naturally were. The call for the rectification of names is obviously related to this belief that there is a single legitimate political order. The Emperor, the officials, the gentlemen, fathers, sons and common people already had their natural place in the scheme of things, and the chaos of Confucius' time was caused by people -- especially the upper classes -- ignoring what they knew or should have known was their duty and so overreaching themselves. If they had any doubt as to what their duty was they could instruct themselves by correctly interpreting the records of antiquity or the _Songs_. (In contrast, Plato wanted to make up his own myths about the past and to do away with the Greek equivalent of the _Songs_.) 2. If we look at Aristotle's _Politics_ some reasons for the difference in outlook suggest themselves. Aristotle deals with the variety of political constitutions that existed in the Greek world and considers the characteristics of each, particularly with respect to durability. His viewpoint is that man is a political animal, but there have been a variety of states of which none is perfect and none lasts forever. That was the natural outlook for someone who grew up in a world that had never been politically unified and in which it was the self-sufficient city rather than the universal empire that was the political ideal. As a result, Aristotle's outlook is far less reverent and far more analytical than that of Confucius. The difference in perspective also results in Aristotle's ethics being rather more individualistic and less self-effacing than Confucius'. 3. What Plato would have said to Confucius if they could have gotten together and talked things over is an interesting question. Plato and Confucius both thought of the Good as something transcendent of which people generally had only a confused notion. Each would have agreed that there needs to be a ruling class educated into habits of self-restraint and public spirit, and that music, poetry and so on should be part of that education. They might have disagreed on the usability of actually-existing institutions in making a better society. In part that disagreement may have been due to differences in their surroundings that caused Confucius to think of all under heaven as part of a single political order and Plato to think of political orders as a multiplicity from which one could pick, choose and construct anew if need be. In addition, Confucius' world was run by feudal lords and noblemen who at least theoretically recognized obligations like those Confucius thought appropriate, while Plato's world tended to be run more explicitly for the benefit of whoever happened to be in power. From jk Sun Feb 7 20:16:00 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.philosophy.meta,sci.skeptic Subject: Re: Consciousness and morality and all that References: <1993Feb6.210846.1012@midway.uchicago.edu> pelton@ecf.toronto.edu (PELTON MATTHEW ALAN) writes: >The criteria for deciding between [moral systems] are pragmatic or >practical. You decide which is best based on utility, naturality, and >effectiveness. You can then determine which system is best -- i.e. >most useful. It is the best mora; system. But that has nothing to do >with its truth. It is still arbitrary. It is not THE moral system, or >the RIGHT moral system -- simply the best moral system. Truth has >nothing to do with it, If it really is the best moral system, what sense does it make to say that it is arbitrary, or to deny that it is the right moral system and consists of true statements about morality? You seem to believe there is something distinctively good and right about using utility, naturality and effectiveness as criteria for judging moral systems. That's very odd, because what you say elsewhere suggests that you believe that using those criteria is no less arbitrary than consulting Leviticus or flipping a coin. Which is it? Are your criteria as arbitrary as everyone else's, or is there really something special about them? From jk Mon Feb 8 07:20:05 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Culture, tyranny and stuff References: <1993Feb8.022402.6090@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >[E]thnic communities are by definition religious communities. Their >theology is not set in concrete though - it is a way of life, rather >than a creed. When I try to puzzle out the relationship among religion, ethnicity and community I quickly get into very murky waters. What you say here could be extended to the claim that the three are identical, that the historical and cultural world that makes people what they are (ethnicity) and their relations to the other people who share that world (community) and to what transcends that world (religion) can't really be separated. On the other hand, it seems that people can change their religion more easily than their ethnicity, so a single ethnic group can include people of differing religions, and that people can share a religion who differ in ethnicity. Do you know of a good treatment of these issues? >BTW, is this a sleepy newsgroup or what? Is everyone else on the net >a flaming lib or something? (Hmmm...interesting word imagery, there) >Where are the counter revolutionaries? When do we get to storm the >barricades? Where's my musket? Muskets will be issued in 1995, at which time the global economic crash of 1994, the failed Clinton presidency, chaos in the former communist countries and the former EEC, and Shintoist fundamentalism in Japan will make circumstances ripe for a CR coup. Congrats for getting in on the ground floor. How'd you like to be Duke of Northeastern Massachusetts? From jk Mon Feb 8 19:27:59 1993 From: jk To: v035550@stortek.com Subject: Re: micro emacs documentation? Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st References: <1993Feb8.160733.9670@stortek.com> In comp.sys.atari.st you write: > Recently, I inherited a bunch of discs that had a bunch -o- public > domain stuff on 'em. Contained on one of those discs is micro > emacs for the ST. Problem is, there is ABSOLUTELY NO documentation > anywhere. I am uncertain what the version number is, but could > some kind soul please send me the file called "keybind.doc."? > When I press the 'HELP' key the editor asks me to "please visit file > keybind.doc." I sure would appreciate it. Many thanks. I use microemacs 3.10s and think it's a great editor -- endlessly customizable, you can use the mouse and your desk accessories, and if you also use something other than the ST you can get a version for the other system too. Unfortunately, though, my version doesn't use keybind.doc so I can't help you on your specific request. Why not get the ue311 files from atari.archive and get a complete set of the latest version? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth." (Blake) From jk Tue Feb 9 09:18:40 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Culture, tyranny and stuff References: <1993Feb8.022402.6090@news.cs.brandeis.edu>, <1993Feb9.001604.25323@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >"Duke of Northeastern Massachusetts"? Sounds fine by me! What kinds of >feudal rights are we talking about, BTW? How about _jus primae noctis_? Historical note: No-one has been able to find a reference before the 18th century to the j.p.n., so like the chastity belt the institution seems to have been a modern fantasy. It's possible the idea was inspired by the religious custom of devoting the first night "to the Lord" by keeping a vigil. >All the trends are pointing towards a massive destablization of >existing social structures. It is not a question of if, but of how and >when. I think it was Horace Walpole who said there was "a lot of ruin in a country". On the other hand, catastrophes do happen. They're more likely to occur in a strictly logical system, and there seems to be a tendency in modern life to work things out logically (the market is wonderfully logical, and the bureaucratic/judicial state aspires to be so). Another request for references: does anyone know of any sober discussions of how to tell whether Chicken Little is right or not? >BTW, I passed my German translation exam (w/ a dictionary) - I can agonize >my way through a text, but if I had to speak the language, I'd be dead >meat. Congratulations! After you go on to French you'll be able to favor us with translations of ENR texts . . . From jk Tue Feb 9 12:29:40 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,soc.women,alt.feminism Subject: Re: Nannygate References: <1993Feb8.144352.13019@news.unomaha.edu> <1993Feb8.164750.1288@netcom.com> <1l6lmiINNkr@gap.caltech.edu> <1993Feb9.032329.18970@netcom.com> In article <1l6lmiINNkr@gap.caltech.edu> peri@cco.caltech.edu (Michal Leah Peri) writes: >It seems to me that something has badly broken down here. Is the >[nannygate] problem mostly in the difficculty of finding a legal worker? >Is it in the intricacy of the paperwork? Is it in the laws themselves >-- should the laws be changed to better reflect the reality of the >situation? You can find legal workers if you look, but the quality tends to be a lot better in the illegal market. I know a married couple who had a string of energetic and well-educated Polish women (one was an artist whose dad had been head of the writer's branch of Solidarity; another was a medical doctor; another was a professional linguist) who liked children and who came to the U.S. for 2-3 years to earn dollars to help them get started in life back in Poland. The couple's choice was between having women like that look after their children and complying with a government regulatory scheme that isn't enforced, and they made the choice that a lot of parents would have made. People generally aren't inclined to take obligations imposed by the government seriously unless they are (i) obligations like the obligation not to steal that would exist whether the government acted or not, (ii) obligations like the obligation to obey traffic rules that would cause immediate problems if people ignored them, or (iii) obligations that the government shows it is serious about by enforcing them. Some people feel strongly obligated to obey laws simply because they are laws, but not many. How many of the Americans who post on alt.feminism file their use tax return and pay the tax when they buy something out of state? (States that have a sales tax require their residents who buy things in another jurisdiction and pay no tax or tax at a lower rate to pay an amount equal to the tax saved as "use tax" when they bring the thing home. The requirement is generally ignored by consumers except in the case of automobiles, for which the registration process provides an occasion to enforce payment. Here in New York the state occasionally takes opportunities to enforce it for other big ticket items.) So I suppose if more of an effort were made to find and deport illegal aliens and punish families who employ them people would be more inclined to feel that someone had serious objections to the aliens' being here and might be less inclined to deal with them. Also, if people who failed to pay the social security taxes of the teenage babysitter who watches their kids every Saturday night were routinely thrown in the slammer, people would take them more seriously. Until that happens, though, I expect people to keep on breaking the law. From jk Tue Feb 9 14:42:02 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Is Christianity, in the end, Protestantism? (was Re: Random thoughts on the American Dream) References: <1kf1j7INN5av@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <1kktdbINNrlk@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <1993Feb3.020218.10289@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> ,<1993Feb4.030231.2900@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> <1993Feb9.052318.522@news.cs.brandeis.edu> In <1993Feb9.052318.522@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >Christianity before the Refor- >mation was very different from the Catholicism that came out of the >Counter-Reformation. The medieval Catholic Church was more a "way of >life" for most people (ritual observances tied to the harvest cycle, >annual holy days, baptism/marriage/burial, certain quasi-magical >practices, etc), with only a handful concerning themselves with >theology. It's hard for me to sort all this out, possibly because I don't know enough about the relevant history. No doubt medieval society was more folkish than modern society in religious as well as other respects. However, pre-medieval Christianity was a creedal rather than a folk religion. Otherwise it would not have spread to Greek, Jew, Latin and barbarian, and there would not have been so much attention paid to defining the nature of Christ and the other articles of belief. I believe that in Byzantium the interest in theology remained quite general. And even during the medieval period in the West there were heresies that were quite popular in some places (like southern France), so creedal matters don't seem to have been the concern solely of a few intellectuals. On the other hand, even during the struggles of the Reformation for many of the people religion was more a matter of loyalty to the institutions of their country than of doctrine. I wish I could remember the name of the Englishman who commented that in his time there were 100,000 country fellows who were ready to fight to the death against popery, but couldn't have said whether "popery" was a man or a horse. Any comments from someone who's well-informed in these matters? >I think that contrary to >our assumptions, creedal religions (and we tend to assume that >religions are *by definition* creedal, which is purely a Western >assumption) are not more stable or more permanent than non-creedal >religions (i.e., ethnic "ways of life"), in fact, we could even argue >the reverse, based on recent history. What are the examples from recent history? My _a priori_ reason for believing the contrary is that thought is a means of adapting to changed circumstances, and thought requires that essentials be distinguished from non-essentials so that the essentials can be preserved through change. A creed is a statement of the essentials of a religion. >[T]he tendency is to drift towards whatever direction is >considered the doctrinal "core" of the belief...in Christianity, this >has tended towards the kind of egalitarianism which we see so prominently >displayed in liberal theology today, whether Protestant or Catholic [ . . . ] Why should modern egalitarianism be considered the doctrinal core of Christianity? And what non-creedal folk religions have resisted modernism better than doctrinal religions? From jk Tue Feb 9 16:11:17 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Culture, tyranny and stuff References: <1993Feb8.022402.6090@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <1993Feb9.001604.25323@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <1993Feb9.150639.23826@news.vanderbilt.edu> In <1993Feb9.150639.23826@news.vanderbilt.edu> rickertj@athena.cas.vanderbilt.edu (John Rickert) writes: >[I]s there an increasingly strong polarization between >liberals and conservatives in this country, and is the middle getting >wiped out in the crossfire? I'm inclined to think so. If the responsibilities of government are limited, political issues have limited importance and compromise is easy. If government is responsible for the well-being of each of us, then the fundamentals of how each of us lives become political issues that people do not want to give on. > What are your impressions? Personally, I think a lot of people who >are not really temperamental conservatives are being tugged in that >direction because they feel government and society have spun out of >control. It's been interesting recently how many mainstream types have been talking about the American social crisis. Claims that there have been changes as in the past but no clear deterioration seem to be wearing thin. From jk Tue Feb 9 22:27:41 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.config,alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Proposal for alt.revolution.counter References: <1993Feb8.000935.23017@news.ysu.edu> <16B6FEB79.C96@vm.urz.uni-heidelberg.de> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes: >>>The purpose of this group would be to give a discussion area for people who >>>espouse political ideologies _opposed_ to the ideas of the French (and >>>subsequent) Revolutions. > > Is this a serious posting? Are there really enough people > with this interest? If USENET has room for alt.sex.bestiality, why not alt.revolution.counter? Among other things, you should remember that the net is international and many European countries have significant monarchist movements. > If so, then what are the main ideas of the French Revolution > that they are opposed to? Liberty, equality and fraternity. For classic discussions in English of why that trio cannot be accepted without restriction as the basis of a political system, see _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ by Edmund Burke and _Liberty, Equality and Fraternity_ by James FitzJames Stephen (Ginny Woolf's uncle). If you don't have time for a reading list, you might consider that some people think (i) the purpose of politics is the promotion of the end of human nature and (ii) that end is virtue in community rather than the unrestrained pursuit of whatever desires one happens to have (liberty) without any preference given to one desire over any other (equality). Such people may be somewhat odd but they do exist, and they tend not to like the French revolution and its slogans. > Any why the French revolution? > The earlier American revolution was also a semi-democratic > revolution against a monarchy (although the precipitating > events were probably more the fault of the Parliament). The American revolution was largely a defensive matter in which the colonists wanted to preserve from Parliamentary revision as much as they could of the status quo that had already evolved in the colonies. The French revolution was intended entirely to destroy the existing order of things in favor of a new order to be discovered by abstract reason and enforced by terror. > Also, isn't it a little late? This is an intriguing bit of > weirdness and I'd like to hear more about it. Fundamental political issues are never settled. Ten years ago people would have said it was a little late to undo the Bolshevik revolution. The French revolution was three times as long ago as the Bolshevik revolution, so maybe it will take 30 years to undo instead of ten. That only means that alt.revolution.counter will have a longer run than the alt.gorby.* hierarchy. > Note that I'm posting this on the tiny chance that the original > proposal was serious. My nonsense detectors were pegged reading > the whole of the original. To coin a phrase, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. I will be looking forward to your participation in a.r.c. From jk Wed Feb 10 12:20:44 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Is Christianity, in the end, Protestantism? (was Re: Random thoughts on the American Dream) References: <1kf1j7INN5av@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <1kktdbINNrlk@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <1993Feb3.020218.10289@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> ,<1993Feb4.030231.2900@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> <1993Feb9.052318.522@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <1993Feb10.023655.19402@news.cs.brandeis.edu> In <1993Feb10.023655.19402@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >The basic argument of social historians (and I >am not one of them, being interested in intellectual history) is that >concern with religious dogma was confined to small educated elites, and >later to the growing bourgeoisie (i.e., it was an urban phenomenon as >well). I was under the impression that there were heresies that were locally quite strong, as in the south of France. Is there a particular explanation for such situations? Also, would _cuius regio eius religio_ (or whatever the expression was) have worked if religious dogma had not continued to be mostly an elite concern? >As for the issue of egalitarianism, >I would have thought that the connection was obvious, but I'll leave >that for another time. I would agree that a sort of egalitarianism is an element of Christianity. What I questioned is that the modern version (which includes the notion that all desires are equal) corresponds to the doctrinal core of Christianity. >Yes, I know jus primae noctis is a myth (though I suppose there might be >historians who might disagree - I'm not a medievalist), but it was too >good a joke to pass up. Lessee...how many angels can dance on the head of >a pin? Oh dear - that was a myth too, wasn't it? Debunkers are such spoil >sports. Sorry for being such a sobersides -- I felt bad about what I wrote after I posted it but it was too late. Could I retrieve the situation by saying that come the counterrevolution you'll be able to implement the j.p.n. in your own domains if you want? (Maybe you could adopt a "this time around it's no more Mr. Nice Guy" theory of ducal government. Personally, I plan to style myself "the Old Oligarch" and be part of a Council of Ten ruling New York with an iron grip.) >As to non-creedal religions? Well, remember by this I mean "ways of life", >and I think, in spite of its current love affair wwith modernism, Japan ia >is indeed a good example of a "way of life" which is adaptable enough to >meet numerous challenges precisely because Japan exists due to its "sense of >itself", not due to adherence to any creed. I'm not sure Japan is so special. Would a Japanese contemplating Europe and his own country say "we've remained what we always were but they've really changed"? Also, it seems likely to me that material abundance, which is very recent there, will utterly transform the Japanese way of life. It's perfectly true that habits can survive for a while the conditions and beliefs that gave rise to them, but not forever, and when outmoded social habits change they can change as suddenly as outmoded theories. Maybe I just don't grasp well enough what you mean by "non-creedal" religion. Would you say that Europe has a creedal religion (Christianity) that has all but disappeared and also a non-creedal religion (its way of life) that survives? As to creedal religions, I would say that Christianity is still with us to some degree after almost 2000 years, which is more than you can say for the folkways of the ancient Greeks, Romans or Visigoths, and when Christianity has had to adapt to new conditions to my impression is that the tendency has been to ditch the folkways and concentrate on doctrine. >BTW, to what extent are the West and Christianity linked? An examination of >Spengler and "faustianism" would be appropriate at this point. It seems to >me that there are salient features of the West which are in conflict with >Christianity. Certainly, the Christianity of Europe has been different from >early Christianity and Christianity outside of Europe. Wht caused these >differences? One could also ask the extent to which it is the Christian or the non-Christian features of the West that have led to our current situation. The ENR and the integralists might disagree on that point. My own view is that if Plato could predict the situation then it's not a result of Christianity. >What about Chicken Little? Well, to see if the sky is falling or not, just >look up. It's notoriously hard to predict the social future, though. >All this just skims the surface of these issues, I'm afraid. See you in a >couple of days. In this post it seems that I've mostly just asked questions that I don't know the answers to. I'm not sure that qualifies even as skimming the surface. Which is nice in a way -- it means I've found some issues I can stick with for a while. Good luck in the computer center! From jk Thu Feb 11 09:08:32 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.sex,alt.feminism,soc.women Subject: Tulsa (was: Sam Phillips (was: Sluts & Goddesses)) References: <1993Feb10.133630.9945@fuug.fi> <1993Feb10.213110.19473@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> In <1993Feb10.213110.19473@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> jay@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Jay Novello) writes: >an6569@anon.penet.fi writes: >>The 26-year-old >>actress recently cut a rap single she wrote called "Choice". ``It's >>about choices a woman can make about abortion, in posing nude, in >>wearing whatever she wants to wear without people calling her a slut.'' I'm willing to seize any lead-in at all for a palindrome: Tulsa nightlife: filth, gin, a slut. Does anyone know of any feminist palindromes? The ones I can think of go the other way. Some glorify dominant males, and even colonialism or military glory: A man, a plan, a canal: Panama! [Said of Teddy Roosevelt] Able was I ere I saw Elba. [Supposedly said by Napoleon] Others reinforce sexist social and religious myths, such as the story that in the first human couple it was the male that was dominant: Madam, I'm Adam. [Supposedly said to Eve by Adam, who apparently was taking the initiative in the relationship] The only recent head of a government that I can think of with a palindromic name (Lon Nol) was an ally of the United States in the Viet Nam war. What does it all mean? Can anyone who knows Malayalam explain things to us? From jk Thu Feb 11 10:41:34 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: 1989 and all that (was: Question of a newbie gentleman) References: <1993Feb8.000935.23017@news.ysu.edu> <16B6FEB79.C96@vm.urz.uni-heidelberg.de> <16B70112A2.C96@vm.urz.uni-heidelberg.de> <1993Feb10.195839.8367@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> In <1993Feb10.195839.8367@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> comjohn@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Mr. John T Jensen) writes: >Indeed, I think that 1989 and all that finished >off the French Revolution. I've wondered about this. The appeal for many people of the claim that the end of Marxist communism means the end of history seems to show that people have a hard time imagining any further development in fundamental political conceptions and ideals; in other words, that the line of political development from the Middle Ages through the French Revolution to modern times has come to an end and can no longer guide further developments. So the time may indeed be near for reintroducing into political life some of the things that the French Revolution and its progeny drove out. Any other ideas on this? From jk Thu Feb 11 21:52:52 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: nyc.general Subject: Re: MORE ADL BIGOTRY? References: <160.2684.uupcb@factory.com> ray.normandeau@factory.com (Ray Normandeau) writes: >Ray Normandeau of the Queensbridge Tenant Council stated that the fact >that the ADL capitalizes the word Hasidic but NOT the word Black when >referring to ethnic groups immediately indicates how the ADL feels >about Blacks. Does it indicate that? I am a white Protestant. When I write "white Protestant" I capitalize the second word but not the first. I believe most other people do the same. It is not my intention to show respect for Protestants but not for whites. >Furthermore Normandeau states, there is apparent hatred on the part of >the ADL towards inter-racial marriages as the Hasidic man could very >well be married to the Black woman. > >Furthermore the locale could very well be the privacy of the couple's >own home. But could those have been the artist's intentions? The cover seemed to express a wish that two communities -- Blacks and Hasids -- "kiss and make up". If that's right, then the artist intended us to view the man and the woman as members of the separate communities. That intention would be lost if we viewed the woman as a Hasidic Jew who happened to be Black. (My impression is that Hasidic Jews feel a religious obligation to marry only other Hasidic Jews. Someone should correct me if I am wrong.) >The ADL is wilfully and deliberately trying to cause an "unnecessary >inflammation of a difficult situation." To avoid inflaming matters it may help not to think badly of people when we can avoid doing so. From jk Fri Feb 12 10:34:55 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Integrism References: <199302112152.AA16212@yfn.ysu.edu> In <199302112152.AA16212@yfn.ysu.edu> ae852@yfn.ysu.edu (Jovan Weismiller) writes: >Integrists would say "la Foi Catholique d'abord!" (the Catholic Faith above >all). That is, Integrism is an ideology which takes as its first rule of >praxis the question "What is the position of the Catholic Church on this?" >[ . . . ] The Integrist on the other hand has >a large body of specific teaching enshrined in official Church documents >and interpreted by experts over the last almost two hundred years by which >to be guided in specific situations. >Some of these experts are Joseph, le comte de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, Rene de >la Tour du Pin, Emile Keller, the Vogelsang Schule in Austria, >Maurras himself, Denis Fahey and F.X. Cahill. What about discussions predating the French Revolution? Did any of the Medieval disputes over the relationship between ecclesiastical and secular authority lead to declarations that are still viewed as authoritative within the Church? Do Integrists quote Hildebrand? (My questions are very ignorant, for which I apologize.) Also, what is the status of Integrism within the Catholic Church? I seem to recall that Maurras got into trouble with the Church. De Maistre, the only writer you mention that I've read at all, has his own way of thinking. Is he really read as an expert interpreter of the specific teachings set forth in official Church documents? From jk Sat Feb 13 11:48:43 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: What Revolution are we against? References: drw@euclid.mit.edu (Dale R. Worley) writes: >I'm beginning to suspect that it's the Industrial Revolution, not the >French Revolution. Please expand. Thousands of cybermonarchists and hi-tech paleoreactionaries are now on-line, eagerly awaiting your views. From jk Sat Feb 13 12:05:19 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: nyc.general Subject: Re: MORE ADL BIGOTRY? References: <160.2684.uupcb@factory.com> <1lgpiiINN6ck@calvin.NYU.EDU> In <1lgpiiINN6ck@calvin.NYU.EDU> roy@mchip00.med.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes: > From a purely gramatical point of view, I would say that whether you >capitalize "white" depends on what part of speech it's being used as. In >"white Protestant", white is an adjective modifying Protestant, which is a >noun. I don't think so -- proper adjectives are capitalized, just as proper nouns are. Compare Democratic infighting (battles within a particular political party) with democratic infighting (battles that everybody can take part in). >The real debate is whether Protestant is a proper noun or not; it >should only be capitalized if it's a proper noun. I would say it should, whether used as an adjective or a substantive, unless being used in a descriptive sense to refer to people who are protesting. When used (say) of the Lutherans it no longer means "those who protest" but rather has to do with a particular set of traditions within Christianity that began with acts of protest almost 500 years age. > Is "black" an adjective or a noun? I guess it depends on context. >In "The black man bought a newspaper", it's clearly an adjective. In >"Blacks have darker skin than Whites", I would say both "Blacks" and >"Whites" are adjectives, although I suppose one could make a case (a weak >one in my book) that they are both adjectives modifying the unwritten word >"people", in which case neither would get capitalized. Here again I would say use as an adjective or a noun is irrelevant. Logically it probably makes most sense to capitalize "white" and "black" when used to refer to the two main racial groups in this country. People usually don't do that though, and I go along with the general custom. The original poster thought that failure to capitalize "black" showed a lack of respect; I disagreed on the grounds that people usually don't capitalize "white" either. From jk Sun Feb 14 09:47:24 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: which revolution etc. References: <1993Feb13.204104.6114@news.vanderbilt.edu> TROTTEJE@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu () writes: >Given Mr. Kalb's affection for the heretic Blake (whose poetry is >nonetheless sublime, I'll grant) one would have thought he might be >sympathetic to the notion that it is the Industrial Revolution "we" are >against. Heretics are worth reading because they see some things very clearly, even though they don't have a grip on the whole picture. In this area I don't claim to have a good grip on the whole picture either, and my request that Mr. Worley expand his remarks was not ironic even though my wording was rather facetious. My previous .sig quote, from Rilke, was somewhat to the point: "Alles Erworbene bedroht die Maschine, solange sie sich erdreistet, im Geist, statt im Gehorchen, zu sein." ("The machine threatens all that we have gained as long as it presumes to exist in the realm of the spirit rather than that of obedience.") The Industrial Revolution has given men power over their physical surroundings. In many ways that is a good thing. If you are a parent (as I am) it is difficult not to prefer a world in which modern medicine exists to one in which it does not. On the other hand, power magnifies vices, and one standing human vice is our tendency to convert means into ends. Another vice that has been made worse by the Industrial Revolution is our tendency to forget our limitations and in imagination to cut the universe down to the size of our desires, our beliefs and our ability to control. As to what "our" attitude to all this should be: it seems to me that reacs are people who have noticed that modern institutions and ways of thought ignore important things, and so are led to prefer earlier institutions and ways of thought. Earlier times cannot literally be restored, though, since what they were was an outcome of myriad circumstances that no longer exist. In addition, what earlier times were became what is now, so it is likely that problems now can be traced to problems that existed then. So our goal must be to find ways of realizing under changed conditions valuable things that have been lost. Obviously, doing so would require changes in any of the new conditions that are simply inconsistent with ultimate goals. Some of the things associated with the Industrial Revolution are no doubt in that category, but very likely many are not. In addition, it's not clear to me which things associated with the Industrial Revolution can be changed. At some point the reflection that our ability to reconstruct the social world is limited has to enter the discussion. >Of course, Blake's "Satanic mills" have been for the most part displaced >by the labyrinthine corridors of the managerial-techno revolution, but >one might plausibly argue that a "neutral" technology is merely abstract >nonsense. It would be nonsense if man were fundamentally an economic producer. In that case, the state of technology might reasonably be thought to determine the organization of production and therefore of society generally, and the necessary organization of society might be thought to determine ideology. That's a view that many people have held, but I prefer to believe that technology does not imply ideology, and that one may sensibly distinguish between a power such as technology and the use that is made of that power. >In any case, the Industrial Revolution was driven by an ideology born of >the bloodless abstractions of the French Revolution--at least in part, >since we mustn't forget the Calvinist contribution. I thought it mostly emerged in provincial England before the French Revolution out of the solution of practical problems by practical men with no particular concern with abstractions. >Indeed, one might speculate that the French Revolution owes something to >the Jansenist loathing of matter. Beneath all schemes of total >liberation (Rousseau, et al.) lurks this gnostic dualism which seeks, >above all, liberation from the "world-prison." Very likely. >The ancient gnostics satisfied their dreams of liberation by postulating >a "Hidden God"--a God beyond God, a nihilistic conception if ever there >was one [ . . . ] I know nothing about the gnostic notion of a Hidden God, but from the words it sounds like no more than the notion that God is transcendent and therefore not to be identified with anything else, including our conceptions of him. What more did the gnostics mean? >All modern ideology of the progressivist stripe is gnostic in this >sense, that it seeks total liberation from imprisoning institutions, >unseen ideologies. The revolt against nature, against any defining and >limiting "human nature" assumes an "authentic" ineffable selfhood which >"yearns to be free" from the dross of its created--and, therefore, >dependent or creaturely--status. Nietzsche is interesting on this point because he doesn't believe he doesn't believe in any authentic ineffable selfhood either. It's part of what makes his thought so wonderfully incoherent. Back to the Industrial Revolution -- what did Voegelin think of it? From jk Sun Feb 14 21:50:01 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: What Revolution are we against? References: <199302142230.AA08163@yfn.ysu.edu> ae852@yfn.ysu.edu (Jovan Weismiller) writes: >Interestingly enough, there _are_ some raving loonies (my description) >in the Integrist movement who _are_ Luddites. My question to them is >always, "How do you plan on getting rid of the surplus population?," >since if we get rid of technology and go back to pre-Industrial >Revolution ways, the earth will not be able to support the great >majority of its current population. Are any of them willing to compromise? I understand that quite high yields can be attained without machinery or chemical fertilizer if you're willing to be otherwise scientific in your approach to agriculture. (If we had a few organic gardeners or Amish in the group I'm sure we could hear more on the subject.) From jk Sat Feb 20 08:38:43 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory Subject: Re: mandatory civics education justified? References: <1993Feb19.142322.2431@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> chang@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu writes: >> 1) Children are told to express themselves about things which they have >> no knowledge or experience about, and then that their opinions are >> equally right. > >i think the reason children are taught this is because at when kids >are young, it is not as important to teach them particular ideas or >ways of thinking, but rather to help establish their sense of self and >individuality. I don't see what is worth having about a sense of self or individuality that depends on the notion that all opinions, no matter how uninformed or confused, are equally right. It seems to me that children should learn that some things really are better than other things, that experience and effort can help us know what those better things are, and that a lot of people have been putting a lot of effort into that project for a long time so it's smart to learn from your elders. Then children will be able to develop a sense of self based on the notion that there are a lot of good things in the world, that society is a collective effort to realize those good things and has often been successful in doing so, and that one has the ability -- which will grow over the years -- to participate in and add to that effort. >i don't disagree with you as much on this particular example [death >education], but on your general approach, which seems to be that we >shouldn't expose children to a wide variety of concepts. heaven knows, >they might start thinking about these issues, and before you know it, >we have... Children like to be told things they can rely on. In teaching children it seems to me best to start off with basic and concrete things that people do in fact rely on in day-to-day life -- basic skills like the three R's, basic facts like where things are (geography) and when things happened (history), basic moral virtues like honesty, kindness, respect for elders. Attempts at abstraction or serious inventiveness generally misfire. Consider the "new math". >> 3) In sex education courses, children were >> a) shown movies of couples actually having sex > >oh no! not sex! it's only the most natural undertaking known to >humankind... All societies surround sex with taboos, so I suppose sexual taboos are natural. I don't know of any society in which it's customary to engage in sexual intercourse in public, so in particular some degree of sexual reticence seems natural. It's true that at least since the time of the Cynics some people with a taste for abstract thought have considered taboo and reticence contrary to nature, but that only shows that educated cluelessness has a long history. >> 4) In a "values clarification" course, one child came home not >> knowing whether or not stealing was right. > >that proves the success of the course, not the failure. it shows that >the student has learned to think critically, not to blindly follow his >or her parent's teachings. the best way to ensure a widespread >following for an idea is to have a good idea. compliance through >ignorance does not sound very compelling to me as good public policy. Critical thought about morals or anything else is a fine thing as long as there is the necessary background of accepted standards and practices. Discussion of whether an idea is a good idea requires, among other things, a general consensus as to what "good" means. That is why the education of children mostly consists of teaching them accepted standards and practices, and critical thought comes after that basic material has been mastered. In this respect morals is no different from anything else. Students of physics don't start off by being asked about their personal theories of the universe, and basketball coaches who want winning teams begin by drilling their players in fundamentals. Brilliant innovations come later. >> 6) Children were often told not to tell their parents of school activities. > >i don't think that is necessarily good nor necessarily bad. in some >situations, it might be good and vice versa. i think your view is too >constrictive of the child, though, as if we need to strangle the child >if we are to keep control. You are speaking as if the issue were whether children are to be subject to authority at all. That's not the issue raised by the example, though -- the children were being *told* by the school what not to do. Rather, the issue is whether it should be the parents who are responsible for the children's well-being or the state. I think it should be the parents. The average parent cares for the child more than the average educational bureaucracy and is certainly no more misguided. Incidentally, I don't understand your use of the words "constrictive" and "strangle". What relevance do they have to whether children let their parents know what the schools are having them do? From jk Sat Feb 20 08:41:56 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory Subject: Re: mandatory civics education justified? Distribution: usa References: <1993Feb17.123907.2384@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> <38627@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> <185448@pyramid.pyramid.com> pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi) writes: >[P]eople are actually free to create themselves, but that they can only >exercise true freedom by choosing knowledgably between real >alternatives. The unexamined life leads to unexamined choices which >yields unintended consequences. People obviously aren't free to create themselves, and they can't know and examine anything without first accepting a tremendous amount without question. That's why being a parent is such a responsible position. Our children are dependent on us to such a degree that we make the world they live in. That's not a right of the parent -- it's a necessity for the child. >I often wish they/we/I didn't have to wait until being full grown adults >to become aware of *this* option. It might be nice if we sprung full-grown from the head of Zeus, but we don't. We can't lift ourselves by our bootstraps, and we can't make choices at all without already having values, beliefs and habits of thought. So we all have to start life by getting those things from someone, and I think the world will be better if people get them from their parents than if they get them from the state. >I'm very glad for a public school system which is not afraid to present >"what's so" about this world, and I'm sorry that you fear it. Public schools have trouble teaching children to read and write. You seem to think they are well suited to supplant the influence of parents in more complex and subtle matters. That puzzles me. From jk Sat Feb 20 08:45:06 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.feminism,sci.anthropology,sci.philosophy.tech Subject: Re: Is Male Dominance Universal? (was Re: More Goldberg Responses to "Patriarchy" Debate) References: <1m3aseINNiit@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov> rspear@sookit.jpl.nasa.gov (Richard Spear) writes: >humans have developed upon the template of 'infraprimate' physiology and >behavior [ . . . ] the forces that retained (and continue to promote) >this relationship and sustain patriarchal polities are social now, not >biological. Is it your view that patriarchal patterns of behavior that were once based on biology are now exclusively social because human evolution has eliminated all biological propensities to engage in such patterns? From jk Sat Feb 20 10:53:51 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: 1989 and all that (was: Question of a newbie gentleman) References: <1993Feb17.005600.1176@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> <1993Feb19.012412.15816@news.cs.brandeis.edu>, <1993Feb19.235720.5742@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >In article , jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes: >>deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >> >>>When the state is a natural product of a society, which functions for >>>the benefit of the society, than I see no problem with the State as >>>such [ . . . ] >>To accept "statism" is to accord divine status to the state [ . . . ] >I don't see how your definition of statism follows from my acceptance of >the state as a natural part of the social order. It doesn't. You said "what's the problem with statism?" and I presented a definition of statism that refers to a set of views that many people tend to hold and that is indeed troublesome. I also presented an account of how people might come to accord divine status to the state. >The point I was trying to make was that the state exists to perform >certain functions, and that only when the state becomes an end in >itself, to the detriment of everything else, only then do I have an >objection. I don't disagree. To accord divine status to the state is to make it not only an end in itself but even the supreme end of all ends. Neither you nor I approve of doing so. >Of course reality is not socially constructed, and since the state is a >part of reality, its ability to manipulate reality as a whole is limited >by factors beyond its control, but this does not mean that the state, or >society, or whatever, is not capable of bringing about change, for >better or for worse. I agree with you. Not everyone does, though. Many people are unwilling to admit that we did not create ourselves, and that reality is not a social artifice that can be reconstructed to further whatever goals one happens to have. Think of discussions of whether there is such a thing as "intelligence" and (if so) whether it has a genetic component, or of whether there are innate differences between men and women. >People did not invent the state to create values - people invented the >state to enforce the values that they already held. What those values >should be is the proper realm of religion and philosophy, not the state You seem to be of the view that values exist apart from actual social institutions, and that as such they can be known through theological and philosophical science. If so, I agree with you but not everyone does. My point was that the contrary view can lead to statism as I defined it. BTW, congrats on your new-found quoting skills. From jk Sat Feb 20 10:58:59 1993 From: jk To: sheaffer@netcom.com Subject: Re: Is Male Dominance Universal? (was Re: More Goldberg Responses to "Patriarchy" Debate) Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.feminism,sci.anthropology,sci.philosophy.tech References: <1993Feb18.210444.6165@netcom.com> <1993Feb19.212836.9523@netcom.com> >(What LAME arguments! Why do I waste my time arguing with this >guy?????????) An excellent question. Fitch and Argic are the two usual occupants of my omni-group kill file. He's not stupid, but he views discussion *exclusively* as a vehicle for self-assertion. Actually, I'm amazed you're still pursuing this discussion. How rewarding can it be to keep on answering the same dumb or mendacious objections? -- Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com) "Rem tene; verba sequentur." (Cato) From jk Sun Feb 21 09:58:01 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Progress and Utopia References: <1993Feb20.193008.8266@news.vanderbilt.edu> TROTTEJE@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu () writes: >Christopher Lasch, in a recent article in the journal "Salmagundi" >(Fall 1992), writes (in a footnote): "the idea of progress, in its most >compelling form, is quite distinct from the expectation of Utopia. It >rests on the expectation that the widening of men's horizons, the >constant expansion of the desire for a more abundant existence, will >generate an indefinite expansion of the productive forces necessary to >satisfy this desire. The idea of progress owes nothing [contra Voegelin >et al.] to the millennarian imagination, nor does it provide any more >than an incidental support for totalitarianism. The idea Lasch describes strikes me as utopian, but it views utopia as something that is perpetually coming rather than something that will fully exist at a particular time. Nonetheless, the progressive believes that each specific utopian desire (the abolition of war, for example) may be realized at some particular time in the future. The idea of progress is the idea that future as a whole is utopia. Obviously, so conceiving utopia makes a difference in some respects. If utopia is always under construction and never quite arrives the totalitarian temptation to try to create it all at once with strong-arm methods does not arise. Nonetheless, the progressive feels a kinship with the totalitarian, viewing him as a progressive in a hurry. Accordingly, the progressive tends to support the totalitarian on the grounds that the changes the totalitarian wants to make are changes in the right direction, and changes in the right direction are what the progressive lives for. >[I]ts persistence, long after the ideological collapse of utopianism in >the 1940s, indicates that it does not depend on the vision of future >perfection. What does Lasch mean by "the ideological collapse of utopianism in the 1940s". Has he forgotten the 60's so soon? Didn't he ever learn to pronounce "Nicaragua" with a trilled "r"? Also, I don't see all that much difference between a vision of future perfection and a vision of future approximations to perfection that become indefinitely closer. (All you Spengler fans: doesn't Oswald say something about Western man and the infinitesimal calculus that is relevant here?) From jk Sun Feb 21 10:01:26 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: What Revolution are we against? References: <199302142230.AA08163@yfn.ysu.edu> <1993Feb18.215452.11902@news.cs.brandeis.edu>, <1993Feb20.003242.6676@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >Classical liberal assumptions were already firmly in place in England by >the 17th century - consider Hobbes, Locke, the English Civil War, the >so-called "glorious revolution" of 1688, etc. At this same time, the >enclosures of common lands and other modernizing efforts in agriculture >were helping to bring about the revolution in agricultural output which >made the English Industrial Revolution feasible...since these >modernizing efforts in agriculture were a direct result of liberal >ideology, I would say this is a pretty clear indication that ideology >can drive a revolution in the organization of production and not the >other way around [ . . . ] [A] revolution in the means of production >based solely on 18th century technology could still have gone far - just >look how long water power was used after the invention of the steam >engine. I suppose one could add that people develop knowledge and skill to do the things they are interested in doing (Romanesque sculpture or modern industrial production, as the case may be), and also point to people who have rejected available technology because it didn't fit in with the way of life they wanted (firearms in pre-Meiji Japan; the internal combustion engine among the Amish). One question is whether the striking success of one line of endeavor leads people to conform themselves to the outlook and habits associated with it but when problems appear support tends to fragment. If so, at some point problems regarding the further development of industrial technology could lead people to abandon the habits of thought that until that time had been associated with that development, while continuing to use the technology already developed. What would you consider the classical liberal assumptions? I would say that the main one is that the common good of society is safeguarding the pursuit by each man of his own good as he himself defines it. That assumption doesn't seem to depend on any particular state of technology. One question is the extent to which by itself it leads to hedonistic materialism. One might say that to accept that assumption is to treat whether something pleases someone as the criterion for whether that thing is that person's good, which is the hedonistic criterion. One might also say that to the extent the accepted conception of the common good relates only to things that everyone in fact agrees on, the objects it is concerned with will tend to be material things because material things are easier to demonstrate. Other views may be possible, though. >[M]odern technology and modern methods of production are not necessarily >the same thing. True enough. One question is what limitations there are on social organization and outlook if one wants to preserve modern technology. >Liberalism has never been able to explain how - once it has rejected >tradition and religion, and established "liberty" and "equality" - it >has never explained how it can possibly keep the process from going >even further...a la communism, the welfare state, libertarianism or what >have you. Communism always seemed to me the logical final stage. If I'm right that the basic assumption of classical liberalism is that the common interest is safeguarding each man in the pursuit of his own interest, then at first libertarianism is the essence of liberalism. But nothing human stays the same. If safeguarding me in pursuing my interest is good, then guaranteeing that I will attain my interest must be better, and the welfare state becomes the ideal. Any qualms I may have that Peter is being robbed to pay Paul (a.k.a. me) can easily be allayed by the reflection that since society could have been organized in a variety of ways, and some of those ways would have been more advantageous to Paul and less advantageous to Peter, the assumption of neutrality contained in the distinction between safeguarding and favoring someone in the pursuit of his interest is unjustified. But if you start worrying about the injustice implicit in social organization due to the practical effect that any particular set-up has in favoring the interests of some over those of others, you will only be satisfied by social arrangements that make everyone's interests the same. The communist movement was the attempt to create such arrangements. This analysis, that treats communism as the natural goal of the progressive movement, makes the events of 1989 seem extraordinarily important to me. From jk Sun Feb 21 13:47:50 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory Subject: Re: mandatory civics education justified? References: <1993Feb19.142322.2431@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> <1993Feb20.171233.2449@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> chang@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu writes: >you yourself seem to argue that what [1] we need to do is give children >a solid foundation upon which to exist. that is the whole point of >[2] giving them self-confidence and a sense of individuality, that >their opinion matters and is acceptable. once they learn this,they can >delve into [3] the much more difficult world of right and wrong and the >various subtleties involved in that. I would say that [1] comes first and mostly consists in enabling children to participate in and contribute to the immediate communities of which they are members, such as family and school. Children are enabled to do that by learning and accepting the standards and practices of those communities. [1] then gives rise to [2], which ultimately enables them (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on maturity, circumstances and character) to think critically about [3]. >i don't see how your approach provides any foundation for children that >makes sense for their entire life. it seems more like a stopgap >approach; since they can't discern right and wrong, we'll give them >these easy to follow steps and they can base their lives on this. What's wrong with a stopgap approach for children? Their minds are _tabulae rasae_ with a lot of mental gaps that have to be filled up somehow for them to function at all. They can't be instantly turned into moral philosophers. Actually, what I propose is better than a stopgap approach: it consists in the children being brought up by their elders to accept the things that the accumulated thought and experience of the elders and the community to which the elders and the children belong seem to show are the best things to base a life on. The elders and the community might be wrong, of course, but that shows more the imperfection of life than any essential flaw in my proposal. >if you premise a sense of self based on a certain moral value system, >then questioning that moral system entails undercutting that sense of >self. I think that's right. What I am is largely determined by what I think is good and bad. My value is part of a system that includes the value of things other than myself. What's wrong with that? >basically, it means people will not question their basic moral systems. Depends on how basic you get. Since you can only evaluate things with reference to values that you already recognize, I'm not sure how one could sensibly question his basic moral system as a whole. He could sensibly question important pieces of it, of course. But even that is not something to undertake lightly. >however, if children are given a sense of self, independent of any >specific moral system and believe that they in and of themselves are >valuable and worthy of their own beliefs, then they can go and find what >in the world is good for them. "What *I* am is surely good and valuable and worthy, even though the value and worth of everything else in the world is uncertain." Is that a rational outlook? How come I am so much more morally fundamental than anything else? >i think it should up to each individual person to decide how much of >their life they want to devote to society and how much they want to >not. How is it possible for each individual to decide what kind of moral education he will receive? >i think the reason we find the idea of showing a sex film to children >to be shocking is that we raise children to be completely innocent of >sex, which is of course a "dirty" thing that we need to protect them >from it. You seem to find the aversion to showing sex films to children to be an oddity of our society that depends on our particularly rigorous notion of sexual purity. If that were so, then in other societies it would be considered quite an ordinary thing for children to watch sex films or (in societies that don't have films) for children to watch people engaging in sexual intercourse. Do you believe that is the case? >i don't think developing a personal idea of morality can be classified >as "brilliant innovation". it's something that each person should do; >otherwise, their lives are meaningless. they are living other people's >lives according to other people's moralities. now, if they choose to >live thusly, that is fine also, but it has to be a choice, not something >people are thrust into with no knowledge that they could live according >to their own wishes. It's normal for people to make their own what they learn from others. I speak and write English correctly and view it as my language even though I didn't invent it. I didn't invent my cosmological beliefs; nonetheless, they are in fact my beliefs. I learned some points of taste from my wife and a couple of other women; once learned, those perceptions have become my own. Also, since you have just stated a rule for what makes people's lives meaningful or meaningless it appears that you believe that your morality provides standards that apply to other people. Have you contradicted yourself? >many people go through life continually being uncomfortable with >themselves. our society is completely neurotic about looks, not being >too fat, etc. Maybe those people would be better off if they would forget about the idea that they had to create themselves. >certainly, i must agree that a school *telling* the child not to tell >the parents is no worse than parents inculcating a child with preset >ideas. but i still don't see the huge harms in this. at worst, the >child is presented with two differing authorities, which the child is >used to looking up to both as unquestionable. faced with the fact that >these two "unquestionables" are questioning each other, perhaps the >child will learn that neither is unquestionable and will try to develop >his or her own ideas. Children do best if they feel secure and they don't feel secure if the people they look up to are in open conflict. That's one of the reasons marital discord and divorce are bad for children. They will have plenty of experience of conflicting signals and demands as they grow older. Why rush things? >(i was assuming that the parents would disagree because they would be >losing their strict control over the child). What do you mean strict control? You overestimate the energy of the average parent and underestimate that of the average child. By itself, knowledge is not control. But in order to know when to exercise control and what kind of control to exercise a parent has to know what is going on with the child. In addition, it's worth asking why the school, which by law has control of the child for 200 days a year, wants to hide things from the parents. Can you suggest a legitimate motive? From jk Sun Feb 21 13:49:21 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory Subject: Re: mandatory civics education justified? Distribution: usa,world References: <1993Feb17.123907.2384@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> <38627@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> <185448@pyramid.pyramid.com> <1993Feb20.172904.2450@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> chang@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu writes: >the whole point is that children need to be prepared for their own >lives. you act as if this form of parenting is the be all and end of a >child's existence until he or she legally becomes an adult. maybe when >the child is five, the child is almost completely dependent on the >parent [ . . . ] i find it ridiculous that this same completely >protective paternalistic attitude might even be applied to older >children and young adults. I didn't say anything intended to suggest this. The normal course is that when children are small they are quite dependent on their parents but as they grow older they become more independent. I have no problem with that. I also don't see why the public schools should feel they have to hasten the process. >i think education needs to be revamped, and more private education will >definitely be important, especially to encourage more innovation. but >the political argument of state versus private education is seperate >from the more fundamental issue we've been discussing, that of the types >of good or bad education. It's worth noting that parents are likely to be more in control of private than public education because if they don't like what the schools are doing they can change their children's schools. From jk Mon Feb 22 11:13:18 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: Puritanism and the Revolution References: <199302150140.AA28135@yfn.ysu.edu>, <1993Feb18.231230.13268@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <1m98jjINN2fd@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> In <1m98jjINN2fd@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> norris@athena.mit.edu (Richard A Chonak) writes: >It >would be more accurate to say that Catholicism has had to fight a >perennial battle against doctrines which held man and the body in >contempt: from ancient Gnostics who believed that matter was evil, to >medieval Albigensians who forbade marriage, to Puritans who thought >fallen man was "totally depraved". >Orthodox Catholicism thinks matter and the human body are just great, >since God made them. Is it clear that Puritanism was to the contrary? That's not the impression I get from the descriptions of Eden (including the love life of Adam and Eve) in _Paradise Lost_. > Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, > All is laughter, love, and wine; But this statement would still make sense if the word "Catholic" were deleted. Ireland and Belgium are Catholic countries where the weather isn't particularly good, and neither is famous for laughter, love and wine. From jk Mon Feb 22 22:23:16 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory Subject: Re: mandatory civics education justified? References: <1993Feb19.142322.2431@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> <1993Feb20.171233.2449@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> <1993Feb22.125536.2464@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> chang@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu writes: >i think we esssentially differ on two things: the goal of education, and >comcomitant with that, which approach best reaches that goal. i view >the goal of education as producing thinking individuals, that can think >critically and independently. that does not mean rejecting the wisdom of >past experience. it simply means looking at that wisdom from a different >perspective. a person can understand the past, the assumptions made >behind old social mores, and can adapt them to changing cirumstances as >the old assumptions become outdated. But critical thought, and the determination whether things are outdated and what adjustments are needed to adapt to changing circumstances, require criteria that stay the same through the changes. Otherwise thought becomes arbitrary whim. I would say that the goal of education is a good life. Thought can contribute to that goal, but it doesn't exhaust it. By and large, and for most people, feeling, habit and perception play a much larger role. Some independent thinkers are needed, but not that many. Which is just as well, since not many people will ever be capable of thinking independently. [Also sprach Nietzsche:] "History teaches that the best-preserved tribe among a people is the one in which most men have a living communal sense as a consequence of sharing their customary and indisputable principles- in other words, in consequence of a common faith. Here the good, robust *mores* thrive; here the subordination of the individual is learned and the character recives firmness, first as a gift and then is further cultivated. The danger to these strong communities founded on homogenous individuals who have character is growing stupidity, which is gradually increased by heredity, anbd which, in any case, follows all stability like a shadow. It is the individuals who have fewer ties and are much more uncertain and morally weaker upon whom *spiritual progress* depends in such communities; they are the men who make new and manifold experiments." When I think of the greatest thinkers and artists the people who come to mind don't strike me as individuals with few ties who are uncertain and morally weak. I don't think of those as characteristics shared by Plato, Aristotle, the Greek tragedians, Virgil, Augustine, Aquinas, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Descartes, Pascal, Newton, and Bach, for example. One or another of them may have had a few flaws or oddities, but the same could be said of my relatives, and my relatives don't include any world-class geniuses. It's possible that in modern times a larger number of jokers creep into the deck, like Rousseau or Nietzsche himself. But that seems to have to do with the decline of the living communal sense that Nietzsche seems to believe is something that a great thinker must oppose. If Nietzsche were right, I would have thought that the less communal sense the less rebellion. Instead, we find the reverse. Also, what's the relevance to education? Do you propose educating people to have few ties, and to be uncertain and morally weak? Assuming Nietzsche is right, and the great thinker is necessarily on the outs with society, why not give the great thinker a well-integrated society to be on the outs with? I believe Nietzsche also said that whatever didn't destroy him made him stronger. Why not give his like some firm social mores to struggle with? >what i suggest, though, is that all people should be provided with the >tools to become independent, to surpass the teachers that gave them >those tools in the first place. The purpose of education is not to make life novel, but to make it good. If every Tom, Dick and Harry is able to surpass his teachers, then something has gone terribly wrong in what's being taught. A few analogies might clarify things. Usually people would rather get bicycles than the tools to design and make their own bicycles. Do you think a way of life is easier to invent than a bicycle? Unless the chef is very unusual, I would rather have dinner in a restaurant that served food prepared in accordance with the authentic traditions of Tuscan cookery than food prepared in some new way that no-one ever heard of before because the cook just invented it. And if a cook decided to be inventive I would be much more hopeful if he had mastered an existing tradition of cooking so he knew some standards and was in a position to know whether his new dish was worth preparing. Food is only a small part of a way of life, so it makes sense to be even more cautious in ethical matters. >i am not premising my arguments on a relativistic principle. i really >have no idea what has worth and what does not. the point, though, is >that it should be the within the power of the individual to choose. Does individual choice have worth or not? If you have no idea whether it does or not, why propose it? If it does have worth, does it only have worth for you or does it automatically have worth for everyone? If the latter, how do you know that there aren't other things that automatically have worth for everyone, like honesty or kindness? >we can provide an individual with the power to accept or reject that >moral education. You believe the power to accept or reject is good and ought to be inculcated in people. Someone else thinks that loyalty to the Corleone family is good and ought to be inculcated. How do you know you're right? >why does the fact that other societies have similar aversions make >sexual puritanism justifies? If something is accepted in one form or another in the great majority of societies, one infers that it probably has a function. >you learned english without choice, but now you should be able to learn >different langugages. perhaps you will enjoy speaking french more. Not likely. Do you think it was wrong of my parents, teachers and society generally to put me in the position I'm in now, in which I'm more or less stuck with English because it would be extremely difficult for me to learn another language as well? After all, I didn't choose for it to be my native language. >(by the way, please define what you mean by cosmological). The origins of the universe. The Big Bang and all that. >on the issue of education, it is impossible to be completely neutral and >liberal about it, to provide an absolutely unbiased education to people. >some assumptions have to be made about education. however, my point is >that those assumptions should be minimized. the only "moral" rule(i.e. >rule that the child cannot "choose" to accept) i use is that people >should be given the power to find their own moral rules. your >philosophy does nothing to minimize the amount of social morality >involved, and thus, it fails. Why should anyone accept your rule? Instead of minimizing assumptions, one might make the assumptions that seem to be true. >people have no idea that they have a choice in societal expectations and >perceptions. they have no power over prevailing social attitudes over >what is fat, thin, beautiful, ugly. thus, they are doomed to lives of >miserable wallowing. it's this lack of power which causes their problems >(as well as a strange societal view of beauty). In America people feel they can be what they want to be, and in particular that they can make themselves thin, beautiful and so on. So being not-so-thin and not-so-beautiful are not just conditions that are part of life, they're blameworthy. Compared with European women American women are always on diets and always worry about what they look like in bathing suits. The belief that you *should* be able to be what you aren't and misery when it doesn't happen go hand in hand. >i think a crucial issue is that your view does not provide people with >the motive nor means of developing as individuals. what is your view of >a good society? are thinking individuals a part of it? or is it >communal contentedness and general happiness? those assumptions are >important. Thinking individuals are part of it, but not everyone can be a thinking individual if by "thought" you mean abstract thought about general questions. I'm inclined to view what everyone can be as more fundamental, and everyone can be honest, kind and loyal. Everyone can love the good, beautiful and true in accordance with his capacity. Everyone can contribute to society in some way or other. People who think can make an irreplaceable contribution to society, and there is something intrinsically noble about thought, but to me it seems one-sided to make thought in itself the goal. From jk Tue Feb 23 15:24:01 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter Subject: Re: What Revolution are we against? References: <199302142230.AA08163@yfn.ysu.edu> <1993Feb18.215452.11902@news.cs.brandeis.edu>, <1993Feb20.003242.6676@news.cs.brandeis.edu>, <1993Feb23.042427.5706@news.cs.brandeis.edu> In <1993Feb23.042427.5706@news.cs.brandeis.edu> deane@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane) writes: >Has Mr. Kalb read Tomislav Sunic's book? He has a section which outline some of >the ENR arguments (or rather, the arguments of an individual who is a source >for ENR ideas on the subject) which point to this very outcome of liberalism. I haven't seen the book. Judging by the samples of Mr. Sunic's prose that have appeared in _Chronicles_ I don't think I'd be able to read the whole thing. Maybe I'll take a look at it for the references. >I would argue >that "communism" as we understand the word, is not necessarily the last stage, >but rather, some form of totalitarian, egalitarian leveling is the final >outcome of liberalism in practice. It may even be impecably "democratic" - >Nietzsche's "last man" if you will. By "communism" I mostly understand totalitarian egalitarian leveling. It would be the ultimate horror if that state of affairs were indeed impeccably democratic. I don't think that would happen, though, if only because people would become too disorderly and brutal in their personal lives for democracy to work. From jk Wed Feb 24 12:26:51 1993 From: jk Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory Subject: Re: mandatory civics education justified? References: <1993Feb19.142322.2431@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> <1993Feb23.194150.2491@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> In <1993Feb23.194150.2491@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> chang@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu writes: >i would agree, except the problem is that we are inundated with that >criteria that stays the same through the changes. for 18 years, we >are bombarded with it continually. Then why do people get so edgy when the subject of schools teaching values comes up? And when schools do teach values, why does it tend to take the form of "values clarification"? >the problem is that nowadays, people do virtually no questioning and >have an extremely limited self-awareness. What past are you contrasting "nowadays" with? I would say that nowadays the problem is more that people aren't brought up with a coherent understanding of values that enables them to make sense of their daily lives and the position in which they find themselves in the world. If you like questioning and self-awareness, then I would point out that such things are a lot easier for someone who starts with a definite viewpoint than someone who starts with no clear idea of things. >that's a pretty dim view of humanity. i sometimes wonder why i have >such optimism about people's capabilities. you're right to some >degree. so few people i know are independent thinkers. Why is it dim? People have many different strengths, but no-one has all of them. There are good people who are not independent thinkers. >i agree that education is to forward "the good life". but what >is the good life? ignorance is bliss? let's live like a content herd >of cows, eating away at the grass as totaly fulfillment of our lives? >seems a little shallow to me, though i may be imposing my personal >views here. People who don't think independently aren't necessarily ignorant. If the educational system is working at all well, what people are taught most of the time for most people will be better than what those people could have figured out for themselves. Which is good even for the independent thinkers, because no-one can investigate independently the validity of the great majority of the beliefs he has to rely on in living. Also, the lives of people who are not independent thinkers are not necessarily mediocre. You can achieve great things without being an independent thinker, you just won't come up with any interesting new ideas. >> When I think of the greatest thinkers and artists the people who come to >> mind don't strike me as individuals with few ties who are uncertain and >> morally weak. I don't think of those as characteristics shared by >> Plato, Aristotle, the Greek tragedians, Virgil, Augustine, Aquinas, >> Montaigne, Shakespeare, Descartes, Pascal, Newton, and Bach, for >> example. >you're just factually wrong on this one. an overwhelming majority of >the great thinkers are outcasts in some form or another. i suggest >you do a little biographical reading. it makes sense too. why would >a person, completely content with the world, bother to innovate? I don't want to take the time to discuss the biographies of the people I listed. In response to your general point, I would say that it's possible to think something new and good is possible even if you have many ties and are self-confident and morally strong. You might take delight in the activity of bringing something new and alive and beautiful into the world. You might think that what's been done up to now is good and take pleasure in developing it further. (Many great thinkers and artists have admired their predecessors.) >socrates was too wise for his own society (by >the way, he is a perfect characterization of the independent thinker >that you find a distaste for). he was not tolerated because he asked >too many compelling questions. i wonder how he would fare if placed >in one of your schools. When have I expressed a distaste for independent thinkers? I referred to independent thought as a noble activity that makes an irreplaceable contribution to the world. Theoretical physics is a form of independent thought, for example, and I think it's a fine thing. There just aren't that many people who can contribute much to it, and there will be problems if we don't drill people on the specifics of how to fix a TV set because we want them to approach fixing it in the same way a theoretical physicist would approach some cutting-edge problem. As to what Socrates would be like as a schoolboy, I don't know. It might depend on the school. He didn't like democracy or moral relativism, so chances are he wouldn't like any school you would set up. He might like a school of the sort I would advocate if he thought that the view of life informing the school could stand up reasonably well to criticism. >you can make the school a wellspring for thinkers. this >is its traditional role, which has been subjugated in modern society. Can you give some examples of schools of the past that you approve of? >we don't have to differ here. remember, making people self-aware and >thinking does not mean that they go out and invent new concepts >everywhere (though that would be great!). it only means that they >understand why they live their lives, and if they disagree with it, >then they have the power to do so. Sounds reasonable in a way. Maybe the issue is how much of the existing system of things people have to assimilate before they can criticize it productively and how many people are likely to succeed in doing so. >no matter how hard i try, i will never be >able to get inside your brain and understand what you think and why >you think it. therefore, you should have the power to choose your >lifestyle, and i mine. Is self-knowledge that easy, and are people that different from each other? My knowledge of most things is based more on my and other people's experience of other things of that type than on consideration of the individual thing itself. Your notion seems to be that each individual by his individual efforts can come up with a theory about what is good for him and how to achieve it that is a better guide to action than the theory people collectively can come up with about what is good for people generally. I don't see why that should be so. >"if anarchy is generally accepted in >human societies, then it's okay." for the vast majority of human >existence, that was how we lived. What do you mean? As long as there have been human beings there has been social order. >as i recall, the original statement you made regarding this was that >you did not choose your own cosmological beliefs. i find this >fascinating. i sure chose mine, and i'm saddened that you did not. Not sure what you mean. Do you accept the Big Bang? What moved you to accept or reject it? Why the sadness? Isn't there enough sadness in the world? >how do reconcile your ideas with the >fundamentally liberal ideas in the bill of rights? "one might make >the assumptions that seem to be true." i have trouble seeing how this >is compatible with "congress shall no make no laws respecting the >establishment of religion..." the principle behind that is that >people, not society, should make their own individual decisions. The principle when the bill of rights was adopted was that the Federal government would not set up a national church. The Federal government was not the whole of society. The states could still have their state churches, and many of them did. The colleges all had some sort of religious affiliation, and many of them still do today. >they don't have to enter into a mind-boggling >metaphysical debate over the nature of the universe. but they should >do some thinking, on a minimal level. that's all i'm saying. I agree that everyone should do some thinking.
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