-copied from here.
"'I think a settlement that everyone can live with is possible.'
"Whether in superstition or in metaphor, Cerialis replied, surprisingly quietly, 'That will depend on the goddess, won't it?'"
-"Star of the Sea," 16.
We have lived in transitional times for a long time. Horatio does in part believe that the time is hallowed and gracious in that season when the Saviour's birth is celebrated. Cerialis says in superstition or in metaphor that a settlement will depend on the goddess.
There is a universe of difference between belief and part belief and between superstition and metaphor yet there are still people who operate on either of these levels and that will continue as long as the world remains in turmoil.
Shakespeare's and Anderson's characters speak for us now.
25 comments:
Kaor,. Paul!
Human beings are always going to be like that because most people are not going to be wholly or partly skeptical or atheistic.
Turmoil or chaos are permanent factors in human affairs because people are like that, prone to strife, conflict, violence, etc. What we call "peace" is always going to be precarious.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
People are not prone to strife, conflict, violence etc. I have disproved this innumerable times. What we call peace will no longer be precarious when technological production of more wealth than everyone needs makes it no longer necessary or desirable to compete for resources, raw materials, territory, profits or markets. It will no longer be necessary to produce weapons or to employ large numbers of full time bearers of arms or to device any other means for a minority to coerce the majority.
You cannot possibly know that "most people are not going to be wholly or partly skeptical or atheistic."
We already have parts of the Earth that are not subject to turmoil or chaos and we can extend those conditions over the whole Earth when enough people want to do this and when they have become able to shake off the propaganda that tells them that it is impossible. This is a battle of ideas that is going on now. Increasing numbers are seeing that the problem is not immigrants but the system that we are all living under, the system that causes wars, droughts and devastation and then demonizes those who flee from those things and who want to come here to live and work.
Paul.
Nothing - especially not active, dynamic and creative mankind - is always going to be the way it is now. Everything changes, has changed and continues to change. If that were not the case, then we would not exist.
Kaor, Paul!
I believe your views/hopes about human beings to be, kindly put, naive and unrealistic. Any kind of global unification is going to happen because a single power or an alliance of powers conquers the world. Nothing I've seen in human life and history makes me think otherwise.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But I have stated reasons for what I say. People do not become violent for no reason whatsoever. You views, kindly put, contradict the facts about human beings and are dystopian.
Nothing you have seen in human life and history tells you what will happen in fundamentally different conditions in future. Before humanity evolved, an alien observer could have said, "Nothing I have seen in the past or the present on Earth makes me think that intelligence, technology or civilization will ever exist here."
We can and should do without conquests in future. Another kind of global unification can be a federation of genuinely free, self-governing communities. We can build that.
Paul.
Sean,
Please respond to the specific details of what I argue instead of just issuing general dismissals like "naive and unrealistic."
Paul.
Paul: human beings are behaviorally flexible, but not infinitely so. Much of human nature is genetically determined.
Sure. I think:
(i) We are VERY flexible. Look at all the different cultures, social milieus etc. What is everyday behaviour in one social sub-culture is shocking or (regarded as) insane in another.
(ii) Sf invites us to contemplate and speculate about the effects of technology on society. This can make for even greater social flexibility in the future.
(iii) Knowing all this, learning from mistakes, learning from history, with the benefit of hindsight etc, groups within society, if not yet society as a whole, can make further progress in changing things for the better.
(iv) We can clearly see what social conditions generated Naziism so we should be able to prevent that from happening again. (Which means that one of your neighbours would have been a concentration camp guard if more recent history had gone differently.) By "we," I mean not everybody and not our current rulers or social managers but large numbers of people who are dissatisfied with what is happening now and who want to move society forward instead of backwards.
Kaor, Paul!
No, the best indicator of how humans are likely to behave in the future is how they are behaving now and as they did in the past. I don't share this faith you have in "learning."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But people in the past and present have not been violent in just any and every conditions and the conditions in which they have been violent can be eliminated in future and surely it is clear that I do not identify those changed conditions just with "learning." You never seem to be replying to what I have in fact said.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I don't believe in your "changed conditions." Mere material changes are not going to change what people are like inwardly. Again, Chapter Six of GENESIS comes to mind.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But I have replied to all that before.
Very large material changes are not simply identical with inward psychological and moral changes but are not appropriately described as "mere," either.
Changes in material conditions and social relationships do greatly affect individual assumptions, expectations, aspirations, attitudes, value judgments etc.
Again, GENESIS, Chapter Six, does not depict the kind of society that I am talking about in which vast technological and social resources are entirely invested in identifying and developing the fullest potential of each individual human being from birth.
But why do we keep saying the same things over and over? Do you forget what has been said? If what has been said on the opposite side of an argument is remembered, then it has to be acknowledged, taken into account and replied to, not just left behind as if it had never been said. That leads to it just being repeated as has happened here again.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
We repeat because we have irreconcilable basic premises.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
No. Having different premises does not explain repeating phrases word for word irrespective of what has been said in reply to them in the meantime. You have to reply to replies.
But, if premises are the issue, then what are your premises?
Paul.
Paul: your error is that conflict arises from shortage of resources for food, clothing, shelter and so forth.
Those -can- be sources of conflict.
However, the more fundamental source of human conflict is a fight for -power-, as that was a crucial element in successful reproduction for hundreds of thousands of years.
If you were powerful, you had more children, other things being equal -- hence 10% of East Asia is descended from Genghis Khan.
If you were a successful flunky of the powerful, you also had a better chance at more offspring.
Note that this is not a -conscious- source of competition for power -- it's a subconscious, and genetically sourced, drive. Even people with no particular desire for children have it. Evolution is a kludgy, random process.
Hence competition for power is inherent in human beings.
And as Max Weber pointed out, the ultimately decisive means of political struggle is always violence.
But I question whether social relationships of freedom, equality and shared common wealth/abundance need retain instruments of coercion like weapons, police, armies, courts and prisons which give a minority the means to exercise power over the majority or give one group/class the power to control another group/class. Social leadership (not rulership) and prestige will still exist.
Well, to start with, what belongs to everybody belongs to nobody... and he's the one who takes care of it.
And power is the ability to enforce your will against others.
In some circumstances, we develop shared pride in collective ownership.
Surely to enforce your will requires means of coercion?
Paul: it certainly does, and humans have an inherent drive to do so. Absent genetic engineering, it will never go away. Hence it can be managed... sort of... but not abolished.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. For example, a substantial minority of humans would kill anyone who seriously annoyed them, if there weren't a looming presence of police.
Or in more primitive societies, a threat of retaliation; but plenty of humans just don't think that far ahead or loose their tempers.
Paul: yes, but that has to be carefully cultivated, and it's much easier in small homogenous societies.
One of mine that got lost:
In some circumstances, we develop shared pride in collective ownership.
Kaor, Paul!
The teaching of the Church on the Fall plus Stirling's comments explains why I don't believe in your hopes.
And what do you even mean by "...shared pride in collective ownership"? It makes no sense.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
There was no Fall. There will be nothing to fight about when everyone has everything they need and when several generations have grown up in those completely different conditions and have never experienced anything else. Shared wealth and equality will be the taken for granted norm.
Shared pride in collective ownership means exactly what it says. In Lancaster, we collectively own the Town Hall and public squares and parks. We want them to be appreciated and used by everyone with no one excluded.
Even if you disagree with something, don't pretend that you don't understand it!
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I still don't believe a "...shared pride in collective ownership" makes any logical sense.,
As for the rest, we will have to agree to disagree.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But I thought that I demonstrated shared pride in the case of Lancaster. What is illogical (inconsistent or self-contradictory) about it?
Paul.
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