Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From jk Wed Oct 1 05:23:01 1997
Subject: Re: Multicultural vegetables
To: j
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 05:23:01 -0400 (EDT)
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> historical trend: widening the area of free-trade results in
> increased pressure for bigger government. To the extent that this
> pressure is not successfully resisted, free-trade libertarians become
> the unwilling servants (or, to use a Commie term, the objective
> allies) of an expanded regulatory state.
Bigger in the sense of geography, not necessarily in the sense of
regulatory burden. At least additional argument is needed to show that
a large free-trade area will end up more extensively regulated than a
small one. Free traders would intend for the international regulatory
scheme to supplant local ones altogether, so that compliance with the
former would mean that the goods can be sold anywhere.
To me it seems more like a national sovereignty issue and a rule by
distant irresponsible elites issue than a quantity of regulation issue.
Countries where there has been little regulation would get more, but
the reverse would also be true.
I suppose to the extent libertarians are radicals who hope to change
things they might have an easier time of it if what they have to change
isn't a unitary global structure impervious to influences from outside
the bureaucracy.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Wed Oct 1 08:52:55 1997
Subject: Re: NY visit
To: t
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 08:52:55 -0400 (EDT)
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Our talk was interesting. You want it seems to modify the welfare
state to allow for more particularism and local community. You accept
the generally secular ethos that has arisen in England and the West but
want to modify it to make room for an understanding of the good life
that has more depth than getting whatever it is you happen to want as
easily and quickly as possible, maybe something out of A. Maslow.
I doubt that any of that will be possible. If the morally neutral
state - morally neutral because it won't be the expression of any
particular community - is ultimately responsible for seeing that each
of us has a materially decent life then our connections to others
become as a practical matter optional. What you do and I do is really
in the end our own separate business.
That way lies radical individualism - community after all depends on
bonds that are part of self-definition. Body is not so separate from
soul that we can make ourselves materially independent of each other
without affecting less tangible things. That way also lies the servile
state since the state that takes care of us will necessarily demand a
quid pro quo. Since there won't be any very persuasive moral
relationship to the morally neutral state the quid pro quo will be
exacted by force.
I'm also doubtful of the secular state. People need to understand good
and evil as connected essentially to the way the world is rather than
something projected by human desires and fears onto a morally neutral
world. A truly non-religious morality will not I think work. Also,
for self-rule to be possible the state must tie into fundamental
understandings of right and wrong. If the order of the state is not
somehow based on that of the cosmos it will I think exist only by
force.
Such at any rate are my concerns. Absolute agreement is not however
necessary, certainly not as things are now.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Thu Oct 2 13:57:11 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
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Subject: Re: Character: the Human Nature Question
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 13:57:11 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <01BCCE76.38784480@shentel.shentel.net> from "Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore" at Oct 1, 97 02:27:37 pm
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Andy:
> Jim goes on to express reservations about the adequacy of that ideal,
> reservations that seem to reflect that lack of faith, of which Miki
> spoke, in human nature with nothing "imposed" upon it.
One issue it seems to me is whether man is a social animal, whether we
are complete in ourselves individually or whether we become ourselves
only by being part of something greater that exists in accordance with
principles that don't reduce to our individual feelings, impulses,
aspirations, etc. In the former case individual inclinations may be a
sufficient guide but not otherwise.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Fri Oct 3 07:06:20 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
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Subject: Character: Social Animal
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Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 07:06:19 -0400 (EDT)
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Andy writes:
> Therefore, we must presume that human nature developed in such a way
> that not only was it geared toward survival, but more specifically
> geared toward a strategy of survival through social life. It would
> seem then that our "individual feelings" etc. should be naturally
> intertwined with the requirements of a larger group.
But there is a limit to the intertwining.
Man naturally has language, culture, the ability to accumulate social
experience through tradition and symbolize understandings of good, evil
and the cosmos through mythology, etc. None of these things can be
educed from a single individual. Each of us must get them from his
society to become human. That was also true in the paleolithic. Even
then there were different cultures maintaining different ways of life
under different circumstances.
Any large group must exist through the identification of the members
with the group, so the way it satisfies its requirements must somehow
on the whole be consistent with individual feelings, etc. Not in all
cases, though. The way of life of an Eskimo was quite different from
that of a Bushman, so presumably some things implicit in human nature
had to be suppressed and some exaggerated to become one or the other.
Also, even after childhood training the need for social control always
remains. There may not have been formal government but there were
Eskimo shaming rituals and no doubt something with a similar function
among the Bushmen and no doubt the Cro-Magnons.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Oct 3 08:08:35 EDT 1997
Article: 10339 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Immigration, multiculturalism and idealism
Date: 3 Oct 1997 07:59:10 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <199709231641012250526@deepblue22.salamander.com> <60aoss$jgr@panix.com> <19970929094204699239@deepblue15.salamander.com> <60pmih$4js@panix.com> <199710012041333170025@deepblue16.salamander.com>
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In <199710012041333170025@deepblue16.salamander.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>That would indicate that there is a level or scope of planning which
>does not lead to corruption. Or is it entirely contextual? If I let
>the task be the master, will my efforts somehow be properly directed,
>at least to the extent that I will not serve what I oppose, or become
>the enemy?
Pascal said that tyranny is the attempt to get in one way what can only
be had in another. Everything must advance consistently with its own
principles. So if your idea of the good society is (e.g.) one in which
people rule themselves in accordance with understandings of the good
developed through tradition you're not going to be able to bring it
about by seizing control of the state and having the newly-formed
Ministry of Traditional Understandings of the Good straighten everyone
out.
It would make sense instead to develop and propagate your notion of
what the good society is, to try with others to live by it, and to try
to weaken or limit the effect of things that prevent its realization,
for example the centralized state bureaucracy, the universal
all-penetrating market, liberal ideology, what have you.
It seems to me less a matter of making the task the master than being
guided by an understanding of what is good that can be shared with
others and coordinate independent efforts, and that also helps you live
well here and now so that pragmatic success of some grand scheme does
not become a _sine qua non_.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Oct 3 08:08:36 EDT 1997
Article: 10340 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Immigration, multiculturalism and idealism
Date: 3 Oct 1997 08:01:49 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <611mgv$jvk@examiner.concentric.net> drotov@concentric.net (dimitri rotov) writes:
>The crisis of American conservatism is Petainism (minor strain) and
>Lavalism (major, monumental strain).
Would you repeat for us what P'ism and L'ism are?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Oct 4 09:55:20 EDT 1997
Article: 10343 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Immigration, multiculturalism and idealism
Date: 3 Oct 1997 18:15:16 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <199709231641012250526@deepblue22.salamander.com> <60aoss$jgr@panix.com> <19970929094204699239@deepblue15.salamander.com> <60pmih$4js@panix.com> <199710012041333170025@deepblue16.salamander.com> <611mgv$jvk@examiner.concentric.net>
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In <611mgv$jvk@examiner.concentric.net> drotov@concentric.net (dimitri rotov) writes:
>Some of the issues of conservatives implementing change are
>highlighted in Paul's career and I don't think he makes any mistakes.
A very interesting comment. Do you want to expand?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Oct 4 09:55:21 EDT 1997
Article: 10345 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Immigration, multiculturalism and idealism
Date: 4 Oct 1997 09:49:59 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <199709231641012250526@deepblue22.salamander.com> <60aoss$jgr@panix.com> <19970929094204699239@deepblue15.salamander.com> <60pmih$4js@panix.com> <199710012041333170025@deepblue16.salamander.com> <612mme$irq@panix.com> <19971003101531977671@deepblue4.salamander.com>
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wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>But there is still the matter of the scope of action. We have schemes
>in our personal conduct, and even if we eschew grand schemes we have to
>have some idea of how far we can go, how much planning and organization
>is necessary and desireable.
In the end it comes down to judgment based on experience and personal
style (tradition and culture, to bring in the social dimension).
>Resistance doesn't make me a stormtrooper, does it?
I don't think so, but then I'm not a pacifist. The usual view is that a
decision to use force is not a matter of ordinary prudence, a judgment
of how things will most likely turn out. It's a more demanding standard
based on social experience that gives rise to concepts of justifiable
and unjustifiable uses of force, not something we excogitate for
ourselves.
>Is the difference between liberals and CRs (of the proper sort) simply
>that the former are neutral regarding individual aims and purposes
>(tacitly encouraging Kalbian hedonism) while the latter want some
>specific conception of the good to orient individual aims?
Something like that makes sense. If we are to avoid having a
comprehensive centralized administrative system in charge of all
significant social affairs we need generally accepted coordinating
concepts. Classical liberals - libertarians - use property as a
coordinating concept. Men make their choices but they accept the rules
of property and those rules coordinate their actions to bring about the
general good. If you don't think the market is quite enough to bring
about the good life you'll want other coordinating concepts, for
example sexual morality to support family life or an accepted religious
orthodoxy to establish a connection between the order of society and
that of the cosmos.
Still, the more complex the system of coordinating concepts the more
likely at some point you're going to need personal loyalties and
authority to keep things running, exceptions to the rules that are
never clearly articulated, etc.
>Similarly, a CR regime could employ principles usually considered
>liberal attributes: "rules of universal application" and "authority
>constrained by general principles".
Those principles just wouldn't have the clarity and universality to
which a liberal regime aspires. A CR regime is not managed but it
doesn't run itself the way an ideal liberal regime would.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Sat Oct 4 09:46:37 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on sexual morality and America
To: s
Date: Sat, 4 Oct 1997 09:46:37 -0400 (EDT)
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Thanks for your note, these are interesting issues.
> The laws against prostitution in the US were a result of that same
> liberal/progressive trend, specifically feminism, that you decry so
> much.
Not unless feminism goes quite a ways back. Laws against fornication,
which would cover prostitution, go back to the earliest times in America
and were brought over from England. The New England Puritans didn't
invent them.
Were there ever licensed brothels in England? I've seen 18th c. English
references to women being punished as "common prostitutes," so
antifornication laws weren't a dead letter there at least as applied to
those who were in it as a business.
> Traditional morality held the man less bound by the constraints of
> marriage than the woman.
True enough, but that didn't mean whatever a man did was OK, especially
not formally.
> It was feminism that was responsible for much of the laws restricting
> sexual behaviour. Feminism saw these laws as a means of attacking
> traditional sexual structures, and ultimately on masculinity itself.
It's true that laws against prostitution strengthen women's position.
Ditto monogamy. Still, strengthening women's position is not the same
as feminism since it need not include abolition of gender as a
principle of social order. It is the attempt to abolish gender that is
the ultimate attack on masculinity.
Laws restricting sexual conduct seem to me consistent on the whole with
a view that recognizes sex and gender as basic to the social order.
Such a view would be antifeminist.
> Statutory rape laws were likewise intended for the disruption of
> these relations. The intent was to remove the threat that men would take
> up relations with young women, thereby strenghtening the power of the
> woman who was likely to be a member of feminist movements, at the
> expense of men.
They also keep young women in the custody of their fathers, and
preserve them as future wives. Making a variety of sexual outlets
available to men (here you're going beyond prostitution as an
accommodation to human nature) weakens the family. Weakening the
family does make women worse off but it also makes children worse off,
and it makes men's actions less part of a continuing system of things
based on something other than will and appetite, and so is
antitraditional.
> Those who supported these laws tended to also support lenient divorce
> laws
Is that so? I can't believe it's been uniformly the case. Official
Christian sexual morality has always been no divorce and no sex outside
marriage. Some people have taken that seriously, and it's affected
practice and social attitudes at least somewhat.
> which represented the forces unleashed like a disease against the
> world by means of the American and French revolutions, and which had
> their root in the Protestant reformation, which is why I cannot see a
> true traditionalist conservative embracing the ideals of America or
> even non-Anglican forms of Protestantism ; these concepts are bound
> with the idea of the perfectability of mankind
Catholicism of course views fornication as a sin. There are Catholic
countries that have accepted prostitution, mistresses etc. as
inevitable, certainly more so than the northern European countries. Is
that religion though or an old cultural difference? Ireland is a
Catholic country, and attitudes toward sex have been strict there. As
you point out, acceptance of prostitution etc. goes with a lower status
for women, and women had an unusually high status in Germanic society.
It seems true that "American ideals" and Protestantism are on the whole
antitraditionalist. It seems possible to me though to interpret them in
a sense tolerably consistent with traditionalism. Restrict American
ideals to formal politics and keep the scope of formal politics limited;
place American ideals in a larger religious setting so that the nation
is understood to be under God. As to Protestantism, it could be
understood as specific reforms rather than a continuous process of
deconcretizing.
> But anyway : on sexual matters, I am opposed to prostitution and
> statutory rape laws( child molesting laws are sufficient, which
> prohibit sexual contact with under 14s - that's good enough)
A difficulty regarding prostitution is that in an egalitarian democratic
society if something is legal that means it's as legitimate as anything
else. On statutory rape I disagree. I oppose open season on young
girls.
> To make a long story short, the glorification of weakness and
> pervasiveness of liberalism in the US culture is why I am not able to
> sympathize with foes of immigration who adopt a patriotic American
> standpoint - is such a culture really worth saving ? I can understand
> and sympathize with Europeans who correctly see third world
> immigration as a threat to their culture. They have something to
> lose, that would really leave the world the worse if it disappeared.
> But American culture being rotten to the core, is the America vs. 3rd
> world a choice between two evils?
I don't think the Europeans are much better off. It's enough to make
you cry. The issue though isn't whether U.S. culture or German culture
as they are now are better than Turkish, Chinese or Mexican culture but
how we can all climb out of the wreckage and build something better.
Continuous ethnic mixing is a bad thing because it makes it harder for
principles of social order other than amoral state bureaucracies and
markets to grow up and become authoritative. That's true I think
regardless of how far downhill things have gone -- multiculturalism
will make them even worse.
> Are there any resources in general geared to reclaiming the
> Mediterranean heritage ?
Interesting question. I don't know of anything. One possible reason
is that since the Mediterranean has always had ethnic and religious
cross-currents there's less of a connection between public and private
life so it's easier for Mediterranean people to carry on a tolerable
private life in a cosmopolitan environment.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Sat Oct 4 09:54:51 1997
Subject: Re: Sexual Morality FAQ
To: b
Date: Sat, 4 Oct 1997 09:54:51 -0400 (EDT)
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> What would you say to those who would argue that much of "traditional
> sexual morality" is, in effect, part of a genocidal campaign to stop
> the reproduction of Third World people?
Don't see it. Strong and stable family life and well-defined sex roles
usually means large families of well-brought-up children -- not
particularly genocidal. Family planning involves a technological
attitude toward sex rather at odds with TSM. In the West the decline
of TSM has gone with a decline in birth rates. In contrast, TSM is
quite strong among most Third World people in the Third World.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Sat Oct 4 21:19:18 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on sexual morality and America
To: s
Date: Sat, 4 Oct 1997 21:19:18 -0400 (EDT)
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>The level of net discourse is quite low, only slightly higher than that
>of North American society as a whole and bound to become lower as more
>people get access (a familiar story with the spread of any new
>technology).
The newsgroups have gotten decidedly worse over the 5 yrs. or so I've
been a user. The worthwhile discussions are mostly on mailing lists.
>serious efforts to end prostitution in the US were part of the rise of
>feminism during the 19th century
Don't doubt it, but more-fully-developed feminism tends to support women
who become sex workers. Their choice after all. Besides, feminism
mistrusts heterosexual relations, and the advantage of prostitution is
that the money gets paid and there's the end of it. Above all, modern
feminists want to maintain the principle that sex is not a principle of
social order. Making sex an ordinary item of commerce gives powerful
support to that principle.
Think dialectically! The issue is what legalizing prostitution would
mean today. At one time legal prostitution might have contributed to a
generally orderly system of sexual relations because it kept men from
debauching respectable women. I don't think it would have that effect
today. It would just drive home the principle that sex has no public
moral implications. We don't need to give that principle additional
support.
>For example, on the matter of statutory rape laws, I would think in a
>society that paid the slightest allegiance to traditional values they
>would not be needed.
Because of informal sanctions, including retaliatory violence from Dad
and Older Brother. "Slightest allegiance" is wrong, though. Laws can
support social standards that are generally but not universally
accepted, especially when people think they have a right to do whatever
is legal. What would the effect be today of eliminating statutory rape
laws?
>Explain how strengthening the position of women is different than
>feminism.
Feminism in the catastrophic modern sense is the abolition of gender as
a principle of social order. It's wrong for there to be different
social standards and expectations regarding men and women, or so we're
told. Adjusting rights and obligations of men and women within a system
that accepts that there are important distinctions between the sexes is
a different and normally more benign matter.
An example: strict standards for the sexual conduct of women
strengthens the position of women just as general refusal to make
private cut-rate contracts with employers strengthens the position of
working men. Strict standards for female sexual conduct are not however
feminist in the current sense.
>Certainly Ireland and other northern Catholic nations are not places
>where the woman is restricted and the man is relatively free.
I think of it as part of a package. The Mediterranean countries are
between Northwest Europe and the Levant both geographically and
culturally. The NW is ethnically rather unmixed and so tends not to
distinguish the domestic order from the order of the larger society.
The household and the nation run into each other. As a result rule is
for the public good, there is political freedom, and women have a strong
position. The system can't survive cosmopolitan multiculturalism
though. Therefore both Nordic racism and Scandanavian decadence. In
the Levant, governments tend to be despotic, the men run things, women
have no influence and are kept under cover, and the order of private
life is not affected by the presence of diverse cultures in the same
political society. Italy is in between, the North more like NW Europe
and the South more like the Levant.
>I have considered formally converting to Catholicism
Religion precedes culture, so conversion for cultural purposes does not
work. The religion has to come first.
>American ideals were based on the destruction of monarchy, and total
>opposition to king and pope ; it is impossible to reconcile
>traditionalism with them.
I think you underestimate the flexibility of traditionalism. It's
possible to have a traditionalist society without king or pope.
Consider Israel before Saul and the Jews after the destruction of the
Temple.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Sun Oct 5 18:36:35 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on sexual morality and America
To: s
Date: Sun, 5 Oct 1997 18:36:35 -0400 (EDT)
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>I guess my point was that Mediterranean societies seem to be better at
>handling cosmopolitanism, and thus seem to be based on a sturdier
>footing than the Nordic structures of not only Germanic Europe , but
>also the USA being as white America is far more based on northern
>Europe than southern Europe.
My own view is that we're heading into a hypercosmopolitan era, and the
social structure that works will therefore be an extreme form of the
southern European form, more extreme even than those traditional in the
Middle East. Basically we're headed ultimately and after a lot of
problems for a conglomeration of inward-turning ethno-religious
communities ruled by an irresponsible despotism. Think of a society
composed of Hasidic Jews, Amish, Gypsies, etc., etc., etc. ruled by the
Mamelukes. Too bad from my point of view, because I like the NW
European form of society, but better than the NWO as planned.
>> Don't doubt it, but more-fully-developed feminism tends to support
>> women who become sex workers.
>
>Some feminism, but a decided minority strain despite much publicity
There's always a problem talking about feminism because they're so
irrational and self-contradictory, not to say dishonest. Nonetheless, I
think feminists today are uniformly against social standards that tell
women what to do sexually.
For me the key is that feminism is nothing without liberalism, and
liberalism denies that the body has any intrinsic meaning. The point of
life is getting whatever it is you happen to want, and the whole world,
including your body, has importance only as a resource for that end.
Morality for liberals consists in establishing a universal rational
scheme that helps people equally get whatever they happen to want.
Sexual morality has no place in such a system because it says some
sexual impulses are better than others. From a liberal standpoint
that's pure bigotry. The form of feminism that is going to get anyplace
is going to have to agree with that.
>I know the prohibition of legal prostitution in the mediterranean
>countries was due to a combination of feminism's rise and US
>influence.
My point is that legal prostitution had one function in traditional
Mediterranean societies, the preservation of a system of gender roles,
while its legalization in America in 1997 would have quite a different
function. It would contribute to the abolition of gender roles by
denying that sex and the body have specific moral implications.
>America basically means liberalism - I don't know how - except for the
>south - it is even possible to support traditionalist or even semi-
>traditionalist ideas and express support for the USA and its ideals -
>they are totally at odds
But the South is perfectly happy with no kings and no Pope. So
traditionalism does not need those things and can live with specific
rejection of them.
King and Pope do help make the public order traditionalist, and so they
have been important in Western Europe where as discussed the public
order is continuous with the domestic and private order in which people
actually live. Even in the West though the absence of King and
Hierarchy has been consistent with tradition where the public order has
been somewhat anarchic or libertarian, as in the American South and in
Medieval Iceland. That's why American conservatives have correctly
identified constitutional limited government as essential to their
cause.
More generally -- no society can exist at all except through whatever
health there is in its moral tradition. America has existed because its
claimed ideals have not been understood in as categorical or
comprehensive way as People for the American Way would prefer. "All men
are created equal" did not originally mean that the state should abolish
the family.
What's wrong with understanding American tradition consistently with
what has been best in American life? Why not do for American tradition
from one point of view what revisionist theologians have done for
Christian tradition from an opposed point of view? Life must always go
on -- the point is to live it as well as possible with what is
available.
>This is exactly what I was referring to. I would think that this would
>be sufficient, and a father who is not capable of such
Again, a law good in some circumstances is bad in others. NW Europeans
tend to do things more by law than by vendetta, and have more basic
respect for the autonomy of others. So laws that support the natural
reactions of a father with public sanctions can be beneficial.
>When would you say the era of transition really would have been
>defined as ?
Things are always in transition. I think it made a difference when men
left the farm and especially when most men became employees with no
definite demonstrable skill and so became much more dependent on the
favor of other men.
>Still there is less mixing ethnically speaking in the northwest, which
>has created a sort of hothouse society, that cannot survive
>cosmopolitanism.
An aside -- East Asia will be an interesting case. The Chinese have
always been able to survive some degree of cosmopolitanism because of
their extended family system and their system of authoritarian
government through Confucian (that is to say Chinese traditionalist)
scholar/officials. Even so the government from time to time has found
it necessary to restrict contact with the outer barbarians. The
Japanese are different. They have a culture based on scarcity and
common ethnicity. They can't deal with minorities. In coming decades
I expect to see big problems there since instant broadband universal
communications etc. are plopping them into a global society in which
*they* are a minority.
>Conversion for cultural purposes has a long and hallowed tradition. It
>was a factor in the construction of beautiful churches, especially
>during the twilight years of the Roman Empire
People didn't convert to build nice churches. Augustine didn't convert
because the Church was where the high culture was - that was all pagan.
>For me, standing inside the Palermo Cathedral was an epiphany,
>unleashing a rather unexplicable inner mechanism. The beauty and
>majesty of the church have always attracted converts.
They grab your attention and make you think there might be something
there. The cathedrals of England are amazing. They join heaven, earth,
man, nature, God, thought, feeling, and devotion in a single cosmos. To
admire them though only raises the issue of Christianity.
To convert is something else. It is to be owned by God in Christ, not
to be your own any more. It is equivalent to the acceptance of death.
No one goes through that for the sake of an intellectual or aesthetic
experience.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Oct 6 22:00:30 EDT 1997
Article: 10351 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Christians Need Promise Keepers
Date: 6 Oct 1997 21:59:10 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 14
Message-ID: <61c51e$eb8@panix.com>
References: <3437CEA2.3055@worldnet.att.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Status: RO
In <3437CEA2.3055@worldnet.att.net> Claire Day writes:
>I admire and Respect Promise Keepers
>I reject the leader,2Submit to the suthority of your churchs.2 Church
>leaders are servants of Jesus, leaders of His people, not bosses.
Isn't this similar to the usual objection to PK, that definite roles
mean male authority, and authority simply means domination and
subservience?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Mon Oct 28 18:43:30 1996
Subject: Re: masters cont.
To: a
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 18:43:30 -0500 (EST)
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> And I would suggest if you are interested on this theme you get
> yourself a copy of the Red Queen.
I intend to look at the RQ. I find the issue extraordinarily
interesting. What after all does lifetime monogamy mean? It includes
extraordinary respect for individuality and for our ability voluntarily
to incur obligations that remain binding no matter what subsequent
changes or inconveniences may arise. It demands subjection of
aggression and overreaching in matters that touch us extremely
forcefully and closely to a publicly-shared principle that is equal for
all. It is, or was, a remarkable institution.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Sat Nov 2 13:33:58 1996
Subject: Re: The New World Order
To: s
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 13:33:58 -0500 (EST)
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> I agree, broadly speaking, with your concerns with the New Wrold
> Order as you percieve it. Would you not agree, though, that the
> problems you identify are also those of the current world order and
> have at their root the problem that they are founded on economic and
> materialistic rather than spiritual principles?
Sure -- the NWO is simply the extension and perfection of what we have
already. That's why all respectable opinion favors it.
> Would it not, therfore, make sense for us all to be actively engaged
> in shaping that world order upon spiritual lines? If we religionists
> don't do that and just take a luddite approach, fearing change rather
> than welcoming it, then who is going to infuse the world order with
> the breathings of the Holy Spirit? The economists??? The
> politicians??? The media???
If "that world order" means "the way things will be in the future" then
I agree. If it means accepting the principle of construction and
centralized administration of a rational world order in accordance with
some overall plan I disagree. We don't know enough and can't possibly
know enough to do that even if "we" (meaning some elite) had the power.
At length the principle that a centrally planned and administered
economy doesn't work is coming into general acceptance. There are many
other aspects of social and political life that are equally or even
more resistent to rationalization. Things grow up that we didn't plan
or choose -- the NWO concept is a denial of that fundamental feature of
our lives in society.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Wed Jan 1 10:29:42 1997
Subject: Re: Flags In Churches
To: E
Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 10:29:42 -0500 (EST)
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> but, of course, as RBork inadvertently demonstrated in the famous FT
> symposium, it is devilishly hard to demonstrate exactly how those
> guys are wrong as a technical matter, while applying standards which
> one could cheerfully apply to one's own intended position.
It's a problem. The obvious technical resources are original intent,
the history of the development of the law and the concept of law as
such. The first would be revolutionary on a grand scale, not the
intended role of the courts. The second puts us exactly where we are
now. The third would presumably draw its content from academic legal
culture. Therefore the appeal to the majority as trumps.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Lived on decaf, faced no devil.
From jk Fri Feb 7 17:31:43 1997
Subject: Re: BEYOND THE FRINGE: 32-10
To: j
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 17:31:43 -0500 (EST)
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> Well, if the dream is dead, the last few generations of royal blood
> has to take a great deal of responsibility for that.
I suppose. Still, I know too little about monarchists and royal
families to say. Do the Count of Paris or the Scandinavian royal
families misbehave? I assume not, since you don't hear about them. Or
how about Benelux royalty? The King of Belgium is a serious Catholic
as such things go -- as I recall he dekinged himself for a day or two
when the Belgians were going to loosen up their abortion law.
> After reading 3 or 4 books by Strauss, I decided that for all his
> acuteness in discussing the ills of the modernity, he really didn't
> have much to offer in the way of a philosophical approach toward
> living in the present. I certainly found it difficult to view him as
> a conservative.
He's not a philosophical conservative but he's critical of modernity
and so is on the same side of the barricades. Also, the Straussians
take the classics very seriously and talk about interesting issues. I
intend to read more of him.
> SOon after I found a copy of Voegelin's "New Science of Politics,"
> bought it and discovered he was now at least intelligible to me.
I've read several things by him and need to read more. I was
fascinated by his _Order and History_ but at this point couldn't give a
good account of what it says, which shows I think that I should reread
it.
> Are you familar with Alasdair MacIntyre's work?
I've read his _After Virtue_ and liked it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Plan no damn Madonna LP.
From jk Tue Oct 7 06:59:59 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on sexual morality and America
To: s
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 1997 06:59:59 -0400 (EDT)
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> I would think that legal prostitution in America today would be a key
> element in re-establishing " family values " of some kind.
Can't see it -- it would just add another item to the menu. It
wouldn't isolate irregular sexual relations, it would bring them fully
into the commercial mainstream.
> The collapse of the USSR shows that states based on ideals are
> hothouse states by nature.
No state is really based on ideals. Nor is any state without ideals.
There's always a mixture. The advantage of the US over the USSR of
course was that the ideals were less comprehensive and categorical and
intended to affect social life less directly.
> The whole idea of America was freedom from traditionalism
Not really. It was self-government of a people, mostly outside
governmental structures. Self-government outside govermental
structures is compatible with traditionalism. In fact, it requires a
lot of it.
Why speak of "the whole idea" of America anyway? Lincoln and other
politicians may have spoken of America as a "nation dedicated to a
proposition" but it's not obligatory to believe them. There have been
hundreds of millions of people here doing trillions of things. All
that doesn't belong to the tyrants, blowhards, and writers of
propaganda for schoolchildren.
People who speak of "American ideals" also speak of our grievous
failure to live up to them. Why not rehabilitate the legitimacy of the
failure and say it's a good thing? Democratic ideals have been an
element in American life but far from the sole element. Tradition is
not so fragile that a little bit of this or that poisons it.
> But what is best in American life ? Purely financial and
> materialistic aspects, and even those are somewhat in question.
Don't understand. The *only* things that have *ever* happened in
America have been financial and materialistic events? I just got up
this morning, and already that's been false as to my day.
Think of the logic of what you're saying. You are saying, for example,
either that the life of every family in America has always been based
solely on financial and materialistic aspects, or that the financial
and materialistic aspects have uniformly been better than any other
aspects.
> Europe has its problems, some quite severe, but the USA is much worse
> ( except for unemployment ) .
America has more experience in dealing with the modern mess. I think
we'll do better than the Europeans. The current situation is too much
at odds with the conditions under which the Europeans have flourished.
Having farther to fall isn't necessarily an advantage.
> However, once the church was in a monopoly so as to speak, its beauty
> and magnificence certainly worked wonders on attracting converts. Was
> this not the aim - I'm skipping a few centuries here - of the Counter
> Revolution and its Baroque style ? The lack of the Baroque is an aspect
> that makes America especially but even northern Europe less palatable.
The Baroque had to do with a struggle within Christianity, in my mind
more a matter of adherence to a party than conversion. Splendor of
course attracts adherents to a party.
> PS. The south is undoubtably healthier than the USA as a whole,but
> how would you say that its level of the disease of modernity compares
> with that of the UK ?
Dunno. The descent of the UK has been meteoric.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Wed Oct 8 18:53:04 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on sexual morality and America
To: s
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 18:53:04 -0400 (EDT)
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>Americans have never really accepted extramarital relations as
>unavoidable to the extent that the rest of western civ. has, which is
>one reason for the high divorce rate in the US.
The two are related to the idealization of marriage, and to an
egalitarian notion that makes everything follow a single system. Still,
if prostitution were legalized the "single system" would be that all
consensual sexual relations are legitimate and a matter of individual
choice and taste, and the tendency would be reinforced to make marriage
an optional ideal, and thus a subjective matter, rather than the
fundamental social institution.
>I don't know - isn't the whole purpose of self-government, no king, no
>pope, and in the north it was also no aristocracy ?
As a practical matter, self-government on anything larger than village
scale requires some sort of aristocracy and reliance on tradition.
Massachusetts for example had its own aristocracy.
>America has alwaysa been a nation guided by ideals and ideas more than
>anything else. It was in these cases the ideal of racial purity that
>led to the destruction of an organic tradition with pre-European roots
>as existed to the north and south of US borders.
Don't see how failure to marry Indians destroyed tradition.
>Unfortunately, outside the south there has been little principled
>conservatism of the sort that one sees on the other side of the pond,
>just lunkhead moronic populism at its ugliest extremes whether from
>left or right.
The conservatism has generally been silent. The whole system has
lasted as long as it has because the role of government and therefore
of declared political ideals has been limited, and because Americans
tend to avoid thought. Now we need explicit principled conservatism,
because government has grown and because there are large bureaucracies
which enforce abstract "thought" in the form of ideology, which means
that we have to discern and emphasize the nonliberal and antiliberal
strains in American life that have silently made social order possible
here.
>What I mean by that is that to me, the only good things about America
>for myself, who is basically middle class, is the opportunity to leave
>it, and sheer materialistic things
You wouldn't even be alive without the love and self-sacrifice of those
who came before you. Social order can't exist at all without those
things, and if there were no social order whatever in America the
population here would be about 318, probably not including you.
Almost any mother has probably done and felt something better in her
life than ownership of a car. Even in America there are military
cemeteries, and not all of those buried there were shot in the back
running from battle. It is a finer and more admirable thing for a man
to be willing to die for his country than for a man to own a car. The
list could be continued. So it seems that there have been a very large
number of things in America better than sheer materialistic things. The
fact that public representations of "the American dream" or whatever
don't emphasize those better things is irrelevant. All that shows is
that such representations falsify the basis of all social life, and
therefore (in particular) of our social life. Better representations
are needed.
>> America has more experience in dealing with the modern mess.
>
>Do you really believe this ?
Sure. It's the first modern country.
>Britain is the most far gone country in the old world, only slightly
>better than the USA.Holland and even Germany ...
Direction is everything. Have you looked at trends in European crime
rates, illegitimacy rates, welfare costs? In European religious life
and high culture? I see no reason to suppose the Europeans will keep
much of the things that have made them such a great and noble
civilization.
>Australia will probably wind up handling these problems better than the
>US or Europe. They seem to have incorporated all the good aspects of
>the USA with the bad ones minimized.
Going down the tubes, fast. PC and multiculturalism reign supreme in
the smaller English-speaking countries. The Pauline Hanson situation
illuminates the nature of the Australian governing elites and ideology.
>Europe would be a better place for raising children than the US.
It's odd then that the Europeans aren't taking advantage of the
opportunity.
>On legal prostitution, I thought of something - what about it being
>part of a compromise in order to make divorce more difficult, which I
>am strongly in favour of ?
People don't think about things that way.
>they saw Italian men as being too apt to cheat and mess around in
>general, in essence too masculine - whereas they saw a WASPized Jew and
>an actual WASP respectively as being properly tamed and neutered.
For my own part I'm sympathetic to the tradition that that views the
Latin as less manly than the Northerner, that sees the theatrical male
as less a man.
>if we're headed for a sort of extreme form of the Mediterranean society
>as an alternative to the NWO-approved future, I fail to see how a
>northern European rooted society would be able to cope ? )
Right. Analysis tells me we're headed ultimately toward a super-
Levantine society, but I greatly prefer societies of the northern
European type. So in practical politics I support measures that make
it more likely that my preferred society could function. My
pessimistic analysis might after all be wrong.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Thu Oct 9 04:26:43 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on sexual morality and America
To: s
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 04:26:43 -0400 (EDT)
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> but this is true in all countries. i was talking more about things
> specifically American.
That's OK if you're in some sort of anteroom before conception looking
at a catalog to figure out which country you're going to be born in.
Once you're born and you grow up you have a country and a family and
it's not that easy to do anything about it. They are most of what has
made you what you are. You want to move to a country with more
tradition but if you do what will make it *your* country? They are not
after all your traditions.
In thinking about your country and family it doesn't make sense to
focus your attention on how another country and family have more of
some good quality or other. The question is what the qualities are
that have made possible whatever good your own forebears have had and
been. Those qualities necessarily include things like love and
sacrifice because life can't go forward any length of time without
them.
The story of those qualities is the true story of your country and
family. The fact that others might have a similar story that's better
in some ways doesn't mean the story is not yours. It just means that
we all belong to the same human race.
> As I said before, Europe has some severe problems. But I see the
> whole process of decay as more advanced in the US than anywhere else.
As I said, the US is the first modern country. What will keep decay
from going to completion in Europe? The principles of European
civilization, monarchy, aristocracy, church, region and nation, class,
are all gone.
> He is very much into the Vince Lombardi school of Americanism with
> the PC tone that is part and parcel of " Americanism " today ; USA is
> #1 because we give breaks to minorities and go out of our way to
> prevent white privelege.
What does Vince Lombardi have to do with PC? (I should say I'm not a
sports fan and so know very little about him.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Fri Oct 10 06:55:42 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on sexual morality and America
To: s
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 06:55:42 -0400 (EDT)
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> Actually monarchy, although it has lost its power, still remains as a
> figurehead, and will probably make a comeback in some countries even
> as the nations grow closer together in the EU.
What can a monarch be though under modern circumstances, with the
emphasis on amusement and sensation and without an aristocracy or
established church? In any case, monarchy is a lot less important as a
unifying and ordering principle in the Mediterranean countries than in
the North and West of Europe. It is important in societies in which
there is not a clear line between family life and public life, and
depends on the general health of such societies.
> An anti-modern reaction could occur more easily in Europe than in the
> US.
I'm dubious. An anti-modern reaction would I think take the form of a
religious revolution which seems more likely here. In Europe people
are too much in the hands of the ruling classes. That's more true of
the North of course.
> To say that European regionalism is gone is mighty premature.
It's difficult to have regional differences that matter much with cars,
superhighways, and a population that spends several hours a day
watching TV. I just don't think it's going to be an important part of
social and cultural organization.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Fri Oct 10 17:52:11 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on sexual morality and America
To: s
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 17:52:11 -0400 (EDT)
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> And people in the US are less in the hands of the ruling classes ? I
> don't know.
I think there's more of a gap here. That's why we don't trust
government.
> In Europe it would take the form of an anti-immigration,
> anti-foreigner Fortress Europe type mentality.
I just don't think that's enough to live on.
> Have you seen any of the news about the Front National recently?
Nothing illuminating. Thanks for the translation, I don't read
Spanish.
> I do not see how an anti modern backlash in the USA would be anything
> but faithful to the belief in the perfectability of man and merely
> loyal to an earlier stage of progress oriented modernity like a
> hundred years ago.
The failure of the American experiment will affect the way people look
at things a great deal I think. Already new break points are appearing
between John Locke and conservative Christianity, which up to now have
of course been allied here. Walt Disney Enterprises is making people
think that maybe the free market and diversity and doing things
technologically and on a large scale is not such a reliable ally of
goodness.
When multiculturalism and feminism go bust liberalism will go bust too,
and no liberalism means no American experiment. Most likely radical
familism and congregationally-oriented religious separatism will play a
large role. Ditto walled communities, which are already a growing
trend. Ditto ethnic fragmentation.
The reason a true counterrevolution is hard to imagine here is that
liberalism is part of the essence of "America." True enough, but what
that really means is that when liberalism stops working what we end up
with here won't be "America."
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Sat Oct 11 04:53:36 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on sexual morality and America
To: s
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 1997 04:53:36 -0400 (EDT)
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> Compared to Spaniards and Italians, Americans trust government
> incredibly.
True enough, I was thinking of the North.
> Anyway. even the French distrust government more than Americans do.
They nonetheless think they have the right to rely on the state. When
the foreign correspondents for the _New York Times_ wax thoughtful they
go on and on about how the French are proud of the post-war welfare
state and that shows how important they think solidarity is. A strange
concept - solidarity as a matter of cash payments mediated through a
state bureaucracy.
There will be no antimodern revolution as long as people base their
lives and understanding of community on the modern state. The marriage
of the French to the authorities might not be altogether happy but it's
a marriage.
> > > In Europe it would take the form of an anti-immigration,
> > > anti-foreigner Fortress Europe type mentality.
> >
> > I just don't think that's enough to live on.
> It would also take the form of getting back in touch with traditions.
But traditions are sustaining not so much in themselves as by their
spiritual content.
> Walled communities are part of what is perpetuating PC and
> ultraliberalism.
Not sure why that should be. There aren't many of them where I am but
those that there are mostly want to tend to their own affairs. From
other parts of the country I've heard different things - from some that
the only thing they're about is property values and it's an oppressive
bore to live in them and from others accounts of walled communities
where the people mostly go to the same evangelical church and that's
what determines the nature of the life.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Sat Oct 11 07:31:51 1997
Subject: Re: Thanks for information
To: M
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 1997 07:31:51 -0400 (EDT)
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> Nietzsche (who despite his flaws is still overall is my favorite
> philosopher).
Nietzsche writes beautifully, and he makes the reader feel very
intelligent and much superior to everybody else. So far as I can tell
though Pascal deals much more sanely with problems of meaning (e.g., do
all concepts fall apart on analysis?) and perspectivism.
One problem Nietzsche has is that noble aristocrats don't scream, rant,
and engage in personal abuse of those they want to position as their
inferiors. A noble aristocrat is what he is, and that's what on
Nietzsche's own view he is not and can't be. Also, his denial of
transcendence makes him hopelessly stuck mind and spirit through and
through in a world he hates. That's why he's incoherent. He wants to
be God but all he can manage is his own crucifixion and without appeal
to transcendence he can't even explain why it's a crucifixion. So he
complains and yells at people. In other words, he hides in trivia from
what he wants to present as his own situation.
> a hatred of modernity, egalitarianism and mass society. I seem to
> part company of the issues of race and sexual morality and
> Christianity.
If there are no ethnic loyalties and no standards of sexual morality
rather like the traditional ones I don't see how egalitarianism and
mass society or something equally mindless and brutal are to be
avoided. Healthy culture requires healthy tradition, and that requires
particular ties among men that precede the choices they happen to make.
The basis of such ties is the family, and ethnicity is family writ
large enough to support tradition and culture.
> I am also suspicious of capitalism, regarding it as a socially
> destructive force (which is where the Frankford School/New Left hit
> the mark on their critique of mass culture).
The issue of course is what the alternative is under present
circumstances. The centralized administrative state is worse.
> I also agree with Aristotle as well as Murray Bookchin and Kropotkin
> that the only viable society with any meaningful sense of community
> is the small scale ones.
The difficulty is that people want to find some way of having the
bureaucratic welfare state administer small scale communities. Can't
be done.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Oct 12 13:48:30 EDT 1997
Article: 10352 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Immigration, multiculturalism and idealism
Date: 7 Oct 1997 06:05:16 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <199709231641012250526@deepblue22.salamander.com> <60aoss$jgr@panix.com> <19970929094204699239@deepblue15.salamander.com> <60pmih$4js@panix.com> <199710012041333170025@deepblue16.salamander.com> <612mme$irq@panix.com> <19971003101531977671@deepblue4.salamander.com> <615hi7$crn@panix.com> <199710061516591033288@deepblue3.salamander.com>
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In <199710061516591033288@deepblue3.salamander.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>people exploring CR approaches sometimes fear that if they step away
>from liberal structures they will fall off the map into naziism or
>some other horror.
The basic problem I think is deep-down acceptance of moral
subjectivism, the view that there aren't any objective goods we can
recognize in common that can order our common life. There's only what
I want, and what you want, and who gets his way.
On that understanding, the only possible alternative to liberalism
(rational scheme for giving our own way equally to each of us as much
as possible) is A dominating B and making B subservient to A's desires.
That arrangement could take the form of naked worship of force
(Naziism), or the relation of dominance and subservience could be
masked by manipulative rhetorical appeals to "traditional values" or
whatever (PK).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Oct 12 13:48:31 EDT 1997
Article: 10360 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Immigration, multiculturalism and idealism
Date: 12 Oct 1997 13:47:02 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 21
Message-ID: <61r2em$r3m@panix.com>
References: <199709231641012250526@deepblue22.salamander.com> <60aoss$jgr@panix.com> <19970929094204699239@deepblue15.salamander.com> <60pmih$4js@panix.com> <199710012041333170025@deepblue16.salamander.com> <612mme$irq@panix.com> <19971003101531977671@deepblue4.salamander.com> <615hi7$crn@panix.com> <199710061516591033288@deepblue3.salamander.com> <61d1gs$5s2@panix.com> <61quol$nrj$1@gte2.gte.net>
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Status: RO
In <61quol$nrj$1@gte2.gte.net> "T.O. Minnix" writes:
>> That arrangement could take the form of naked worship of force
>> (Naziism), or the relation of dominance and subservience could be
>> masked by manipulative rhetorical appeals to "traditional values" or
>> whatever (PK).
>This surprises me - I would have thought CRs would have identified PK
>with a new Great Awakening.
The "on that [moral subjectivist] understanding" at the beginning of
the paragraph was intended to carry over to the sentence quoted. I
didn't intend to state my own view.
Actually, I haven't been paying close attention to PK although I've
seen lots of liberal criticisms. Anybody have an opinion on the
movement itself?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Tue Oct 14 20:18:45 1997
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Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 20:18:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710150018.UAA06397@panix.com>
To: jk@panix.com
Subject: The ECUSA and the nature of politics
Status: RO
>Those who are currently involved in the ECUSA's power structure have,
>for many reasons, let their politics form their theology.
Some theorizing of my own, to do with whatever anyone wants:
The problem goes deeper than ECUSA and even formal religion, it's the
overall trend toward basing all thought in all aspects of life on
experience.
If you keep at it long enough, and it's been going on for centuries,
and you squeeze out everything that can't be reduced to experience,
then "truth" eventually becomes whatever symbolic articulation of your
sensations, feelings and desires you find most
empowering, "righteousness" becomes action that as a practical matter
advances "truth," and "God" is a way of saying that "truth" and
"righteousness" are the ultimate standards. Anything other than that
will appeal to something that isn't in your
experience.
Oddly, the description I just gave applies equally to progressivism
and Naziism. Both views are fully modern, and both are based on
practical denial of the transcendent and consequent deification of man
as he concretely is. (As they say, "We are Church,
and in the Eucharist we become Christ.") The reason for the importance
of Naziism in progressive thought is that there is so much common
ground between the views -- for progressives the Holocaust is always
just inches away, and any deviation from
progressive correctness could lead there rather quickly.
For progressives, then, the ultimate ethical standard is the triumph
of the particular actual will, which now has the role once played by
the Will of God. However, instead of taking as their goal the triumph
of the will of a particular people, identified
with the will of the particular man who leads that people,
progressives aim at an overall system that gives a practical guarantee
of the equal triumph of all wills. It follows that support of
radically egalitarian social transformation -- opposition to
oppression, understood as the subordination of one human will to
another -- becomes the essence of the faith. All other things --
creeds, sacraments, scriptures, you name it -- are symbols,
observances and pious legends, OK but only to the extent they
support what is essential.
From jk Mon Nov 4 14:57:48 1996
Subject: Re: PO
To: m
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 14:57:48 -0500 (EST)
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> Who is Flora Lewis which frequntly writes in International Herald
> Tribune?
She used to be a columnist for the _New York Times_ on foreign affairs
and so speaks for establishment liberal opinion.
> Friday 1/11 she writes how to fight the "extreme right" in Europe and
> USA, in which she includes Le Pen as "proto-fascist" and Joerg Haider
> as almost nazi. Not mensioning Buchanan she writes that the militias
> has got into the republican party and turned it from "mainstream". On
> the other hand she writes that Le Pen and Haider is turning the
> european mainstream to the right.
That is the establishment liberal view here. In the prestige press
such views are treated as fact rather than opinion. So far as I can
tell, any European who thinks immigration causes problems that can't
simply be attributed to the bigotry of Europeans is an "extreme
rightist." In the United States, the forces of "extremism" include
everyone to the right of Bob Dole, everyone who (as a recent discussion
in the _New York Times_ put it) is concerned about immigration,
abortion or moral chaos.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Was raw tap ale not a reviver at one lap at Warsaw?
From jk Sun Oct 12 07:06:44 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on sexual morality and America
To: s
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1997 07:06:44 -0400 (EDT)
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> Quite personally, I can't understand the German revulsion towards
> Turks in particular or southerners in general
If people from a place where there's a lot of public cynicism move into
a place where there's a lot of public trust there are going to be
problems. Actually, it seems clear that ethnic outsiders will always
cause problems in a place where there's a lot of public trust.
> Somehow this never seems to have caught on to anywhere near the same
> extent among Americans who distruct government, a sign that even with
> the growing distrust of government it is still regarded higher than
> in much of Europe
It could also show greater self-respect and respect for others.
Unwillingness to live by fraud is not such a bad quality.
> The people who live within them tend to be the movers and shakers of
> the society
The more walled and gated communities there are the less that will be
the case.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Sun Oct 12 18:28:57 1997
Subject: Re: Comments on sexual morality and America
To: s
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1997 18:28:57 -0400 (EDT)
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> > Actually, it seems clear that ethnic outsiders will always cause
> > problems in a place where there's a lot of public trust.
> It's human nature for those who look different to be shut out in some
> way.
What I had in mind was something different, that public trust depends
on cultural cohesion, and that ethnic difference means culture
difference and so difficulty maintaining that cohesion. The type of
society that grew up in Northern and Western Europe, in which public
life tended to be free and open and also to have a moral content, was
able to do so because there were no invasions from outside after the
900s. Its development was aided by the continued absence of outsiders.
By 1500 for example there were no Jews in any of the European countries
on the Atlantic seaboard.
> > The more walled and gated communities there are the less that will be
> > the case.
> So they'll give up their walled and gated communities once they're more
> common?
No, I meant that as more people live in them they won't remain the
particular hangout of limousine liberals.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Wed Oct 15 12:23:40 1997
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Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 12:23:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710151623.MAA29223@panix.com>
To: jk@panix.com
Subject: Re: Re: Re: The ECUSA and the nature of politics
Status: RO
I continue to spin out theory, for comment and I hope with the
indulgence of readers:
>They exalt their own human reason and experience above that which has
>been revealed by God ... They have cut themselves off from the things
>which can guide them and keep them from error. As a result, God
becomes
>projections of their own experiences and wills.
It's important how broad and deep this tendency is, and not only in
the church. Our system of public morality is constructed as a
projection of our own experiences and wills. It takes the view that
what life is about is getting one's own way, and what morality and
politics are about is finding principles for accommodating conflicting
purposes. Our schools inculcate the same understanding, and our legal
system makes the intrusion of other viewpoints in public life
unconstitutional. Our scholarship construes the world in terms of
human feelings, sensations and purposes using modern natural science
as a model. To the extent modern theology aspires to mainstream
intellectual respectability it follows the same path.
The revolution of the 60s was the triumph of this system of thought
throughout society. In that period our public life became formally
self-sufficient and man-centered (that was the point of the school
prayer decisions). The next step was for the resulting moral
understanding to become all-penetrating -- as people began to say,
"the personal is the political." Today we are achieving political
correctness, in the church and in society at large, which is to say
that language suggesting objective moral norms other than those of
liberalism is being abolished, because if there were such norms some
lifestyles would be better than others, contrary to equality. The goal
is to make it impossible to express dissent from the established
order.
The effect of all this is that the people in the pew who still from
habit consider themselves "mainstream" are in fact nothing of the
kind. If they have any doubts they should watch TV, read their
children's textbooks or pick up a random selection of magazines from
the local newstand. From the standpoint of all authoritative American
institutions they are cranks, if they take what they say they believe
at all seriously, and the function of respectable organized religion
is to keep them harmless. So in attempting to take back mainline
denominations from trimmers and revisionists traditionalists are going
against the whole grain of American life today.
From jk@panix.com Thu Oct 16 09:20:53 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710161320.JAA07121@panix.com>
Subject: Character: It's for your own good ...
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 09:20:52 -0400 (EDT)
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Some comments on comments:
>I tend to think of children as coming into this world as people who
>have the potential to form themselves.
I think part of what's at work here is the idea is that a man is too
glorious a thing to be an artifact so it's wrong to think we can decide
what we want a child to become and make him into that thing.
That seems all very true. Another alternative though to the "child
forming himself" theory is that we elders could recognize the best
possibility for the child and help him become that through education and
discipline. We might be wrong about what's best for him, but so might
anyone including the child. A necessary part of the process would be
for the child to come to a better understanding of his own good, and in
time his understanding would count for more and more, but there'd be
nothing *uniquely* valid about the child's views. Especially in the
earlier stages his parents and teachers would normally understand the
matter better than he does.
In many respects "the best possibility" would be similar for all
children -- for example, it would include physical health and ordinary
virtues like honesty. In some respects it would reflect the child's
particular qualities or the situation he is born into. It wouldn't be
quite the same for example for a musical and unmusical child or for a
child born into a hunter-gatherer family and one born into an American
professional family. What is best for a child depends to some degree
after all on what possibilities his life will offer. Often of course a
parent's judgment of his child's good would reflect the parent's own
idiosyncrasies. That's just how things are - it doesn't mean though
that the situation has to be understood as the parent devising an
agenda and forcing it on the child as a foreign imposition.
To me that seems a natural view. We want what's best for our children
and exercise our authority as parents to try to promote it, and we
don't think "what's best" is at all the same as "what I happen to want"
or "what my child happens to want." People tend to reject the view
though because they don't think any of us has a "good" that others can
recognize and is largely independent of what we happen to want. The
tendency is to want to reduce good to preferences and to think that the
_summum bonum_ is giving people what they want. Or maybe the _summum
bonum_ is creating oneself though an act of pure choice, if that's a
different concept. (I think the two are the same, except the former
sounds tawdry and the latter heroic.)
It seems to me these tendencies make it impossible to think coherently
about family life and education since children are not and can not be
independent even to the extent we adults are, and the whole question in
bringing them up is what they will be led to become - in particular, how
their "values," their settled long-term preferences, will be formed. So
unlike economics and politics, in childrearing saying "give 'em what
they want" gets the discussion precisely nowhere. And as a practical
matter I'm not sure "let the child create himself" can be distinguished
from "give him what he wants."
>Yet the real task is sometimes to trust that the form is already in a
>sense there or to be created from within. The child may look like he
>is going to become a gangster, but one needs to see that is not what is
>really there.
Fine. Is there anything uniquely authoritative about the child's
insight into the matter?
>Yes, but it is ultimately the child's choice as to the values he/she
>wishes to take on in forming him/herself.
The notion of choosing values is an odd one since it is a condition of
rational choice already to have values.
>I think of the difference as the distinction between keeping the yard
>clean and planning and developing a French garden. I do not chose the
>plants, but some sense of order is needed, and I pick up broken
>bottles.
Man is a social animal though. It is *natural* for man to live in
society and become human through participation in culture, the
particular way of life of a particular society. We do not as
individuals create ourselves. To treat children as if they should is
to deny their nature and truly to force an agenda on them.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Thu Oct 16 20:35:34 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710170035.UAA04116@panix.com>
Subject: Character: Responding to Andy
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 20:35:33 -0400 (EDT)
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Andy writes:
>The title you gave your message, Jim --"It's for your own good..." --
>has some pretty heavy-duty overtones that you may not be aware of ...
>the title of a devastating book ... contibuted over the generations to
>the inhumanity expressed eventually in Nazism and the holocaust.
I knew of course that the phrase is sometimes considered a particularly
creepy mask for domination, and used it partly as a minor provocation
and partly because I think it should be rehabilitated. We
*necessarily* do things to our children for their own good, and might
as well grow up and deal with it.
I wasn't aware of the book you mention. I consider it natural though
for people to justify bad things by appeals to good things, to "the will
of God," "the good of the children," "social justice," what have you.
What else would anyone use as a justification?
Naziism may be something of an inkblot. Every one who looks at it sees
the other guy. My own theory is that it's a logical implementation of
social constructivism and denial of goods that don't reduce to
preferences. The good (or so a philosophical Nazi might say) is what a
particular society constructs as its good, in other words its will as
made concrete in the will of its leader. A people's good (that is, its
will) becomes universally valid and therefore as close to absolute good
as we're going to get when it overcomes the wills of all other peoples.
That overcoming is most fully and undeniably realized through a
successful war of universal conquest, torture and extermination. So
the way to the universal triumph of the true good turns out on this
view to lie through the horrors you mention.
The point of the foregoing is that although some people tie Naziism to
imposition of an idea of the good on others I'm more inclined to tie it
to a denial of objective good valid for all regardless of preferences.
If "good" is not at bottom distinct from "what I feel like doing" then
it seems to me you arrive at some very odd results. Hitler didn't think
there was some objective common good that the Jews shared with Aryans.
He didn't want to force them to become vegetarians, he wanted to create
a new world from which they were absent. It was triumph of the will and
not triumph of ethical cognition that mattered for him.
>"How are we to tell the difference between the imposition that
>constitutes a form of abuse and the imposition that is actually in the
>service of the good (the child's own, or some larger)?"
This is the question of how we can tell what is good. My answer is
that it's a skill a man or society develops through experience by
working at it. In the case of society as a whole the word "tradition"
is used instead of "experience." You do your best and eventually you
get better. There are no perfect masters of the skill, at least I
don't know any, but we can't act rationally without relying on whatever
degree of it we have. If we can't tell at all what is good then we
can't act rationally even in our own affair, so if there's a
fundamental problem with saying such a skill exists then saying "don't
impose your idea of the good on someone else" doesn't solve it.
>But what confuses me is: if the infant's desires to be breast-fed
>should be heeded as right and good, but if --as I believe-- a goodly
>number of the subsequent desires of the growing child should not be
>trusted to point toward the good, just how and why is the line to be
>drawn between what is naturally trustworthy and what is not in our
>inborn natures?
There's no mechanical way of doing it. You come to be able to draw the
line well by participating in a good way of life. Presumably there's
more good than bad in all actual ways of life -- otherwise they would
fall apart and their adherents would murder each other -- but none is
perfect. That's life. You do the best you can. Even if your Mom put
you on a feeding schedule and that was bad she was probably a better
mother than she would have been if she hadn't tried to do what seemed
best instead of simply doing what she felt like doing or simply what
you seemed to want (and if "what one feels like doing" is the standard
why would she have done the latter instead of the former anyway?)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Oct 18 06:37:01 EDT 1997
Article: 10366 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: What to do about "the culture"
Date: 13 Oct 1997 11:19:30 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Status: RO
The following proposed questions for discussion at a meeting of a
traditionalist conservative discussion group. I wondered whether it
would provoke comments on a.r.c.
The topic is "Can the Culture be Redeemed?"
For present purposes, "the culture" means the complex of attitudes,
ideals, goals and ways of life publicly presented as valid and proper.
It includes the things understood to bind the members of a society
together morally, and those taught to children by public institutions.
In America today the culture is mostly determined by the mass media and
governmental or quasi-governmental institutions, although popular
acceptance or at least acquiescence is also necessary. So things that
pass without much comment and with authoritative support on TV or in
the public schools are part of the culture; things that are viewed with
suspicion and always have to explain themselves are not.
It seems that in America the culture (as so defined) is hedonistic,
individualistic and relativistic. Its principle of order is to balance
impulse with careerism, self-seeking with egalitarianism, and
hoggishness with a cult of connoisseurship. It recognizes money and
power far more easily than other forms of authority. In recent decades
it has become explicitly opposed to any religion except the religion of
self. It could hardly care less about tradition except as something to
destroy in the interests of liberty and equality as it understands
those things.
As described, "the culture" seems unredeemable. Is the description
accurate or only a caricature? Do the problems reflect fundamental
problems with the way Americans live or only problems with our elites?
If the latter, how can the points of soundness in American life be
built upon? If the former, what should be done? Should traditionalist
conservatives put their efforts into trying to reform the culture, or
into building a counterculture or countercultures with only defensive
participation in public life?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Oct 18 06:37:02 EDT 1997
Article: 10425 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: What to do about "the culture"
Date: 18 Oct 1997 06:31:26 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <627aaj$rf1$1@cfs2.kis.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (Andy Fear) writes:
>I think it would be wrong to see high culture as solely belonging to
>Western Europeans, there are plenty of other noble cultural
>traditions.
So far as I can tell multiculturalists don't study Sanscrit or read Ibn
Khaldun or _The Tale of Genji_. Freeing oneself from high and noble
culture is more the purpose, affirmation of the self whatever the self
happens concretely to be. On that score the Confucian _Analects_
aren't much help.
>One is to withdraw from society, as advocated by Plato, the other
>would be to enforce moral norms on society. Alas the first would not
>be tolerated by liberals - we have already seen what happens to
>communities who try to drop out of the liberal world order.
It's a mixed situation. Strictly orthodox Jews and the Amish seem to
be doing just fine. Liberal theoreticians think their kids should be
taken from their parents and given the current version of liberal
education but so far there doesn't seem much appetite to do that.
Laziness, corruption and sentimentality hold out a lot of hope and the
liberal world order generates those in plenty. It's not going to be a
perfectly implemented system run by efficient and dedicated officials.
Think more of something presided over by the United Nations bureaucracy
or the New York City Department of Education. Keep your head down and
do what you want and you might become a target but most likely you'll
get away with it. It's too much trouble to stop or even notice you and
besides there are more interesting things for the higher-ups to attend
to like interagency politics and finagling unauthorized perks.
>The second requires an effort of will which I see no sign of existing.
As will and order disintegrate in society at large people will have to
organize their own locally. It's not as if there's going to be
anything else for them to rely on.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Oct 18 14:15:31 EDT 1997
Article: 10431 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: What to do about "the culture"
Date: 18 Oct 1997 14:01:11 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <3448E41C.7388@nospam.com> FELIX writes:
>> One is to withdraw from society,
>In this country, the only successful examples of this are those
>communities with strong centuries old religious traditions.
My inclination is to think this is the only solution that will work,
though.
Unless you're part of an inward-turning community modern communications
mean you can easily establish instant connection with anyone, anything,
and any pursuit in the world. It's as easy to connect with someone in
Tokyo as your next-door neighbor. In a very few years everyone will be
a couple of button clicks away from a drug-enhanced virtual reality
rendition of _120 Days of Sodom_. Even if most people don't feel like
going all the way with the Divine Marquis, that and every other
imaginable possibility and some not so imaginable, and everything in
between, will be immediately available and so be impossible to exclude
>from what defines our world.
That means our world won't be defined in any way that's even slightly
comprehensible. Unless you happen to be a god or at least a saint
coherence of life is impossible if you don't live in a coherent social
setting. Incoherence eventually means death, so in the end people will
come to live by whatever is necessary for coherence of culture. So far
as I can tell, that will mean dropping out, which means a discipline
and way of life fine-grained enough to keep out the all-penetrating
world order, which probably means a religious way of life with lots of
rules for family life. The sort of thing the strict Orthodox and the
Amish have, in fact.
>As long as white people keep getting their (gradually diminished)
>paycheck they do not appear to be ready to take up the gun to rid
>themselves of their oppressors.
The fundamental problem though isn't oppression in any ordinary sense.
If a man's loosing his marbles very likely it will be possible to take
advantage of him in various ways but his basic problem is not that he's
being taken advantage of. Even if every oppressor in the world moved
to Antarctica to fast and do penance for his sins the situation
described above would still be with us.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Oct 18 14:15:32 EDT 1997
Article: 10432 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: What to do about "the culture"
Date: 18 Oct 1997 14:13:42 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <3448EAD8.31DB@nospam.com> FELIX writes:
>I am constantly suprised that the counter-revolutionaries in this
>group are not more explicitly Christian in their posts.
Then it becomes a different conversation. If you're talking about
politics and social issues and aren't presuming Christianity then you
can't bring it in as an answer because it doesn't follow from what's
been said to that point together with assumptions that can be taken for
granted. That of course may show that conversations of this kind are
of limited use, like a conversation about public health among people
not all of whom can be presumed to accept the germ theory of disease.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Sun Oct 19 06:17:40 1997
Subject: Re: On Nietzsche and Other Matters
To: M
Date: Sun, 19 Oct 1997 06:17:40 -0400 (EDT)
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>[Nietzsche's] value lies elsewhere: in the questions he raises, and in
>the manner in which he examines ideas and problems in new ways.
He's a provocative writer it's true. Read him and it frees you from
having to read a lot of other things.
>Ad hominem attacks and psychologizing are not really productive when
>examining particular philosophical systems.
As you observe, he's not a systematic philosopher. He's a man in a
situation partly of his own making and partly forced on him and must be
considered as such. It's true one can break off particular observations
or arguments and consider them in abstraction from his overall effort,
and that can be valuable, but it's not the only productive way to deal
with his writings.
>Nietzches' philosphy is a philosophy of transcendence, albeit of a non-
>theistic kind (this is not as strange as might appear at first glance.
It's a philosophy of the necessity and non-existence of transcendence.
As such in the end it has nothing to say. All he can really do is
scream and strike poses. Still, the situation he's stuck in -- partly
by choice -- is one worth understanding and he illuminates it better
than almost anyone.
>His aphoristic style may stike some readers as trivial, but a careful
>reading does not bear this out.
Actually, I like his style very much.
>Your references to his "cruxifiction" are I suppose, to his psychotic
>break at the end of his career.
That wasn't what I had in mind. Crucifixion is the death by torture of
the transcendent at the hands of the non-transcendent. He needed
transcendence but couldn't allow it partly because of the cultural
situation and partly because he didn't want anything other than himself
to be God. Therefore he was stuck hopelessly in the non-transcendent
and it tortured him so he screamed and wriggled around like a bug on a
pin.
>Without giving over to the "hyper-cosmopolitanism" of multicuturalism,
>I think we can strike a balance between tradition and tolerence. I for
>one do not want to live in a world where it is acceptable for a racist
>skinhead to beat me and my Cuban wife to death.
In America in 1997 anyone who thinks it's OK for ethnic distinctions to
play a significant role in social life is considered the same as
somebody who thinks it acceptable for a racist skinhead to beat you and
your wife to death. After all, racism is racism. What function does
it serve to define the issue that way?
>It is my belief that the corrosive effects of post-modern capitalism
>are so corrosive and insideous, that talking about conserving anything
>will be a moot point within the next 20 to 30 years. We will be forced
>to act at some point in the future, hence such a response will no
>longer be conservative as such but radical. It will be an effort at
>retrieving what was valuable in the past and building traditions that
>are sustainable.
The difficulty is what to do about it. Capitalism makes everything a
matter of choice, on the theory that each of us is an utterly
independent chooser, and then gives tons of money to whoever can
manipulate us most successfully, which is possible because we are social
beings as well as choosers. The usual proposed remedy, the modern
state, only makes things worse. It is also based ostensibly on the
theory of man as an independent chooser (that's basic liberal theory)
but actually on manipulation, and it adds to the power available to the
capitalist the power of brute physical force.
>This is not the same as claiming that a universal sexual morality
>exists, which can be determined and imposed. Still, the geni is out of
>the bottle. I don't even begin to speculate on how to put it back.
I don't think sexual morality is different from other kinds of morality.
If people feel it as valuable a variety of arrangements grow up that
have the effect of enforcing it.
One possibility is that people will notice that sloppy sexual conduct
goes with a cruddy life. That's already true of course. Perhaps
family ties will become more necessary as a practical matter because of
welfare cuts, degradation of public education, etc., and things like
traditional sexual morality that support family life will come to have
a clearer relation to living well. Another possibility is that the
continuing evacuation of public life of moral content will eventually
mean that most people will carry on their lives as adherents of some
sectarian religion, and sectarian religions that last always have
strict sexual morality because otherwise it becomes impossible to
maintain boundaries between the sect and everyone else and to pass on
beliefs etc. to the next generation.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Tue Oct 21 09:00:09 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710211300.JAA20517@panix.com>
Subject: Character: co-creation, consent, etc.
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 09:00:09 -0400 (EDT)
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>From the discussion between the Schmooklers:
>I would, for example, prefer, "If you keep interrupting, I will have to
>put you in your room," to "This is not the kind of person I want you to
>be, one who interrupts."
What's wrong with "People who are considerate don't interrupt, we should
all be considerate, and it's my duty to see that you learn that"? It
seems to me most parents actually think about things that way, that it
would wrong the child and the world not to teach elementary manners.
Also, why should your child think you're justified in imprisoning him
unless your action has to do with with a moral system that is binding
before you or he choose anything? Otherwise it seems it's simply a
matter of your greater physical strength enabling you to have things
your way.
>I do believe we do create ourselves, co-creatively with God, through
>our choices. To empower children to do the same doesn't seem to be to
>impose an agenda.
Co-creatively with God is an interesting notion. It may be quite
useful. Does it mean we can make choices that thwart or violate God's
co-creative activity, and such choices are illegitimate? For example if
I drank myself to death it seems I would be doing something of the sort.
Someone might say as he left the graveside "God made him for something
better." It also seems that it would be possible for someone, a parent
say, sometimes to judge God's co-creative purpose well enough to enforce
it without imposing an agenda, for example by intervening to prevent his
young son from developing a crack habit. There must be less extreme
examples as well.
Also -- is it only God who is co-creator with us? Why not our family,
our society, our times and environment? It seems to me those things
contribute to making us what we are at least as much as the conscious
choices we make. If my parents for example had a co-creative role in
making me what I am then it seems that playing that role to the best of
their ability would be different from either imposing an agenda or
letting me develop in accordance with a strictly internal principle.
>Though we are social and are impacted by that, that doesn't mean that
>we are created by it.
Co-created? It seems to me I'm probably a different sort of guy in very
profound ways than I would have been if I had been raised as the eldest
son of Assurbanipal's favorite concubine. The differences may well go
deeper than most differences I could create by conscious individual
choice. What sense then does it make to say that I am created by my
conscious individual choices but only impacted by not being the eldest
son of A's favorite concubine?
>no one can be influenced except if the influencee in some way decides
>to go along.
My parents influenced me to speak English rather than Sanskrit because
that's what they spoke around the house. In some sense no doubt I
decided to go along with the influence but how illuminating is it to put
it that way?
The example isn't trivial. Moral judgments and so on are encoded in
customary vocabulary and turns of phrase. If A grows up in an
environment in which people are always analyzing conduct in terms of
"dharma" and B grows up in one in which they talk about what's "cool"
instead chances are they'll be influenced to have a different
understanding of what life is about. How could they go about declining
the influence?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Oct 21 09:54:47 EDT 1997
Article: 10436 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: What to do about "the culture"
Date: 18 Oct 1997 18:21:55 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <62a64d$av4$1@cfs2.kis.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (Andy Fear) writes:
>Officials in the Anglo-Saxon world in particular tend to be zealous
>and there is the question of the pleasure of power even if exercised
>in a petty way.
Who cares about the Anglo-Saxon world in the age of multiculturalism?
Think East of Suez, where there ain't no 10 Commandments. Oriental
despots may thoroughly enjoy the pleasures of power, but minute
regulation of daily life is too much trouble. Why should islands off
the coast of Europe be any different? The English will rise above
their puritan heritage of zeal yet.
I think it was Robert Walpole who said there's a lot of ruin in a
country. He may have meant that people who predict national ruin are
wrong, but I think it means things can degrade a whole lot more. So
have faith in incoherence, incompetence, and if it comes to that
corruption on a grand and petty scale. The new liberal order isn't
going to promote the contrary.
>I fear that in the main they won't bother, but will simply sit and
>take it.
The ones who do that will tend to die out. Wait a few generations and
see who's thriving.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Oct 21 09:54:48 EDT 1997
Article: 10445 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: How stable is liberalism?
Date: 21 Oct 1997 09:53:32 -0400
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Another issue statement for a traditionalist discussion group, proposed
here for comment:
The topic is "How stable is a liberal social order?"
Our current social order is mixed, but more and more exclusively
oriented toward the goal of liberalism, equal freedom. In the long
run, freedom and equality can not be can be achieved simultaneously,
and each is self-destructive if pursued single-mindedly. On the other
hand, liberalism views all other principles of social order as evil,
and so is unable to moderate its pursuit of its goods. Our current
liberal social order is therefore unstable.
To make that more definite:
1. The evolution of liberalism at some point creates conflicts (for
example, between freedom and equality or between either and their own
conditions) that would make it unworkable.
2. Most libertarian and neoconservative thought is an attempt to save
liberalism by restoring it to an earlier stage in its development.
Libertarians like to define liberal goals classically, in formal rather
than substantive terms, while neoconservatives generally approve of the
concrete liberal state as it stood at some earlier time.
3. Neither attempt can be successful because each in some way denies
the fundamental principle of liberalism, maximizing the equal freedom
of each to do whatever he wants while preserving the equal freedom of
others to do similarly. The evolution of liberalism has been the
unfolding of that principle, and to halt or reverse the evolution is to
give up on it and prefer some other principle.
4. Therefore, liberalism will not be saved, but rather will lead to a
crisis resulting in major and discontinuous changes. With a change in
guiding ideals, our system will no longer be recognizably liberal.
So far liberals have won their arguments with prophets of doom. The
American and other liberal systems have displayed a startling ability
to meet and overcome challenges while becoming ever more liberal.
Throughout much of the world, including all its developed parts,
monarchical rule and feudal remnants have long been swept away.
Fascism and communism have all but disappeared. Liberal ideals, such
as individual freedom and equality, and liberal forms, such as
representative government, universal suffrage and an independent
judiciary, are all but universally accepted, as is the principle of
combining market economics with ultimate state responsibility for
individual well-being. State activism against non-liberal principles
of social order such as religion, ethnic culture and family (sex roles,
heterosexism, parental authority) is generally understood to be a
fundamental requirement of morality.
However, triumph doesn't last forever. As the logic of liberalism
works itself out, the liberal interpretation of freedom and equality,
and the practical requirements for putting that interpretation into
effect, become more and more far-reaching. One result is an increased
role for state and world market, the only institutions universal and
neutral enough to satisfy liberal principles. Another is the weakening
of all institutions, since the functioning of institutions depends on
inequality and restrictions on freedom. Eventually state and market
themselves weaken fatally since they cannot exist in a vacuum but
presume popular moral discipline and other preconditions that they
cannot themselves generate.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Tue Oct 21 08:12:55 1997
Subject: Re: Your misogyny web site
To: P
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 08:12:55 -0400 (EDT)
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> First, I have heard reports of some small societies (Melanesian, I
> think), which were formally matriarchal; and Andrea Dworkin, in one
> of her essays, also refers to one of such "feminist paradise" in
> which most of the men were castrated.
I don't think such societies exist. I mostly rely on Steven Goldberg
(see Sheaffer's Domain of Patriarchy page) and on my confidence that if
they did exist they would be as famous as Harriet Tubman. As to
Dworkin, she has a far better mind and prose style than most feminists
but she's insane. I wouldn't take any assertion of hers seriously.
> First is what we can call the "Lysistrata factor", or the fact that
> most men, incredibly vain creatures that we are, will do just about
> anything to avoid appearing unattractive to women.
I would include that under "masculine cowardice."
> A Christian man is of course afraid for all the usual reasons to
> speak against feminism, but he also (at least in the more
> intellectual forms of Christianity -- Bible thumpers anachronize that
> book and interpret it more literally) cannot justify his position --
> and therefore he is silent.
Don't agree. Christianity is full of conflicting tendencies, and to
give any of them free reign so that it destroys its contrary is to
destroy Christianity. The technical term is "heresy." So feminism is,
among other things, a Christian heresy.
St. Paul does say in almost so many words that in Christ there is no
race, class or gender. He also preaches submission of slave to master
and wife to husband, and the whole New Testament presumes the
legitimacy and permanence of distinctions among nations. To claim that
taking the latter tendency seriously is an anachronistic reading of the
Bible is pure prejudice. Christian antinomianism has always been based
on the former tendency, but it has never been orthodox. The fact we
are all in some sense equal in relation to God does not mean at all
that social distinctions are wrong. To claim otherwise is to make the
Kingdom of God something to be created immediately by an act of our own
wills.
What's happened today is that secular thought has become antinomian, so
the Christians who count as intellectual from the standpoint of modern
secular thought tend to be antinomian heretics. I assume you read
Plato. If so, there is a description of what is going on today, not
only feminism but antiracism, the sexual revolution, the cult of youth,
and even animal rights, in _Republic_ 562d ff. That situation is a
consequence of the disappearance of the transcendent characterizing the
series of regimes described in books viii and ix. The current
situation in what is understood as intellectual Christianity has the
same origin -- it's "God is dead" Christianity, whether called by that
name or not.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Wed Oct 22 09:20:45 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710221320.JAA20656@panix.com>
Subject: Character: Jim to Ed
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 1997 09:20:45 -0400 (EDT)
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Ed writes:
>>>I would, for example, prefer, [A]"If you keep interrupting, I will
>>>have to put you in your room," to [B]"This is not the kind of person
>>>I want you to be, one who interrupts."
>>
>>What's wrong with [C]"People who are considerate don't interrupt, we
>>should all be considerate, and it's my duty to see that you learn
>>that"?
>
>I consider this a shaming remark. It tells the child not that there
>is a problem with its behavior but with its nature. That is the
>essence of shaming.
A is what I would actually say, but if the kid demanded an explanation
of what I mean by "have to" C is the one I would give.
I wouldn't say B, because my mere desire isn't a justification for
ordering the kid to do something. On that point I agree with Andy's
counterculture. To my mind the issue is whether in addition to
personal desires there are goods we all share and can recognize that
provide a basis for human society including the family.
I suppose C could be changed to "Interruption is inconsiderate, we
should all act considerately, and it's my duty to see you learn that."
But that wouldn't change the point of parental intervention, which is
not only to prevent particular acts, but also to habituate the child to
certain kinds of conduct and so encourage him to become a person with
qualities he does not at present possess.
In this particular case one could say "Mr. Soandso has a right not to
be interrupted and I'm protecting that right" but you can't always
appeal so readily to the interests of third parties. "Eat your
brussels sprouts and then finish your homework" doesn't protect others
and the *particular* acts, eating those 4 brussels sprouts or whatever,
don't much matter. It's the kid's habits we're worried about, and
those on account of our concern for his well-being. Speaking as if
discipline of children were simply a matter of protecting other people
distorts the situation, which can't be a good thing.
Your comment on shaming is interesting. It seems to me there's a
difference between intentionally shaming someone to get your own way
and recognizing that it is right sometimes to feel shame, that
shamelessness is no virtue. But if it is right sometimes to feel shame
then saying "that remark will cause someone to feel shame" does not
necessarily show there's something wrong with the remark.
>I do not think it is superior to imprison someone for moral reasons
>than for the child not following what I have told him.
Would you say "I do not think it is superior to imprison someone for
reasons I believe justified on general grounds all can accept than
simply in order to get my own way"?
>>Co-creatively with God is an interesting notion. It may be quite
>>useful. Does it mean we can make choices that thwart or violate
>>God's co-creative activity, and such choices are illegitimate?
>
>I do not feel qualified to answer this question, as it relates to the
>will of God for which I cannot speak.
If we can never make judgements as to God's intentions or actions I'm
not sure what sense there is in speaking of God.
>I'd like to stop a kid from developing a crack habit if I could,
>because I'd prefer it out of love for him.
"[O]ut of love for him" sounds to me very much like "for his own good."
>people decline influence all the time.
Sure. But to decline influence it seems we have to know what we think
is good and bad. That understanding isn't something we simply create
for ourselves, even with God's help. It depends on what we think the
world is like, what distinctions we draw between different sorts of
conduct, what we think the various kinds of conduct are associated with
or lead to, what we expect of things and people, what the people we
care about care about themselves. All those things we get in the first
instance from our early surroundings. To say that a child's early
surroundings "influence" him seems to understate their role in his
becoming a human being.
Even after we become adults it's terribly difficult to maintain such
independence of others that it would be true to say that our relations
to others only influence us rather than to some degree constitute us.
I'm not sure it's good to try to be that independent.
>We create who we are through our choices. But I also have the
>experience that God creates me. Jim, you and I can impact each other,
>but we are not each others' Creators.
Perhaps God creates us by working through our choices, if we accept his
activity. Could he also create us by working through our parents if
they are conscientious or through the social standards we grow up with
if those standards have arisen among people who to at least some degree
trust in God and accept him?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Oct 22 16:46:09 EDT 1997
Article: 10455 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: How stable is liberalism?
Date: 22 Oct 1997 12:05:19 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Status: RO
In <1997102110452226909@deepblue4.salamander.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>Every individual must be treated as moral end in his own right, not
>simply as a means so someone else's end. Economic redistribution
>breaks this goal. Some are workhorses used as means, others are the
>deserving recipients.
The theoretical answer is that production is a function of the economy
as a whole, of all the participants and the conditions and
understandings governing their collective action, so determining how
much production should be attributed to a particular participant is
like determining how much of the watery quality of a glass of water
should be attributed to a particular hydrogen atom. Social contract
theory gets us past any remaining difficulties. The workhorses should
really be understood to have agreed to redistribution from behind the
veil of ignorance.
You're right of course that it rankles when people who have their acts
together find they have to pay the freight for people who don't but
plainly could. Hence all the propaganda about middle-class
intolerance, judgementalism, racism, etc. People have to be trained to
feel it shouldn't rankle and to feel guilty when it does. You're right
that it's a strain.
>2. Conscience. "Free will" and "freedom of conscience" are not the
>same thing, and when liberals uphold the latter they make trouble for
>themselves.
It's a matter of strategy. "Freedom of conscience" is useful breaking
down established nonliberal social institutions. Once the institutions
are suppressed and liberalism is firmly in the saddle it becomes
antisocial, a form of bigotry and hate.
>You can already see this: "I want X" is an acceptable statement, but
>"I was raised to believe X" is not.
Just so. It's a sign of the progress of liberalism.
>Liberals currently hold that homo may NOT be converted to hetero. But
>what if some individual wanted to make that transition? It would seem
>that liberals are bound to honor his choice and ought to fight hard
>for enabling methods and technologies.
Again it's strategy. "Homosexuality is innate" helps break down
heterosexuality as an established norm. Once that's been done then the
concept of innate homosexuality will be seen as tyrannical.
>Choice vs multiculturalism. Isn't all choice judgemental?
In a liberal state choice aspires to become mindless impulse. Only so
does it become morally acceptable.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Wed Oct 22 16:42:45 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710222042.QAA12227@panix.com>
Subject: Character: Goods and rights
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 1997 16:42:44 -0400 (EDT)
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Andy writes:
>Your point, as I understand it, is that there IS such a good, and that
>it is characteristic of the liberal side of many of our cultural
>discussions to deny that, with a great variety of consequences.
That's right.
>In other words, although Ed is far from relativistic about whether
>there is such a thing as the good, he opposes some traditional ways of
>trying to achieve the good because of strong feelings and beliefs about
>how people are to deal with each other.
My concern is that his views seem to deprive the good of any function.
Ed may accept that the good exists, but he seems reluctant to say that
anyone can recognize it (see his comment regarding the will of God) let
alone legitimately act on it in opposition to someone else's desires.
In order to matter or even be worth talking about it seems to me the
good must be something publicly recognizable, such that I can recognize
your good, possibly better than you do. If that is the case then non-
contractual authority can be justified as something better than the
sheer domination of A by B for B's private purposes. Otherwise I don't
see how it can. And if it can't the relation of parent and child is
necessarily a sort of slavery.
>What I'm hearing is a sensitivity (which, from my point of view, is too
>extreme) about one person imposing upon any other his concept of the
>good, even (or perhaps especially?) between parent and child.
But if my concept of the good never justifies me in doing anything in
regard to other people, how much of a role can "the good" play in
ethics?
P.S. -- Miki just signed off, which means I should delete her address,
but instead I deleted her message. Which address should I delete?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Wed Oct 22 16:37:51 1997
Subject: Re: Misogyny
To: P
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 1997 16:37:51 -0400 (EDT)
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>But if you truly believe that you are equal to a woman, then it seems
>to me that you are agreeing with the feminists, and not refuting them.
Equal as to what? A captain and a major are equal in ways that are
more important than those in which they differ. They are equally bound
by military law and by the informal standards of honor required of
officers and gentlemen. They are referred to as "brother officers."
When they took their oaths as officers they became something other than
what they were; nothing nearly so important happens when they get
promoted. For that matter they're both human beings, and what they
have in common as such is more fundamental than their points of
difference. Nonetheless, the distinction between the two is important,
especially if one is the commanding officer of the other.
Is it splitting hairs or counting dancing angels to say the
distinctions matter even though they are not everything?
>When I said that taking race/gender/class distinction seriously was an
>anachronistic reading of the Bible, I merely meant it as a social
>observation, not as a slur, if that is what you mean by "prejudice".
I took it as a statement regarding how the Bible should be read by
someone today with a serious and intelligent interest in it. My
response was "Not so, it's how it should be read by someone who has
already decided for other reasons that r/g/c distinctions should be
abolished." That previous decision is what I referred to as
"prejudice."
>But you are correct in surmising that I don't think much of
>Christianity, regarding it as a very toxic Jew-originated
>superstition.
But Christianity made Europe.
>But just to call it cowardice, and leave it at that, doesn't capture
>the cupidity and vanity that I meant to point out to you.
A fair comment, and I will consider my wording.
>It is not clear to me, for example, how secular thought could be
>antinomian, since, as I understand it, this adjective describes the
>difference between salvation through grace and Mosaic Law.
I used it to refer to the belief that secular salvation -- tolerance,
inclusiveness and multiculturalism, liberation, what have you --
involves rejection of traditional moral distinctions and institutions.
Doing whatever you are moved to do in the right spirit is what leads to
heaven or the equivalent.
>And it is also not clear to me how one could possibly have a "God is
>dead" form of Christianity.
It's easy. You just say that taking literally all the stuff about a
personal being transcending the world of our experience but interfering
with it is just fundamentalism. To speak of "God" is to speak of what
we take most seriously, to say God is personal is to say our most
serious concerns are found in our relations with other men, to say God
is mighty and exercises his providence among men is to say that serious
engagement in our relations with others leads to social progress, etc.,
etc., etc. Just treat "God" and so on as a way of speaking of this-
worldly (and probably political) concerns viewed as matters of ultimate
importance.
>But thanks for taking the time to reply. Always nice to find someone
>willing to speak with intelligence on any subject.
Actually my motives are mostly selfish -- people ask questions and
raise issues from various angles and responding helps me understand and
develop my own views. So thanks for your comments.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Thu Oct 23 05:45:23 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710230945.FAA29455@panix.com>
Subject: Character: Shame and consideration
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 05:45:23 -0400 (EDT)
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> If the object is to teach the child to be considerate, I do not
> believe that this can be done well by being inconsiderate to the
> child. Making the child feel bad about him/herself does not seem
> like good modeling.
To my mind it depends on what sort of "making the child feel bad" we're
talking about. It can be a manipulative device used to get one's way
or it can be a consequence of the child understanding the true state of
affairs. Truth is sometimes unkind and should be softpedalled but not
always. Feeling bad about oneself can be many other things as well.
Suppose X, a parent, habitually gets his way by shaming the unfortunate
members of his family and other such devices. He does not of course
admit the nature of his conduct. Then he notices other families in
which people are much happier and have better relations than in his
own. He has the uneasy feeling that the difference may have something
to do with his own conduct and starts feeling bad about himself.
Eventually he decides to see a psychologist. After several sessions
with Dr. X the situation becomes altogether clear to him, and he feels
*really* bad about himself.
Is there something wrong with this story?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Thu Oct 23 08:37:56 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710231237.IAA14921@panix.com>
Subject: Character: Jim on Ed on Andy on Ed
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 08:37:56 -0400 (EDT)
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Some more stuff for Ed and anyone else who's interested:
>Similarly, if I approach a child with the idea that I shall mold him or
>her into the object that I wish them to be, then I can inadvertently or
>perhaps semi-deliberately rob them of the sense of the freedom of their
>being by conveying to them through my language that their being and
>nature is in my hands and not in theirs.
It seems to me possible to approach a child with the idea that what it
would be best for the child to develop into is neither in your hands
nor his, but something to be discerned and worked toward. Since you're
a lot older and more experienced your views on the subject might be on
the whole more reliable, to an extent that justifies the compulsion
parents inevitably exercise upon their children. To say that it is
just a matter of trying to make the child what you wish seems false to
me.
>They are accepted as people, regardless of what they do. Then I can
>distinguish nicely between what they are and what they do.
Unconditional acceptance also means we accept our children regardless of
their habits, attitudes, personal qualities, etc. One loves one's son
even if he is what is ordinarily called a bully. So from that point of
view education for character, which implies that the child should
develop personal qualities that at present he lacks, seems no less
consistent with unconditional acceptance than forbidding the child to do
particular harmful things. In both cases the fact we don't approve of
something about the child doesn't mean we don't accept him.
>I prefer instead to let a child chose which consequences he/she wants
>to experience and let him/her base a choice of behavior on that. This
>supports both the sense of agency and the sense of self-value while
>instilling acceptable behavior.
On the face of it this sounds like saying to the kid, "decide what you
want, and whatever it is, go for it." Somehow though I expect that if
the kid routinely came up with the wrong answers you'd put a lot of
time and effort into discussing with him just what's good and bad about
the consequences he's experiencing. ("It may *seem* like pushing your
sister away from the Nintendo so you can play with it gives you just
the Super Mario experience you want, but remember that ... and does it
really ... " etc.) So all the morality would be packed into the
discussion of consequences. It might often be good to approach things
that way but I'm not sure it is always a uniquely good approach to
teaching the kid how to act. Sometimes I think it would just seem
artificial.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Thu Oct 23 09:11:13 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710231311.JAA19183@panix.com>
Subject: Character: Conclusion, perhaps
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 09:11:12 -0400 (EDT)
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My exchange with Ed may be winding down:
>It is my belief that if one treats one's children with utmost respect
>and behaves with integrity manifesting what one believes, that is the
>most powerful way of allowing a child to see what is ideal in a human
>and provides the greatest chance that they will do so themselves, in
>their own way.
Agreed, at least in general. My only issue is whether that does the
whole job, whether as parents we are sometimes forced to use
compulsion, and if so how we can best make sense of that and the other
things we actually do.
>I'm not sure I wish to continue a point-by-point rebuttal to your
>rebuttal. We seem to be neither converging nor elucidating together.
>Communication does not seem to be moving forward. It feels more like a
>scraping of ideas against each other, with no profit in sight for
>either of us.
I've gained from it, although it may not be apparent. So I should
thank you for sharing your views without reward.
Our styles differ greatly. It is always useful to imagine how the
world looks to another, why it looks that way, and to formulate the
concerns that lead one to consider another view more adequate. I find
point-by-point exchanges helpful in such things. That's why I go to
the trouble of engaging in them. Others of course find they distort
the consideration of issues. Certainly they accentuate disagreements.
>Shame that is healthy is about behavior. Toxic shame is about one's
>being. "You are a bad person." is toxic. "You hurt that kid, and you
>should not behave that way" can be healthy.
One issue I have regards shame over habits, how a man who habitually
lies in certain settings or becomes conscious of a streak of cruelty in
himself should feel. It seems illusory to view such things as a series
of independent actions.
You can see that I've continued the point-by-point. Whether that's a
good habit or a bad one others can judge. Thanks again, though. You
have helped me.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk Thu Oct 23 08:32:24 1997
Subject: Re: misogyny
To: P
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 08:32:24 -0400 (EDT)
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>to say that souls are equal without regard to race/gender/class
>distinction does not mean "equal in the eyes of God only", or equal in
>some other Jesuitical sense.
I don't see how saying we are all equal in the most fundamental respects
makes it particularly difficult or Jesuitical to recognize other
distinctions that have important social implications. Thought can't be
carried on without making distinctions and limiting the application of
principles to proper domains. Maybe your point is that thinking is hard
and it's easier to shout slogans. True, but I can't help that.
The important thing about modern egalitarianism, one that I tried to
bring out in my anti-feminist page, is that it is such an *extremist*
outlook. On any view that takes into account the complexity of social
life and human nature it makes no sense at all to try to organize a
society that puts us all in the same position across the board. It's
plain fanaticism. Whatever else people disagree on, they can agree to
reject feminism. That's a point to insist on.
>Feminists and other secular humanists who use this approach mean it
>literally and do not therefore allow of any distinctions -- indeed,
>they cannot.
Just so. Therefore saying we are the same in fundamentals does not
lead to feminism any more than observing the obvious, that there are
some women who are taller or better mathematicians than the great
majority of men.
>Somewhat ironically, I think that this idea of the equivalence of souls
>is ultimately Pythagorean/Platonic in origin.
It's a tendency of rational thought, that attempts to find common
principles equally applicable everywhere.
>But as I said, I believe the key to prevailing in this argument is to
>jetison the baggage of Christianity entirely.
Don't agree. To get rid of transcendental religion is to make man the
creator of his own world and human rationality the measure of all
things. Human rationality tends toward egalitarianism because it looks
for common principles equally applicable everywhere. In addition, if
man is the measure it is hard to justify social arrangements to those
subject to them on any basis but equality.
You should remember how recent a development Christian feminism is.
It's not a result of Christianity becoming more Christian, but of its
abandonment (in its respectable forms) of the transcendent and betrayal
of its own nature.
>Eventually, it will be shown that the notable absence of women (and
>Negroes, for that matter) from the intellectual history of mankind is
>no mere artifact of culture, but that it is due to very clear
>neurological differences between men and women -- I'm as convinced of
>this as I am of anything.
What makes you think it will be permitted to be shown or that society
will be run scientifically? The main noticeable consequence of the
publication of _The Bell Curve_ is construction of the new social
defenses for egalitarian dogma now found needed.
>The historian Gibbon blames Christianity for the fall of Rome, and the
>ensuing 10 centuries of intellectual darkness and religious
>obscurantism.
Rome had its own problems -- high taxes, bureaucracy, growing despotism,
intellectual stagnation, economic decline. Christianity won because it
provided a new principle of social order that was needed because the old
ones were dying. And you should learn more about the cultural,
intellectual and even scientific and technological history of the next
10 centuries. They weren't dead.
>With regard to your last point about "God is dead" Christianity, I will
>only say that I have never known Christianity to be presented as just
>another philosophical system.
You spoke of Christian feminism and instanced R. W. Emerson, J. S. Mill
and so on. Christianity becomes feminist when it turns into a
philosophical system indistinguishable from secular left/liberalism with
traditional terminology layered on.
How do you think mainline churches and religious thinkers manage to
remain respectable today? Not by adhering to views fundamentally at
odds with the regime. Their function is to bridge the gap between
those in the pews, who are attached to the traditional outlook but
aren't great thinkers, and the demands of the New World Order. They do
it by retaining the old forms and language but reinterpreting them to
make their substance identical with the requirements of those in power.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Oct 24 12:30:09 EDT 1997
Article: 10459 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: How stable is liberalism?
Date: 23 Oct 1997 15:12:39 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <62o7j7$mb9@panix.com>
References: <62ic4s$slg@panix.com> <1997102110452226909@deepblue4.salamander.com> <62l87v$kii@panix.com> <19971023063028353509@deepblue5.salamander.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
In <19971023063028353509@deepblue5.salamander.com> wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>> In a liberal state choice aspires to become mindless impulse. Only
>> so does it become morally acceptable.
>What are the implications for market economies? If my choice is
>supreme, how can I be held responsible for contracts I made in the
>past, or for any fiduciary responsibility?
Contract disappears, a tendency visible as the tendency of judges to
enforce their own view of the relation between the parties that makes
sense rather than the contract as written. To some extent the tendency
is cushioned by the greater readiness of judges to pay attention to
what's in black and white when neither party is a natural person but
only to an extent.
I don't know what the tendency of the law is on fiduciary
responsibilities. I would expect that their distinctive features would
be disapppearing since they had a particular source, "the punctilio of
an honor the most sensitive," [Cardozo] that was rooted in an
understanding of human life that no longer exists. On the other hand
fiduciaries are often big institutions like banks and if there's a
lawsuit they're a deep pocket so in many practical situations the
result (liability for minor or constructive shortcomings) would be
similar.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Sat Oct 25 04:34:26 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710250834.EAA00180@panix.com>
Subject: Re: Character: Jim on Ed on Andy on Ed
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 04:34:25 -0400 (EDT)
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Ed writes: "This conversation began with my objecting to the idea of
molding a child into an image we have of him/her."
I agree with the objection.
I think of argument as a somewhat specialized activity, like the
stress-testing _Consumer Reports_ puts consumer products through or
dissecting a biological specimen. It tells you a lot about the thing
you're examining, but it's not a normal way of acting and can look more
like vandalism than anything else.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Sat Oct 25 05:03:22 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710250903.FAA03804@panix.com>
Subject: Character: from Ed to Jim re "Conclusion, perhaps"
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 05:03:21 -0400 (EDT)
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Ed writes:
> I'd be interested in your saying what you got out of our exchange, if
> you are so minded.
To see what ideas mean to someone is to draw on his stock of thought
and experience. Ideas about childrearing touch on sensitive and
painful issues and also on feelings of responsibility. They relate to
how we came to be human beings and so go very deep. As a therapist who
sees the consequences of childrearing disasters ideas about such things
take on special meaning. By seeing what that meaning is I learned
something.
Also, how people deal with ideas is always of interest. They have a
logical side that appears in formal argument but are also stand-ins for
a complex of feelings and experiences that varies for each of us
although there's usually enough in common to make communication
possible. Otherwise there'd be no point using words, people would just
yelp or moan. As a therapist you seem to emphasize the latter
tendency. So you present one side of a range of possibilities, which
helps understand the possibilities.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Sat Oct 25 08:53:44 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710251253.IAA17981@panix.com>
Subject: Character: Addendum
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 08:53:43 -0400 (EDT)
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I wrote to Ed that ideas "have a logical side that appears in formal
argument but are also stand-ins for a complex of feelings and
experiences that varies for each of us although there's usually enough
in common to make communication possible. Otherwise there'd be no
point using words, people would just yelp or moan. As a therapist you
seem to emphasize the latter tendency."
One of the wonderful things about computerized editing is that it's
easy to move sentences around. One of the bad things is that
references can get lost. The "latter tendency" I thought Ed seemed to
emphasize was not yelping and moaning, but treating ideas as stand-ins
for feelings and experiences rather than as logical counters.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Sat Oct 25 10:25:15 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710251425.KAA26247@panix.com>
Subject: Character: Goods, rights and what not
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
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More with Ed:
> I do attempt in my own life, and I support others attempting in
> theirs to discern what is right and good.
It seems to me that part of what we do as parents is to encourage our
children to attempt to do so. Since learning goes from the concrete to
the general it seems that the process would start with teaching our
children to see as good particular things that we understand as good
and to act on that perception. If so, it seems that in raising our
children we are necessarily guided by a character ideal we have for
them -- attempting to discern what is right and good and to live by it
is a character trait, conscientiousness, and the particular good things
we teach our children, honesty and consideration for example,
correspond to other character traits.
> I object intrinsically to the concept of recognizing someone's good
> better than they do. I think it is arrogant, except when it comes to
> people who are really incompetent to discriminate, such as the
> severely developmentally disabled.
It seems to me we can't help but take that approach with our children.
In later life I agree it would be arrogant to claim the kind of
discretionary personal authority over another that a parent has over
his children.
It is not clear to me though that it is arrogant to participate in
other arrangements that in effect presume that a person is not always
the best judge of his own good and that there is a social wisdom that
sometimes should be preferred to private choice. For example I see
nothing arrogant about accepting the validity for others as well as
oneself of moral standards that tell us habitual drunkenness is a vice,
or supporting licensing requirements that make liquor less easily
obtainable than it would be in an absolutely free market. The
requirements might be a good or bad idea for any number of reasons, and
one can easily become too much involved in worrying about the moral
lapses of others, but the basic principle remains I think that since we
are social beings what the people we live with are like *does* matter
to us. I think that an important principle, not because I want to
oppose any concrete concern you have expressed, but because at present
many people tend to make its denial into an absolute, which I think is
a mistake.
> I just don't think one has to decide for others what is right and
> good, unless, of course, one is a legislator.
To make a moral judgement is to legislate. Also, in a democracy we are
all legislators. Legislation of course demands prudence and it is
imprudent in all sorts of ways to put the reform of other people at the
top of our "to do" list. Nonetheless, I think it is right to have some
concern for the well-being of others, and well-being is more than
physical.
I apologize to our beloved and respected leader and everyone else if I
have wandered too far off the topic of character. One reason the topic
is interesting is that it is so closely related to other social and
moral issues.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Oct 26 06:31:20 EST 1997
Article: 10463 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Which America?
Date: 24 Oct 1997 12:45:51 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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Yet another issue statement for a discussion group, this one from a
year and a half ago. Comments?
The topic is "Which America, or, Can This Country be Saved?" In my
view, these are the basic issues raised by the Buchanan campaign.
Patrick Buchanan says his movement is inclusive, while _The New York
Times_ says it is not. Both have a point. Buchanan is reaching out to
groups, such as conservative Christians and NRA members, whose members
have been ridiculed, demonized and excluded from public debate. He
isn't particularly interested in reaching out to Queer Nation. The NYT
does the same thing but with the opposite groups.
It seems that two Americas are being proposed, each of which would be
glad to include people who sign on to its principles, customs, and
interpretation of our national life and history. Buchanan likes the
America of traditional American patriotism, a particular complex of
peoples and ways of life that limit the scope and application of ideals
such as freedom and equality, while the NYT likes the America of People
for the American Way, which is basically a set of abstract principles
intended to promote equality and individual autonomy and the
institutions implementing those principles and which requires the
destruction of the America of traditional American patriotism.
Many ordinary people still prefer the first America, while all national
institutions prefer the second (for one thing, it increases their power
and authority). The grand political issues thus include the following:
1. To which America do most people actually give their loyalty and
why? TV, the way the educational system has developed and lots of
other things have undermined the first America and promoted the second.
How effective have they been? Can the trends be reversed?
2. More specifically, how can the first America be saved from the
imperialism of national institutions? How can that be done? People
get most of their information from national institutions (the media)
and that's where most political discussion is carried on. People look
to them for security in old age, poverty and (more and more) sickness.
They are presented as embodying "America", our highest earthly loyalty.
How could suggestions that they be cut back possibly be successful?
Has Buchanan's relative success been based on abandonment of the notion
of cutting back?
3. Is there something conceptually hopeless in the whole effort
because the first America was fatally infected from the beginning with
the second America? Was multiculturalism implicit in "life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness" all along? If so, now that the implications
of our founding principles have become explicit can those implications
be denied without rejecting the American polity as such? All
respectable opinion holds that Buchanan has done so. Is respectable
opinion right?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Oct 26 06:31:21 EST 1997
Article: 10469 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: What to do about "the culture"
Date: 26 Oct 1997 06:28:34 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <62uqdp$jt5$1@gte1.gte.net> "T.O. Minnix" writes:
>> "the culture" means the complex of attitudes, ideals, goals and ways
>> of life publicly presented as valid and proper. It includes the
>> things understood to bind the members of a society together morally,
>> and those taught to children by public institutions.
>Are we trying to redeem "the culture" or trying to redeem the people
>living under and influenced by the same? The former seems absurd -
>the definiton of culture you give seems to involve only ideas or at
>most behaviors, not people. Ideas cannot be 'redeemed' - they are
>either right or wrong. As to the latter, people can be 'redeemed' by
>changing their beliefs toward more wholesome ideas.
A system of ideas, practices etc. can be redeemed if a small number of
changes understood as removing specific evils and abuses but leaving
most of it as it is can turn it in a decisively better direction. It
can't if it's bad in its basic principles.
The distinction is the one often seen on the Left, between reformers
and revolutionaries. Can America be guided toward the goals of the
Left by reinterpretation and development of principles it already
accepts, for example by construing "liberty" and "equality" as People
for the American Way do to require steady weakening of traditional
standards and corresponding strengthening of the state bureaucracy, or
is something more dramatic like abolition of private property required?
On the neoconish right the issue came up in the _First Things_
symposium I think last November in which some of the participants made
noises suggesting they no longer accepted the moral legitimacy of the
actual American regime as a given. The result was a big to-do,
resignations from the board, denunciations of incipient terrorism and
bomb-throwing from _Commentary_ types, etc.
The question you raise is a good one, whether there's any real
difference between "up with America" and "down with America" when what
you want is something that can be defined independently of "America."
It does seem to me though that it matters what attitude you adopt
toward grand abstractions like "the American way," "the Constitution,"
etc. Those are things after all that for better or worse motivate
people and they aren't completely free of content. Is it better to
think about what one is doing and present it to others as basically
continuous or decisively opposed to the existing state of affairs? Is
the basic presumption to be that the TV networks, the official
mythology taught in the schools, pop music, mainline religion, what
have you is OK or not OK? Do you accept Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, M. L.
King as heroes? These questions are not meaningless.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Mon Oct 27 09:03:58 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710271403.JAA06430@panix.com>
Subject: Character: to Ed on moral training, demon rum, and so on
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 09:03:58 -0500 (EST)
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Ed writes:
>I do not object to telling a child my values. But I do not expect them
>to adopt them as their own. It is to me, as it was also to my father,
>to some extent, most important that my children be endowed with the
>capacity to decide for themselves.
Is the Autonomous Agent a particular moral ideal? It seems to me it is.
After all, one can't be that way without possessing certain virtues, at
least what are understood as virtues from one moral perspective, for
example the habit of looking within rather than to authoritative others
for guidance. So it is hard for me to distinguish helping one's child
become endowed with the capacity to decide for himself from training him
in particular virtues. Anyone who tries to do the former will look to
me like he's doing the latter.
>I objected, in a way somewhat ancient between him and me, to the
>concept of producing a product. But if we talk instead about
>supporting the development of a subject, of a person, not as an object
>who matches or fails to match a moral ideal, but rather as a person who
>can navigate life's space successfully -- including, but not limited
>to, how moral and in what way they wish to be -- then I agree.
To develop a person able to navigate life's space successfully seems to
require a conception of successful navigation and what life's moral
space is like. I'm not sure it's possible to try to help the
development without deciding a lot of moral points. "Successful
navigation" might mean maximizing one's own present pleasurable
sensations or it might mean applying the precepts of the Bible as John
Calvin would have applied them. Depending on the nature of the world
either definition might be the appropriate one.
Children start life knowing very little, and what they learn from us
goes very deep. In effect, it creates the world for them, especially
the moral world. It is only after that they recognize the basic
features of their moral world that they become able to make moral
decisions at all. For example, are values something we create,
important to the extent we make them so by our own decision or agreement
with others, or do they become important to the extent they correspond
to objective goods that are valid whether we or anyone else choose them
or not? It makes no sense to say we choose for ourselves between these
alternatives, because they are so fundamental as to define the moral
world within which rational choice takes place.
>>attempting to discern what is right and good and to live by it is a
>>character trait, conscientiousness, and the particular good things we
>>teach our children, honesty and consideration for example, correspond
>>to other character traits.
>
>I am happy to see these qualities emerge in my children. But I also
>tolerate their opposite, as parts of a whole person.
In a sense one has to tolerate it if his child is dishonest,
inconsiderate, morally frivolous and lacking in integrity, or for that
matter Jeffrey Dahmer, because you can't stop him from being your child
or wanting what is best for him. It seems wrong though to think that
what is most important is that he feel empowered to choose among those
things. He *is* empowered to choose among those things; what seems to
me important is that he recognize the nature of the moral world that
makes some choices good and others bad, and that he develop the habits
etc. that enable him to follow the good and turn from the bad.
>But I consider ideal parenting to be that which gradually relinquishes
>that position to the child and all along allows children to chose for
>themselves when appropriate and to state their needs. I really do
>believe that much harm has been done children by parents knowing for
>them what was right when it really wasn't.
I agree, on the whole. All I would add is that great responsibilities
like that of being a parent have dangers in all directions.
>>For example I see nothing arrogant about accepting the validity for
>>others as well as oneself of moral standards that tell us habitual
>>drunkenness is a vice,
>>
>It is interesting that you should chose this ground to present the
>rightness of moralizing about other people.
It seemed an example likely to bring out issues.
>Most people who work with alcoholism have long since abandoned the
>concept of alcoholism as a vice and see it instead as a disease. Even
>those who reject the disease concept do not go back to the 18th century
>concept of alcoholism as a vice.
I'm not sure what is involved in saying alcoholism should not be viewed
as a vice, or that there is something specifically 18th century about
such a view. Is it something special about heavy drinking, or is there
something wrong with the concept of "vice" in general?
To me, "vice" simply means habitual behavior that is destructive or
otherwise wrong but is in general subject to conscious control. It
doesn't mean something one has consciously chosen or could simply
decide to give up and count on the decision sticking. Most of us know
what such things are like from our own experience, and we've suffered
from them in others. Habitual lateness is a vice. So are greediness,
habitual overeating, nastiness to others, lack of charity, and lots of
other things. It's quite unpleasant to become conscious of such things
in oneself because simply saying "well that's a bad thing so I'll stop"
doesn't work. On the other hand, saying "that's just the way I am" or
"it's a disease so there's not much to do unless someone else cures me"
doesn't seem to be a step forward.
"Most people who work with alcoholism" sounds like it means most people
who are professionally involved with problem drinking rather than most
people in general who come in contact with it. The former I would
expect to prefer a disease view since after all in America in 1997 the
activities of professionals tend to be organized on technological lines
-- one defines a problem, analyzes causes of the sort professionals can
control, and devises a solution based on affecting those causes.
It seems to me though that most people who come to see themselves as
drinking too heavily cut back without professional involvement because
they think it's a bad thing to do and they see themselves as
responsible for their own lives. A big part of the way they come to
see things that way is the popular view that heavy drinking is a bad
thing and that people can control what they do even with regard to
alcohol -- in other words, that habitual drunkenness is a vice. That's
also part of how people avoid developing drinking problems in the first
place.
It may be of course that some people have a compulsion to drink that
makes the popular view misleading, just as some people have violent
compulsions that make the popular view that rape, murder and mayhem are
evil acts misleading. It may also be that "well you would just stop if
you had an ounce of decency in you, you swine" may not always be the
most helpful thing to say. The question you seem to raise though is
whether the view that habitual drunkenness is a vice has a legitimate
role at all. I don't understand the view that it does not.
[Aside to Seth: forgot to mention -- the first word in the subject
line should always be "Character."]
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Tue Oct 28 08:52:44 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710281352.IAA08409@panix.com>
Subject: Character: are we plants or social animals?
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 08:52:44 -0500 (EST)
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Also sprach Andy:
>I do believe, Jim, that you and I perhaps differ most on this point--
>the extent to which what is inborn in the human being must figure in
>the understanding of that person's good.
Our good is no doubt inborn in us. If it weren't, and it were imported
altogether from outside, it's not clear why it would be *our* good.
The matter is not simple, though.
First, we are social animals, and what's good for us depends on what
society is like and our relation to it. It's as if the good of a water
molecule depended on its relation to the Atlantic Ocean. If you were
smart enough you could figure out everything about the Atlantic Ocean by
looking at a water molecule but it's not a practical procedure. So to
figure out what's good for the molecule you also have to look at the
ocean even though God wouldn't have to.
Secondly, we are complex and subtle beings, with potentialities that
are hard to see before they become actual, so what is important about
us and for us isn't immediately obvious on inspection. Luckily, what
we have in common is more important than what distinguishes us from
each other. It follows that the best source of knowledge about what is
most important for and about me would be vast accumulated experience of
human beings in all aspects of their lives, to the extent such a thing
exists somewhere. The best source for that I know is experience
accumulated in society, in other words tradition.
Thirdly, to the extent you appeal to biological nature, evolution,
etc., you should take into account that the impulses and desires that
arise in us did not become part of our natural constitution in a
setting that gave them free reign. Man evolved as a social animal, and
the setting for which he is fitted by nature is a *cultured* one. It's
as if a plant evolved in gardens. Cultivation, pruning, weeding, what
have you would be natural to it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From jk@panix.com Tue Oct 28 08:54:45 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Message-Id: <199710281354.IAA08655@panix.com>
Subject: Character: what's special about "morality?"
To: CharacterForum@panix.com
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 08:54:44 -0500 (EST)
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Ed says:
>You tend, at least in this conversation to see all good from a moral
>viewpoint, and also all ill.
The reverse, I think. I see morality -- questions of how one ought to
act -- from the standpoint of all good and all ill. You seem to think
there's a special kind of good that has to do with morality and some
other kind of good that doesn't. I don't understand that. It seems to
me the goal is an overall view of how to act that takes into account
all the goods and evils we can do something about.
>I see raising children as navigating space in which moral good is only
>one element, and helping children chose between things is not just a
>matter of helping them to be good but of preserving and developing
>parts of themselves that are important outside of a moral viewpoint,
>even immoral sometimes.
If preserving and developing those important parts is a good thing to do,
why not view it as part of morality? If not, why do it?
Maybe the problem is the word "morality." Would "ethics" or "acting well" or
some other expression be better? The substantive question is how best to act
and think about our actions.
>Perhaps this would be a good point to agree that we just see things
>differently.
No discussion lasts forever, it's true.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Two new books
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19971027203114.007ce100@swva.net> from "Seth
Williamson" at Oct 27, 97 08:31:14 pm
Status: RO
Bah, optimism. He's intelligent, though.
>With the collapse of communism, the last competitor with any moral or
>intellectual credibility, there is now no challenge to the liberal
>definition of what is politically right. There continue to be numerous
>political challengers to the liberal conception of politics, but their
>naked exercise of power cannot stand before the glare of public
>scrutiny. Lacking an ideology, power invariably reveals its instability
>and is succeeded by equally precarious claimants to its exercise.
>Liberal politics has emerged as the undisputed touchstone of the good
>in politics.
Well said. There is now no challenge to the view that legitimate power
rests on consent of the governed, in other words that in the long run
there is no such thing as legitimate power. The genius of liberalism is
therefore to live in the short run. The liberal state functions because
of its non-liberal elements while drawing its moral authority from its
attack on them in the name of reform. It uses prerational social
discipline to attack the sources of that discipline. Hence liberal
guilt -- liberals know their actual policies and social arrangements
they can't do without can't be justified on their own principles.
As Professor Walsh suggests, the eventual consequence as the situation
clarifies itself and the ruling group is no longer able to obtain the
consent required for legitimacy through payoffs and obfuscation is
instabilility. Groups seize power on some thin excuse or none and hold
it until the spoils of office make them overly self-indulgent and they
lose cohesiveness and are replaced by another group. For extended
discussion and analysis of such situations see Ibn Khaldun's
_Muqaddimah_ and Tacitus' _Annals of Imperial Rome_.
>The mystery is that liberal politics works at all given, in the view of
>so many commentators, either its superficiality or its bankruptcy.
It lives by eating its presuppositions. As the man says, it's a process
and not a theory.
>At every stage the source of the moral appeal remains the promotion of
>self-determination as the route to the growth of the person.
Which becomes indistinguishable except rhetorically from "do what you
feel like doing" as the _summum bonum_.
>In this sense, the liberal tradition is not a self-contained persuasion
>but is in continuity with the discovery of the soul through philosophy
>and its transcendent fulfillment through revelation.
The revelation though increasingly loses a determinable objective
content. Any impulse whatever becomes justifiable as the work of the
Spirit.
>The secret of the tradition's success is that the elaboration of the
>process alone contains enough of the intimations of its direction to
>evoke a responsive unfolding.
The current state of the process retains enough of the intimations of
its original direction to delay collapse for a long time. Nothing is
forever, though.
The proof of the pudding, as Professor Walsh suggests, is in the
eating. He's quite right that liberalism has become our only
conceivable public morality. In that sense it is a success. He seems
to believe it is also a success in the sense of promoting the soul's
transcendent fulfillment. That is less obvious.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Two new books
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19971027203114.007ce100@swva.net> from "Seth
Williamson" at Oct 27, 97 08:31:14 pm
Status: RO
More on Walsh:
> What they fail to recognize is that there would be no political order
> at all, liberal or any other, unless it were experienced by those who
> support and sustain it as legitimate and worthy of their
> participation. No variation on the theme of self-interest can
> explain what it is that compels human beings to support an order that
> depends on such support precisely when it is in conflict with the
> satisfaction of interest.
An excellent point. The key I think is that liberalism is not an order
but a process that manages for a time to combine social order with
subjectivism as to the good. Habits of deference and self-sacrifice
that remain from ages in which the good was thought to be objective and
valid for all are one source of order. In liberal ages those habits
are no longer supportable theoretically, however. The other necessary
source of order is therefore the promise of a future of ever-increasing
freedom, equality and material prosperity. Liberalism never lives in
the present, but always in some combination of the past and future --
that's what it means to say it is a process. The absolute conflict
between the two in fundamental principle is negotiated by liberal
pragmatism -- its orientation toward particular issues and reforms and
the obfuscations and payoffs typical of democratic politics.
The difficulty today is that liberal principle has triumphed too
thoroughly. The end of history means liberalism is becoming a system
instead of a process, and it can't exist as such. Key events include
the formal declaration of the godlessness and therefore
self-sufficiency of the American political order in the school prayer
decisions and the appearance not long afterwards of Rawls' _Theory of
Justice_ setting forth liberalism as a system. As always the flight of
the owl of Minerva demonstrated the approach of dusk.
> The liberal articulation can be a means of preserving the
> philosophic-Christian consensus within a context in which its actual
> explication is no longer possible.
Its stabilizes things by slowing down the process whereby radical
subjectivism as to value destroys the transcendent. It pushes the
radicalism into the future and so permits life today to go on as it
had. The transcendent is therefore preserved for a time even though in
theory it doesn't exist and is inexpressible. So actually I agree with
this sentence.
> The revolutionary direction always carries a high index of
> improbability and destruction. Much more likely to effect improvement
> is an appeal that builds on the remaining residue of moral authority,
> working to expand its foothold into a full-fledged recognition of its
> obligatory force in individual and political existence. This is a
> task not primarily for
Sounds like he wants to reverse the process of turning away from the
transcendent -- "God," in plain English -- while accepting the moral
world of liberalism that is defined by that process.
> Nietzsche's depiction of liberal democracy as the offspring of
> philosophy and Christianity was indeed correct.
Make Christianity a human system ("philosophy") and liberal democracy
is one of the things you can get. Seems plausible enough.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Two new books
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy"
at Oct 28, 97 09:41:52 pm
Status: RO
> I wonder how much of it is normal digestible political philosophy and
> how much is sheer Voegelinianism?
He's got to pull the rabbit out of the hat somehow.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Oct 29 10:08:01 EST 1997
Article: 10486 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Which America?
Date: 29 Oct 1997 08:52:32 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 76
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
John Hilty writes:
>The first America of the town craftsman and the family farmer was
>destroyed by the agricultural, industrial, and telecommunication
>revolutions, which require the existence of large organizations in the
>form of big business, and a form of big government that either caters
>to its interests or regulates it in the interest of the general public.
It's not obvious to me that those technological changes require
predominance of big business. The agricultural revolution means there
will be fewer farmers but not that the family farm won't be
predominant. The industrial revolution does mean there will be some
activities, like manufacturing automobiles, that are best carried on by
very large enterprises, but most can still be carried on in a variety
of ways. The situation seems different in different countries and
depends on the local way of doing things -- the Japanese like big
business, the Chinese like family enterprises for example. In any case
the overall economic importance of activities like car manufacturing
seems to be declining. Telecommunications made economic enterprise on
a national scale possible but I don't see why it makes it necessary.
In recent years it seems to have made it easier for smaller enterprises
to compete.
As to government, the things it does that cost the most money or have a
big effect on social relations and how people live -- social security,
public education, civil rights enforcement, other social programs and
protections -- don't appear to be required by technology. They no doubt
reflect a technological approach to the world, the belief that through
organization and application of resources we can manufacture the society
that's wanted, but that seems a different matter. I would say that most
government regulation, OSHA, EEOC or whatever, is facilitated rather
than required by large size of economic enterprise. No doubt medical
technology makes government involvement in funding medical care more
likely but that seems to me a somewhat isolated although important case.
>Yes, multiculturalism was always implied in the "pursuit of life,
>liberty, and happiness," however it was denied, explicitly or
>implicitly, to women, blacks, the poor, and members of other minority
>groups. The founding fathers were a bunch of wealthy WASPS who failed
>to extend the benefits of democratic government and capitalistic
>enterprises to everyone else, although this has slowly eroded with the
>passage of time, no doubt due in part to the characteristics of
>democracy itself.
You seem to treat the benefits of society as something produced by a
process to which race, class and gender have no natural connection. On
that view justice becomes a matter of dividing the benefits up equally
or at least in accordance with criteria to which r., c. and g. are
irrelevant. Such a view seems to follow from taking the equal right of
each individual to pursue happiness as the basis of social order. If
that is the goal the founding fathers of course only made a start
toward achieving it.
In assessing something like the Buchanan campaign an important question
is whether such an order is desirable or even possible, or whether
America has been able to exist and in some respects prosper only
because of residual illiberal aspects (e.g., residual loyalty to family
and to particularistic ethnic, religious and local communities and
standards). Is a society run on fully universalistic principles
possible, or are ethnicity, class and gender necessary principles of
social organization? It seems to me the latter is the case, which
calls in question the political and moral judgments implied by your
language.
>I would take his so-called commitment to free enterprise and civil
>liberties with a grain of salt -- that's not the part of the first
>America that really interests him.
If his commitment were absolute he would of course be a liberal. My
impression (I don't know that much about the man) is that he thinks
they are good things in a world in which there are many good things but
aren't the sole legitimate basis of social order.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Wed Oct 29 16:53:34 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Orthodoxy
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: from "Mark Cameron" at Oct 29,
97 10:35:17 am
Status: RO
Mark Cameron writes:
> The practical argument that moved me was that Catholicism is the one
> force that represents a direct challenge to the premises of secular
> modernity. Orthodoxy perhaps offers an alternative, an escape, as do
> the Amish or Hassidism, but Catholicism is an affront to everything
> that this dark age stands for.
I can't help but wonder whether perhaps for historical reasons
Orthodoxy is better set up to survive very bad times, domination by the
Turks, Golden Horde, Bolsheviks, whatever. What will be most useful in
the years to come? Catholicism has of course been engaged with the
secular world for a very long time, far more than the pre-Constantinian
church was, and more assertively than Orthodoxy has been. The problem
is that you tend to become what you're engaged with. Evil
communications corrupt good manners as someone once said. That seems
to have happened in Seth's local Catholic diocese.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Wed Oct 29 17:06:05 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Orthodoxy
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: from "Francesca Murphy"
at Oct 29, 97 07:39:12 pm
Status: RO
Ita dixit Francesca:
> The point is that people are going to go on and on and on asking
> questions. One has either to say 'all questioning is forbidden' or
> to think of a way of answering. The Catholic church has taken the
> latter path - it is a living intellectual force.
Another question of course is what the important issues are and which
are dead ends or somehow aside the point. Paul didn't become a living
intellectual force in Athens by taking part in the discussions that
were already under way in the Areopagus, he raised new issues that he
thought were the ones people should be thinking about. He tied them to
existing discussions to the extent he could but that was a matter of
presentation rather than substance. He didn't try to reform the Athens
city government or try to develop a position that could become part of
the discussions at the Academy and maybe affect the development of the
curriculum there somewhat, he founded entirely new communities.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Oct 30 07:58:02 EST 1997
Article: 10497 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Which America?
Date: 30 Oct 1997 07:41:13 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 42
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"T.O. Minnix" writes:
>if the founding principles of the American nation did imply that
>equality and liberty are supreme social ideals (or as commentators such
>as Robert Bork have surmised, if the seeds of our current political
>crises were planted in the thought behind the American Revolution) then
>how can the society defended by Buchanan be any more stable than that
>produced by 20th Century Liberalism, since both are largely based upon
>and expressions of these ideals?
The American polity has been constituted by its explicit public ideals
(equality and liberty) and by its actual way of life. Both have been
necessary to it even though they are somewhat at odds with each other.
The problem we have today that the former have eaten up the latter and
it isn't possible to base a social order solely on equality and liberty.
The goal of Buchanan's conservative Americanism, I think, is to
stabilize the American polity by reducing the power of centralized
national institutions that make it their business to force the actual
American way of life into full compliance with American public ideals,
and to modify American public ideals to make room for things like family
values, religion and acceptance of ethnic and other parochial loyalties.
Both are quite difficult to do but the effort I think is worth making.
>with what ideals conservatives (really counter-revolutionaries or
>right-radicals at this point, since the American conservatism intends
>to conserve precisely the ideals in the Declaration of Independence)
>intend to replace these fallen idols of political philosophy (life,
>liberty, and the pursuit of happiness)?
Most of them want to retain the D. of I. ideals but as elements within a
public moral order that includes other things and so limits them. There
is no real break with American conservatism. Get rid of big government
and stated national public ideals suddenly become much less important in
the overall scheme of things. Tom Fleming for example seems to favor a
sort of neo-Scottish Highlands/hillbilly way of life in which freedom is
the highest public value but ties to kin are of enormous practical and
therefore moral importance because those are what you have to rely on.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Fri Oct 31 05:51:14 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: Two new books
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19971031021851.007e9c30@swva.net> from "Seth
Williamson" at Oct 31, 97 02:18:51 am
Status: O
Thus Seth:
> what a gloomy bunch paleos are generally speaking.
For sure. I am reminded only in reverse of the old classmate of Dr.
Johnson's who said he had tried to be a philosopher in his time, but
cheerfulness kept breaking through.
It does seem there's an ethical principle somewhere that what's good
ought to be more important to us than what's bad and more the basis of
what we do and think. So maybe we should all get collectively bummed
out about how gloomy paleos are.
> You are the first person to mention Ibn Khaldun's name since my
> course in economic history with David Friedman two decades ago at the
> Center for Public Choice at Virginia Tech. An amazing figure, given
> his (Khaldun's) time and place.
Actually, I think it was his time and place that enabled him to develop
such a good theory of posthistorical multicultural society.
Interesting Friedman is a fan though. He (Friedman) has also written
about medieval Iceland, another of my interests.
> But apparently he thinks it has some unsuspected sources of renewal
> and/or resilience, though I'm not far enough along in the book to
> know what they are.
Doesn't he say that section of his book is going to be
incomprehensible? Maybe he's just constitutionally cheerful, like
Emerson, and when you try to figure out the exact grounds for his
cheerfulness you end up in this world where the more you look at things
the less they scan and eventually you start doubting his sanity.
> >>In this sense, the liberal tradition is not a self-contained
> >>persuasion but is in continuity with the discovery of the soul
> >>through philosophy and its transcendent fulfillment through
> >>revelation.
> This is the first time I've encountered a claim like this from
> anybody who might be identified with the orthodox Roman Catholic
> Right. Which is one reason why the book really interests me.
The quoted language is literally correct. The issue is whether the
continuity of which he speaks although necessary to the existence of
actual liberal societies is something that gets progressively purified
out so the societies eventually come to an end.
> Film at 11 when I finish the book.
Do let us know. Give us a slo-mo replay on the videotape.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Oct 31 13:26:04 EST 1997
Article: 10503 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: The web of tradition
Date: 30 Oct 1997 19:12:34 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 39
Message-ID: <63b7pi$rqf@panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
Yet another issue statement for a discussion group meeting.
The topic is "Traditionalism and Electronic Communications."
Traditions are strongest where community is closest. However, modern
communications tend to break down the particular ties that create close
communities, because they make it as easy to talk to 100 New Zealanders
chosen at random as to your sister around the corner.
Also, traditions are transmitted more by personal contact and word of
mouth than by images or writings broadcast to everyone. Because modern
communications make everyone equally easy to reach, they put a premium
on universal comprehensibility. Thus, modern communications mean that
the things communicated tend to be things that can be separated from
particular human relationships and cultural backgrounds and so are
divorced from all particular traditions.
So what happens to tradition in the age of 500 cable channels and the
Internet? Does it disappear in favor of forms of life based purely on
market principles, as many net libertarians seem to expect? Or if we
need traditions and traditional institutions that don't simply
facilitate individual choice and exchange (e.g., family and religious
traditions), how will they preserve themselves and develop?
Some religious groups solve the problem by radical restriction of their
participation in the universal electronic web. Something similar but
more limited has been suggested as a solution for the problem of
pornography on the net. Is that the wave of the future? Will the
universal interconnecting web simply be a transitional phase that
enables people to sort themselves into seccessionist communities that
will then cut most of their outside ties to enable them to construct a
livable social world on their own principles? Or is there some other
solution to the problem, if there is a problem?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Oct 31 14:12:20 EST 1997
Article: 10509 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The web of tradition
Date: 31 Oct 1997 14:12:10 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 23
Message-ID: <63daia$hdh@panix.com>
References: <63b7pi$rqf@panix.com> <19971031071611384168@deepblue3.salamander.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
wmcclain@salamander.com (Bill McClain) writes:
>People may form new distributed communities, but it hard to know if
>physical proximity can be entirely optional
I don't think physical proximity can be optional. Electronics doesn't
touch us as closely or in as many ways as face-to-face dealings. Also,
community isn't community unless it's part of what makes the man. It's
hard for electronic connections to be part of what makes us what we are
because switching is too easy.
The communities that have been somewhat distributed (Jews, Gypsies,
various religious sects) have in fact emphasized local physical
proximity and physical separation from others. The Jews traditionally
had a variety of rules (dietary, domestic, minyan requirements) that
required them to live with other Jews and made it difficult for them to
mix readily with others. Ditto Gypsies (rules of ritual purity) and
the more cohesive sects (separation from the world, emphasis on local
congregations).
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sat Nov 1 05:14:06 EST 1997
Article: 10510 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: The web of tradition
Date: 31 Oct 1997 14:14:32 -0500
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Lines: 41
Message-ID: <63damo$i1c@panix.com>
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X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test55 (26 Feb 97)
vtnetSPAM@xs4all.nl (Martin) writes:
>Even traditions can probably be regarded as based upon the free market
>principles in a extended sense, since the primary function of
>tradition is to sustain communities which in turn bring a comparative
>advantage to its members.
They're both forms of self-organization so there are naturally points
of similarity.
>What no doubt will remain is the comparative advantage of community
>and so with it the principles underlying community. Some moral and
>behavioral codes that are respected by all members (even in disregard
>of short term personal interests) will remain
Community requires us to do more than disregard our short-term personal
interests, though. The good of the community has to become part of our
own good, so that we become willing to disregard even what would
otherwise be considered long-term personal interests. We have to be
willing to sacrifice.
>Where counter revolutionaries are wrong is in their believe that the
>comparative advantage that communities offers, is best restored by
>restricting information to foster common values. In today's world
>communications (and with it competition) is so intense and issues so
>complex, that the advantage of withholding information to foster
>community, will almost always be overshadowed by the loss of the
>comparative edge for individuals and so for the community that
>comprises these individuals.
The information that gives comparative advantage is mostly technical
information and in any case not everyone has to have all of it. So I'm
not sure the conflict is so fundamental. In any event I can't think of
that many social issues regarding which information of a sort that
gives comparative advantage plays a key role. I don't think it's
usually things that would normally be called "information" that are the
issue.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
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