Message-ID: <19990814235745.AAA25135@LOCALNAME> Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 21:01:29 +0000 From: Kerry Miller <mailto:kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca> Subject: Power and the Assumption of Power To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Introduction"The debate on the relationship between science and religion [facts and ideas] goes round and round and slowly disappears like a whirlpool until it resurrects itself once more. No doubt I've missed some things in the discussions. I have questions for all participants. One. Can you demonstrate that the perspective you advocate is more useful in advancing knowledge than the one(s) you don't? Or, two, that it explains, repeat explains, some real event(s) that the alternatives do not? I've put my own view before you earlier, and will repeat it in different words. Then challenge you with further questions... We anthropologists are very close to real life. But our job is to stand back in order to explain what we see. We have more difficulty in doing that than any other discipline because a chaos of real observations intrudes into the attempt to abstract, which is a necessary part of explanation..." -- C. Belshaw, email 4 May 1997
I think anyone who stays close to real life is 'anthropological' in this way; and that (reading 'explanation' as communication generally) abstraction in the face of complexity is exactly what is being stolen from us by the factualizers, concretizers, merchandisers and simplifiers. Sure, we're educated; we know what ideas are: Religion, Race, Sex and Violence. Don't we rally round these fundamentals every day, and in almost every way? Dont we instill some 12,000 hours of them in our children?
But as you say, the debate suffers from a paucity of detail; a perspective that amounts to 'It is what it is' doesnt *explain very many facts -- and this is exactly the problem I encounter with the Free-market religion.
It is for this reason, or rather, it is by utilizing this fact, that I put forward my views (and my position) -- to *demonstrate a mechanism of understanding why so little human development occurs in cyberspace. While I regretfully abstain from posting some 25k to the list without invitation, I invite any interested person to visit http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/kerryo/dev/power1.htm
and to consider whether hyr own perspective relates as well to the real events archived at http://library.wustl.edu/~listmgr/devel-l/Aug1999/0004.html
et seq. The discussion, if it *develops, may be considered off-topic for this list, but I will be happy to post your reponses on the 'E-lekh' website. (Imo, the conceptual abyss between WWW and mailing list is another aspect of this chaos of non-communication we are living through - but enough.)
kerry