Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19970601115603.00911d70@monmouth.com> Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 11:56:03 -0400 From: Wilbur Streett <mailto:wstreett@MONMOUTH.COM> Subject: "We" don't exist. I do. You may. To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
At 11:49 AM 6/1/97 +0100, you wrote: >Hi Wilbur, well clearly you didn't like my answer:-)
>>I'm not interconnected to you in any way that you can define what is good
>>for me. I'm responsible for myself.
>Well, I expect that we both buy things from the same corporations who
>are exploiting labour and destroying the environment.
If you accept the idea of Individual Empowerment, then you wouldn't say that they are exploiting labor. Labor, believe it or not, is made up of people, and those people have the right to decide if they want to work with a particular company or not.
>Every time you
>breathe out you are contributing to the same air I breathe, and if you
>decide to put a nuclear power station in your back garden and it leaks,
>it could kill me.
And if I take a gun and point it at you, it might kill you also. Can you drop the emotional content out of your messages and stick with the real issue. If you are going to resort to "I might die!" as a basis for your argument then I suggest that you realize that the counter argument is that I'll take away your freedom to have a life based on their assertion that I'm protecting your life, but you don't have the right to do the same to me.
>I never made a suggestion that this inteconnectedness
>meant I could define what was good for you. However, I suggest that in
>our decision making, we need to consider that our actions always have
>reactions upon others, and it is precisely this lack of responsibility
>for the wellbeing of all above the well being of the individual,
>company, government, nation etc., that has led to many of the problems
>the world has, including the post colonial ones that were being
>discussed on this group.
I believe that you are entirely mistaken. The treatment of the Germans after World War I was done "for the greater good" and caused the German people to not be able to feed their children, which in turn lead to a country looking for a saviour. Responsibility belongs with the individual, not with the pretend "collective conciousness" which is actually nothing but a collection of individuals.
>>No, that every human is unequal is a better place to start. We have the
>>right to be unequal, we have the right to be individuals, we have the right
>>to not be treated as some non-individual unit in a great made up model of
>>reality.
>
>Well, we will just have to agree to disagree here. I have a unique
>human consciousness that only belongs to me and is not open to anybody
>else's scrutiny or understanding, except to the extent that I choose to
>share it, or that they can observe it in my actions. But my values,
>attitudes and beliefs were formed by my life experiences in interaction
>with all the human beings with whom I came into contact, and many, eg
>Hitler,etc., that I never ever met. That's how we all have different
>cultural and social values and behaviours - because we inherited them
>from our social environment. We had a choice of course, in whether we
>responded negatively or positively, or even ignored the information that
>we were being given from birth, and we all end up with unique patterns
>because our experiences are different. Much of what we inherit from the
>social realm we remain totally oblivious too. We think it is the result
>of nature, like for instance the supposed superiority of men over women,
>white races over black races, when actually it was purely the result of
>social nurture. But overall we actually have more similarity than
>difference, and ultimately what we share with every other human is
>precisely being human. With several billion of us on this planet, that
>hardly makes any of us unique at the purely physical level. What does
>lead to the gross inequities between human beings is lack of opportunity
>and education.
And where do you think that the culture came from in the first place? Humans haven't always existed on this planet.
>>Baloney, I'm not a member of "one" human family. There are millions of
>>families, and they are all different, and the ideas of justice are different
>>from family to family, person to person. We are not all one, we are
>>billions. We are not equal, we are not the same. We are individuals and
>>deserve to not even be classified as "We". I am an individual. You don't
>>know who I am, and your generalizations don't mean that anything that you
>>come up with is correct for "all" of the individuals on the planet. Indeed,
>>I challenge your ego to explain why you think that you can speak for me.
>Wilbur, I am still not understanding your problem here. I recognise
>that there are forms of psychology that promulgate that human beings
>should never refer to humanity as "we". But overall, if I choose to do
>this, because I believe we are all one human family - and facts do prove
>this -
There are no "facts" that prove that we should all be classified as a single statistical norm. While it's popular to assume that there is some archetype for "human" the reality is that we are 4 Billion different individual beings, with different ideas, feelings, thoughts, desires, aspirations, and even basic languages. We are not the same, we are not all "human". Indeed, "human" doesn't even have meaning in many languages.
>then I have as much right to talk about "we" as you have to
>stress the individual "I".
No, you don't not have the right to talk about "we" if you think that "we" includes "me". It does not. You can speak for yourself, you have the right to say whatever you want. You can make whatever sounds you wish, you can collect letters into whatever order you want, so long as you do not claim that you are speaking for me.
>I just happen to believe that it is the
>stressing of the "I" in western culture that has led to many of its
>problems.
Prove it.
>Too much stress on rights without consideration of
>responsibilities.
Rights are responsibilities..
>I am sorry that you do not believe that human beings
>are equal. You promoted the idea of individual empowerment. Surely
>this must rest on the basis that every human being has the equal right
>to the best conditions to develop his/her unique individuality in
>cooperation with every other human being.
No. Individual rights means that individuals have the right to not be cooperative if they so choose. They have the right to be wrong. A quote from Thomas Szasz, a noted writer in the area of Individual Rights, "A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong." You think that you know what is right for "We", as in all of us. You don't. You can't. Your assertions that you do put the responsibilities of the entire human race on a single ideal, which would them be enforced and defined a single group. There are 4 Billion people in the world. (Maybe more).. The idea of centralized control, or even agreement amoung that many individuals strikes me as either naive or an attempt to justify some ego position. Certainly not a recognition of the realities of the world. Hitler believed that he was right, there were plenty of supporters. The same rightness is responsible for the Catholic Church's stated treatement of the Indians of South America, "1. convert, 2. enslave, or 3. Kill" because they didn't agree with the stated ideals of the "world". What happens if people don't agree with your statement of what "we" all have to agree with? I say that in order to avoid the inevitable, that we ought to agree that there is not possibility that "we" will ever create a single "Tower of Babel" to explain everything about how "we" ought to get along.
>>>Then the operating structures of society must reflect this principle.
>>>It used to be called utopianism - but looking at recent posts on local
>>>commons, is there any alternative?
>>
>>Did you ever hear of the "Tower of Babel?"
>Yeah - another of those human accidents. All we need to do to fix this
>one is agree on an international auxiliary language.
ROTFL.. it's the building that's the problem. Coming together is a natural human urge, so is individuation. Esperanto failed miserably. We English speakers try to pretend that English is the International language, but the reality is that more people speak Spanish than English. Or Chinese..
>>If you have a problem pushing education in Pakistan, perhaps you aren't
>>teaching them something that is important and provides any real benefit to
>>them. Perhaps you need to look at your arrogance and realize that they know
>>what they need to learn. Or perhaps you haven't realized that the main
>>purpose of mass education isn't to develope intellegence or clear thinking
>>but mainly to normalize the populations experience?
>You have confused two posters here, I am not involved in education in
>Pakistan. I do however teach in a British college - I hope the end
>result of my course is that my students are individually empowered to
>act confidently in a better understood social world. Of course, as it
>is a reciprocal process, the person who benefits most is myself, from
>constantly being in an environment where there is a sharing of views in
>a supportive and courteous atmosphere.
Oh, that explains the great differences in our perspectives. I got of of college after two years because I wasn't learning anything and was tired of the centrist viewpoint espoused by the colleges. I sat in classrooms hour after hour listening to one person with little knowledge pretend to have "the answer" to everything that was being brought up. For amusement I would on occasion destroy the position of the Professor with simple questions, which would lead into discussions that would last the entire 2 hour class. My classmates loved it, they wouldn't have to hear canned "thought" and would actually become conversant in the material, but my Professors would hate it, because they won't appear to be "experts". About 5 years later I created the first 3 credit college courses that ran on PC's. The ideas that support the University model of education are quite centrist, and quite strongly mirror the positions that you take.
If your students leave school with anything other than a knowledge that they don't know the social world, and will never know it, then you are doing them, and the world, a disservice. Your job as an educator should be to get them started on the path to knowledge, not to corral their intellectual horizons with a couple of years of schooling. It is precisely the confidence that you claim you give your students which is the real problem. A person with a few years of college doesn't "know" very much at all. If they are confident that they do, (when in actuality they don't), then they will create very large messes in society. It then becomes a political battle of the University based ideals verses the ideals that are necessary for the real world. I know, I've cleaned up more than one mess created by college graduates from the best schools that "knew it all".
Your position reflects the popular beliefs that form the foundations for the very existance of colleges. But it doesn't reflect the real world. Only a part of it. Your "we" is the academic or royal "we" with lots of tradition. But "we", as individuals, are on to that idea and it's implications.
Wilbur