Dear Glen D.,
Returned from holiday under smoking mount Etna, having taken a
week to catch up with what all of you wrote meanwhile and another
week to prepare this posting, I am surprised that you didn't
write at all any more after your posting in this thread of 5/7
23:22 -0700. Maybe you misinterpreted (because of my lack of
clarity) my last remark of 6/7 23:56 +0200: "Please don't write
too much in my absence... :-)"? I just meant "Please, all of you,
don't make it too difficult for me to catch up with what you
wrote when I return from holiday.".
I apologize for making my 4/7 23:33 +0200 "sound" too much like a
diatribe.
You answered my statement "America is forcing upon the world an
addiction to material wealth, of boundless maximising of
biological value, that will kill humanity if it goes unchecked,
leaving only pre-social and pre-intellectual humanoids." with
"You make some pretty big predictions without little support.
Humanoids? Really. Got any good scientific data? No? Sounds like
scare tactics mascarading as science."
You are right. I can't fully support a statement like that with
the kind of science you refer to. I can point however to the
destructive effects Western colonialism had on Southern societies
and civilizations and to the continuation and consolidation of
this by the dual impact of Western foreign policies and
activities of Western
multinationals (globalization impeding autonomous local
developoment). In some African countries, where civil war masks
(and is financed by) the plunder of natural resources, humans
already resemble humanoids. Almost all social and intellectual
patterns of value have been destroyed.
I will immediately admit that America (to the -limited- extent
that you can treat a herd of cats as an actor) is not the only
one to blame. (I don't see America as a monolithic structure. If
what I write seems to suggest so, this is only for convenience
sake, in order not to make the posting even longer.) Addiction to
material wealth has developed partly autonomously all over the
globe. Being at the apex of the social hierarchy in which wealth
gives status, Americans have a special responsibility however not
to set the wrong example: using foreign policy to serve narrow
national interests instead of global ones and to safeguard a
standard of
living that would rapidly deplete the earth's resources if
followed by the rest of humanity. I presume that these are also
the aspects of "USA domestic and foreign policy [you] disagree
with", as you wrote.
By the way (answering some of your remarks):
- In my opinion the U.S.A. was kicked off the UN human rights
committee, partly because it was considered to be too far below
the apex of another social hierarchy in which serving global
interests gives status and partly because of jealousy for the
financial and military power of the USA that accompanies its
position at the apex of the wealth hierarchy. (My calling the USA
a "backward part of civilisation" 26/6 23:54 +0200 hinted at a
third social hierarchy in which "civilisation", intellectual
guidance of society, gives status. The USA is certainly not near
the bottom of this hierarchy, but not near the apex either thanks
to -in my opinion- individual rights to own firearms, capital
punishment etc..)
- A fair share of the earth's resources is according to me a
share that at least doesn't make it impossible for the rest of
humanity to attain your standard of living (without killing
earth's ecosystem).
- American (and Dutch) wealth causes poverty elsewhere because
earth's resources are limited and because the industrial
competitiveness and protectionist measures needed to stay at
(near) the apex crush infant industries elsewhere.
Don't you agree?
I don't dislike anyone at the apex of a social hierarchy and I
don't dislike Americans in general. I do dislike social
hierarchies and -as a development economist having been concerned
about unjust global distribution of wealth for all my adult life-
especially the global social hierarchy that draws capital, brains
and fortune-hunters to the core states of the global
socio-economic system, draining the rest of the world from
opportunities for autonomous development.
Doesn't that strike a sympathetic chord with you as a
libertarian?
My fear that "Libertarians will undermine society and morals and
hence take the world down to a biological level" (as Gerhard
phrased it 5/7 11:16 +0200), expressed in my prediction of
"humanoids", was based partly on my impression that you (as a
libertarian) are so negative about government and social patterns
of value in general, that you were pulling the social rug from
under intellectual patterns of value leaving it to crash to
pieces on its biological foundation. Your mentioning of Hongkong
as an example and of a "Libertarian state" as an at least
theoretical possibility considerably diminishes that fear.
You did not understand me when I wrote:
"My most compelling reason for renouncing capital punishment and
the right to kill in self-defence is that it bars me from
experiencing Dynamic Quality. If I have the arrogance to judge
other human beings as having so much less value than I myself
that they'd better die and carry out this verdict myself, this is
a irreversible evaluation of them. I must refer to an extremely
static pattern of (intellectual) value to legitimise it. I won't
be free to experience Dynamic Quality any more (in the person I
judge, the persons who contradict my judgement or in the whole
situation)."
So I should explain myself.
The problem is, that I just copied the phrase "most compelling
reason for" from Pirsig (Lila ch. 13) without realizing that I
hardly ever experience "reasons" in the sense of experiences of
value (arguments) preceding and supposedly motivating (my)
actions. I just experience doing and saying things (and not doing
and not saying other things) in which I recognize patterns which
I call "Me". Usually I feel comfortable about conforming to those
patterns. Sometimes I do (or don't do) something that belongs to
a pattern that conflicts with other patterns. Than I try to deny
I did it or to present it as "Me" doing it "involuntarily"
(without involving "I"). When questioned about behaviour "I" does
own, I am forced to translate this experience of behaviour
conforming to "my" patterns into the "figure of speech" of
"reasons preceding action". I experience "truth" when the pattern
of reasons I create somehow "fits" my behavioural patterns. (And
sometimes I don't bother to give reasons and just apologize...)
Do you recognize my experience?
The reasons I invent can be abstracted into two kinds: preserving
(wanted) patterns and breaking (unwanted) patterns in order to
recreate other (wanted) patterns.
By the way: I am just as able to invent reasons "behind"
behaviour of other people (and "behind" behaviour of things to
which we are not used to ascribe free will, thereby
"anthropormorfizing" them...). They are just less
convincing/"truth generating" (to myself and others) as my memory
usually contains more of "my own" behaviour to distil patterns
from than of that of others.
My behaviour hardly differs from yours, I guess. Neither I nor
you have ever participated in capital punishment or have ever
killed in self-defence. You may occasionally practice using your
gun, I regularly practice with wooden weapons during
Aikido-training. I like war-games too, like chess, risk and
stratego, even if I haven't run into the opportunity to play
paint-ball yet.
How is it possible that we write and say different things about
the right to individually own firearms, the rationality of
non-violence etc. and both experience "truth", a good "fit" with
our respective behaviours which are roughly comparable?
The answer is, that we experience our individual behaviour as
part of the behaviour of groups of people. What we identify with
is often not a pattern in just individual behaviour, but in the
behaviour of one of those larger groups. And the same individual
behaviour "fits" in with the behaviour of lots of different
groups. Someone may experience him/herself as a member of
different groups on the basis of the same behaviour, either
simultaneously or consecutively. Sometimes we even experience a
"fit" of our behaviour with a particular social pattern as the
proverbial exception that proves the rule: one may kill in
self-defence and still experience basically non-violent
convictions. Like Dan:
In reply to my statement of 12/6 23:17 +0200
"No cause (= intellectual pattern) legitimises fighting with
material weapons (= fighting social patterns by fighting
biological patterns with inorganic patterns)."
Dan wrote 14/6 13:17 -0500
"This is a tough one. I would like to intellectually agree with
you but I am quite sure in a threatening situation my instinct
for survival would precondition my actions. There would be no
thought involved at all. Only action. And that action would be of
a violent nature if that is what the situation called for, but
only upon reflection. At the time it would be just what I had to
do to survive. I think that part of 'me' is very old and very
ruthless and it disconcerts me when I look at what we are capable
of as human beings."
A lot of the "Free Will" we experience derives from our freedom
to choose a social pattern as context for (the experience of) our
individual behaviour and from our freedom to choose on top of
that an intellectual pattern as context for the reasons we invent
when that individual and/or social behaviour is questioned.
The fact that you don't understand what I wrote and even called
it "blurly and poorly thought out" (while someone else just
thanked me for what I wrote), derives from the very different
choices we made. As I wrote 5/7 23:51 +0200 in the context of
evaluating vegetarianism: "There may be some 'tacit assumptions'
(Sam 5/7 9:53 +0100) involved that -when taken explicitly into
account- would reconcile our experiences with one -more complex-
evaluation of vegetarianism ... Something like this must be the
case with libertarianism and gun-owning also". So, in order to
explain myself, I must tell you about my 'tacit assumptions' or
(as I would phrase it now) the social and intellectual patterns
that are for me the context of what I wrote.
As for the intellectual patterns involved: I did try to refer
only to the MoQ when explaining my renunciation of capital
punishment and the right to kill in self-defence. That shouldn't
be the problem.
The main social pattern which I experience my behaviour te be
part of is that of Quakerism, being a member of the Religious
Society of Friends (Quakers). As often as I can, I go to our
weekly meetings for worship. There a small circle of Quakers sits
for an hour in silence, waiting until someone "gets" words to say
and feels forced to stand up and say them and listening in what
is said for "what speaks to my condition" and ignoring what
doesn't. Sometimes we stay silent for a whole hour. Nowadays I am
not often able to attend meetings for business of Amsterdam
Monthly Meeting (the group of Quakers meeting in Amsterdam).
There we decide on organisational matters and collective
statements not by taking votes or discussing till consensus
occurs, but by waiting (while exchanging views) till something
more than ourselves makes its will clear to us and by
subordinating our individual will to this even if we don't agree.
Some fifteen years ago Netherlands Yearly Meeting (the group of
all Quakers in the Netherlands) was collectively concerned about
testing of nuclear weapons and the failure of a test ban treaty
to materialize. I led a group of Quakers in talks with
ambassadors of nuclear powers in the Netherlands and with two
successive Dutch ministers for Foreign Affairs. At every point we
tried to let ourselves be led by this same sense of divine
guidance in everything we wrote (to gain admission to these
people) and said (when we were there).
If I use the expression "Dynamic Quality", it has for me the
connotation of this "divine guidance" I seek and occasionally
experience as a Quaker. The discipline we practice as Quakers to
open ourselves up to divine guidance does not go together with
rigid individual opinions and irreversible evaluations. As
Quakers we have been practising trust for so long in the
possibility that everyone may be "used" to reveal divine guidance
to us (however incoherently they express themselves in meeting
for worship) and the availability of divine guidance to everyone
(even if their opinions are contrary to ours) that we can hardly
be expected to justify killing anyone. How can you write off
someone who could be a channel of the divine to you?
I hope this context explains to you some of what I wrote.
Our interpretations of social and intellectual patterns differ
indeed. Using the same computer analogy from Lila, in my view
social and intellectual patterns of value don't die when I die,
just like word processing software and most texts written in it
are revived when the computer is turned on again or -in case of a
hard disk crash- can be revived on other computers. Even a new
text which is being written on the computer before it crashed
usually can be largely recreated from memory, paper copies of
draft versions etc. even if no full backup is made. Anyway
(leaving the analogy behind) I would not call myself an
intellectual pattern, as you do, no more than I would call myself
a social pattern. In my view my behaviour is part of a social
pattern as my reasoning is part of an intellectual pattern. I can
identify with an intellectual (or a social) pattern however, in
the sense that I choose that pattern as context for my reasoning
(or my behaviour).
As a start for a debating the specific merits of (some of) those
whom you Americans elect (I wouldn't call them idiots, I just
copied the phrase from your 27/6 00:37 -0700 posting) I recommend
Ken Wilber's appraisal of Bush and Gore in the interview with him
that was mentioned before on this list:
wilber.shambhala.com/html/interviews/interview1220_3.cfm/xid,6587
424/yid,88470152 .
I hope you noted that mixed in with my provocative statements of
4/7 23:33 +0200, I did try to formulate some common ground:
- "using armed violence is less valuable than a more civilised
approach"
- "the basic right and duty of self preservation"
- "peace and order exist in society not primarily because of laws
but because most people agree on how to behave".
I hope we will be able to build further on this in our
e-correspondence via this list.
Some of the other issues in your 5/7 23:22 -0700 posting I hope
to return to after I heard from you to what extent you are
familiar with the writings of Ken Wilber, for (after reading a
summary of his books in my holiday) I find his theories of levels
of consciousness (especially the spiral dynamics color coded
ones) very useful for an evaluation of states, political theories
etc..
With friendly greetings,
Wim Nusselder
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