Hi Roger, Rob, Horse,
> ROG:
> I hate boxing anything into a single level. But on this one, I really
agree
> with Jonathan. I think RETRIBUTION is a part of one of the essential
value
> patterns of the social level.
Actually, I deliberately changed from talking about retaliation (the word
Horse was using) to retribution, to make clear that I was talking about the
emotional motivation for a violent response.
Now Horse is going to like it even less when I switch back to talking about
RETALIATION.
Roger already pointed out that there is a rationale for "tit-for-tat"
responses:
ROGER (24 Sep 2001)
<<<Interestingly enough, the most successful model of this type of situation
identified by game theorists in non-zero sum games (where you can cooperate
or compete) is Tit-for-Tat. It has been shown in theory to be superior to
all other strategies at encouraging cooperation and supressing exploitation.
>>>
Furthermore, ROB [5 oct 2001] adds:
<<<I hate to be the devil's advocate here, but you all forget that a good
retaliation against the terrorists THIS time can dissuade others from
perpetrating these acts again in the future, so retaliation can in fact be
Preemptive. >>>
Thus we are no longer talking about an emotional socially-conditioned
response, but a reasoned response. To put it another way, we are now talking
about the intellectual pattern of retaliation.
I know I keep harping back on this, but I still maintain that there can be
no direct inter-level conflicts, since the levels are orthoganal. However, a
higher level can directs intra-level conflicts at a lower level, e.g.
society directs biological conflicts between individuals.
To take it back to the war between fundamentalist terror and western
liberalism, there is an intellectual-intellectual conflict where both sides
rationalize how best to fight each other. Some of the weapons used social
weapons such as propaganda and fear - thus we also have a social-social
conflict. Then we have the physical (and biological) weapons - the bombs,
missiles, box cutters and anthrax spores.
In conclusion, I utterly reject the argument that conflicts can always be
resolved into "higher levels" (the good guys) vs. lower levels (the bad
guys). IMO, the conflict can be resolved into several levels. The good guys
and the bad guys all have intellectual values, social values, biological
values etc. - but the difference is in the QUALITY of those values.
Jonathan
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