Please excuse my scatter-gun approach, I'm breathless trying to keep up with
you all...
Platt, you weren't 'Dim' re: my post a while back, I was just wired on
coffee.
(Metaphysics of Qaffeine?)
There was a number of points in there, as you said, and I will try to
reformualte them in different posts... in english this time:
Oscar Wilde once said that America and England are two countries seperated
by the same language.
Part of the challenge in any Intellectual discussion is to go beyond
cultural and social bias that we have internalised.
My History teacher in Secondary (High) school once said that prejudice is
perfectly natural. Everybody is prejudiced, and we should not try to be
prejudice-free. The problem is only when we refuse to accept and acknowledge
our prejudices, and are therefore unable to change them.
If I may offer a 'bumper-sticker' spin on some differences in prejudice
raised here please (while acknowledging that I am not immune from this
either etc., I make no claim to completeness):
1. Human life and Liberty are manifestations of Quality, and must be
respected universally; There is thus an unresolvable contradiction in the
use of wholesale physical force which destroys human life, to defeat or
prevent the use of wholesale physical force which destroys human life.
2. Although Human life and Liberty are universal manifestations of Quality,
they are preserved more by certain Social corporates/tribes, and therefore
the use of wholesale physical force is justified to protect these
societies/tribes.
3. Our tribe is within the pale of Quality, therefore we do have the right
to use wholesale physical force on the non-quality heathen.
4. Our tribe is not within the pale of Quality, therefore we do not have the
right to use wholesale physical force on the non-quality heathen.
5. (related to 1.) Our tribe is not within the pale of Quality, if we
instigate wholesale physical force on the non-quality heathen at the expense
of the lives of innocent people.
I believe MoQ cannot 'prove' any of these, simply because the adoption of
any of these stances, shapes the very meaning of the language the partisans
use. They may be using the same words, technically, but the words have
different meanings and implications according to the beliefs/cultural
choices of the person using them. In effect, this is a Social argument, not
an Intellectual one. We are simply using Intellectual methods (in this case,
the MoQ) to protect/propogate our internalised social
patterns/opinions/choices, in the same way that a society uses biological
methods ("a soldier and a gun") to protect and propogate itself.
Any resolution requires that we first "'fess up" about our social-level
prejudices/interpretations. Otherwise we will just talk in circles, "making
the usual ritual noises" (my History teacher again) over and over, but not
connecting on an Intellectual level.
Good luck,
- Oisín
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