Dear Roger, Rog, Risky, Risque, Mirror Boy & co,
How to make progress in our discussion...
I wrote 19/3 17:24 +0100:
'We can enumerate separate progressive aspects of ways of life (more true
for some ways of life, less true for others) as you do 16/3 9:15 -0500:
science, technology, medicine, health, wealth, lifespan, nutrition,
education and our ability to sustain larger and larger numbers of people off
a given area of land. We could also enumerate separate aspects of ways of
life (more true for some ways of life, less true for others) that show
steady decline. Unless we find agreement on core (intellectual) values on
what is most important, we won't ever be able to generalize on overall
social progress (or decline).'
You also wrote 16/3 9:15 -0500:
'My point is that progress is possible, and the best way to learn about
progress is to study what progressive dimensions have and compare and
contrast it to what non-progressive dimensions don't have.'
You implicitly counter my point (that we need agreement on core values to
generalize on overall
social progress), by stating something like: 'Well, let's forget about
defining overall social progress. If we agree on progressive
aspects/elements/areas and apply what we learn to non-progressive ones, we
will create overall progress sooner or later even if we don't know when and
whether we cross the line between non-progressive and progressive overall
development.'
I don't think this strategy works however. My studies in development
economics have led me to see countless ways in which progress in/on one
aspect/element/area is intimately connected to decline in/on other
aspects/elements/areas. I agree that it is too simple to state it is only a
zero-sum game, but it is equally wrong to think that you can treat those
aspects/elements/areas in isolation. To answer whether society is making
progress, it is essential to see this interrelatedness of development in/on
different aspects/elements/areas.
The way in which I understand social patterns of (static) values is, that
they ARE only zero-sum games (the summation being that of status or relative
social -static- quality) and that win/win potential and social progress in
the absolute sense is due to migration of those social patterns of values
toward DQ, usually mediated via intellectual quality. This may be largely a
matter of definition/interpretation of 'social' as distinguished from
'intellectual', 'relative' as distinguished from 'absolute' and 'static' as
distinguished from 'dynamic' however.
A lot of the progress you identify is -without belittling its importance-
EITHER progress at the cost of decline elsewhere or for others (including
future generations) OR progress not on the social or intellectual level, but
on the biological level (success for homo sapiens as a species compared to
other species), which is relative in another sense: it threatens to
unbalance ecosystems and to hamper evolution of life on this planet as a
whole.
The only way I see to identify REAL social progress is to identify
intellectual values that can (and maybe already do) empower migration of
social patterns of values and -if we have to choose between different
intellectual patterns of values- to identify a direction of progress toward
DQ in these intellectual values themselves.
That was the subject of my 5/3 9:46 +0100 posting:
1b WHAT PATH TOWARD DQ FOLLOWS FROM APPLYING THAT METHOD?
and especially the first sub-questions:
1bI What is the most Meaningful intellectual pattern of values with which to
judge the balance between stability and versatility of a social pattern of
values?
In a next e-mail I'll comment on your 9/3 16:15 -0500 posting with your
comments on my provisional answer to question 1bI.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:00 BST