From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Oct 03 2002 - 17:23:14 BST
Hi Wim:
> You replied to my suggestion to distinguish pre- and post/trans-rational
> with: 'Any thoughts on what a post-rational world would be like?'
>
> I don't think 'post-rational thinking' will ever completely oust rational
> and pre-rational thinking, if only because human beings have to start from
> zero (no intellectual patterns of values at all) when growing up. A more
> 'post-rational' world is one in which more people need less time for
> survival. Such a world is already being accomplished by rational thinking.
> People in that world don't have all their economic needs satisfied; they
> even still need time to satisfy their survival needs. They have time left
> however. They have the more time left, the more they recognize (and act
> accordingly) that part of their economic needs is only a disguise for
> greed, irrational fear for their survival and socially organized insecurity
> that justifies such fear. In a society that glorifies competition survival
> needs are less easily satisfied than in a society that values (and
> organizes) more cooperation and risk-sharing. At the social level the 'law
> of the jungle' and the need to be competitive is very real. Societies need
> to value competition enough to survive as society or there will soon be no
> basis for an intellectual level at all any more. They need a balance
> between competition and cooperation and yes, Platt, I agree that communist
> countries got that balance wrong. Societies that recognize that they are
> part of an overarching (now global) society that has no real competitor any
> more and that act accordingly, need less external competition. They still
> need internal competition however to prevent degeneration of intellectual
> patterns of values. Intellectual values, reasons to act in a certain way,
> are exceptions to social, habitual patterns of behavior. If there is only
> one, global social pattern of values, without internal competition between
> less encompassing social patterns of values, no reason to deviate can latch
> any more. Intellectual patterns of values will degenerate into habitual
> repetition of ideas that won't support consciousness any more in the end.
> So no, global communism, a world government etc. are not the roads to take
> either.
I still don't understand what a post-rational world would look like other
than in worthy but vague generalities. But, with your summary sentence
I whole-heartedly concur. (-:
> You wrote:
> 'Societies only change one person at a time and someone has to be
> first ... We're the vanguard ...'
> There are lots of discussion lists like this one ... plus chat boxes plus
> mobile phone circuits plus ... so this mailing list may already be lagging
> behind ... If someone -logically- has to be first, the speed of imitation
> is so high, that quibbling over who is first is pointless. Logic may fail
> here ... Maybe social change is not located in individuals at all, but
> rather in the relations between a lot of them...
First, if you can recommend any philosophy sites on the general quality
level as this, I would like to know about them. The babble that goes on
in chat boxes, mobile phones, etc. I consider irrelevant to any
worthwhile social change. Positive social change does require relations
among individuals to be sure, but someone--a brujo, a Galileo, a
Lincoln, a Pirsig--has to be first.
Platt
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