From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Mon Nov 07 2005 - 07:45:08 GMT
Dear Case and Platt,
Case wrote 6 Nov 0:50 -0500:
"The conviction that the powerful have the right to inflict their beliefs on
the less powerful is held by many in western culture. Its fruit is slavery
and genocide; both in the past and in the present. There is no Quality in
this. There is no justification for it. We chose it at the peril of us all."
Platt retorted 6 Nov 10:07 -0500:
"If the powerful inflict their belief in freedom on the less powerful, the
less powerful have an opportunity to become powerful. Unfortunately, many of
them blame their lack of power on anything and everything other than
themselves. They have learned that defining themselves as victims arouses
politicians to shower them with unearned benefits extorted from the
productive members of society."
There IS Quality in power-backed order and it CAN be (and has in the past
repeatedly been) justified. Slavery and genocide are possible, but not
inevitable fruits. That depends partly on the order being backed also by
people being economically dependent on (positive fruits of) that order and
being convinced by the justifications... (To that extent they need not to be
forced to comply.) The negative fruits are not the only ones either.
It is a relatively low-quality type of 3rd level static quality, for sure.
Not the lowest possible quality type though. (See my "Economics of want and
greed" at www.antenna.nl/wim.nusselder/schrijfsels/economics.htm for an
analysis of levels of quality within the 3rd level.)
Freedom is the one belief that can NOT be imposed (on pain of being exposed
as false and the imposer/imposter as a hypocrite). Imposing (a belief in)
freedom is like fucking for virginity and making war to obtain peace. No
idea is too weird to have no supporters (man's mind is infinitely twistable)
and all three of these have scores of them, but you will get the point.
The 3rd level habit to support victims against the powerful has been of much
use for homo sapiens. It may have been one of the factors that distinguished
and separated it from apes. Groups protecting their temporarily
weak/victimized members have on occasion more survival chances in
competition with other groups that don't. The problem is in distinguishing
between temporarily weak/victimized (that need support to gain strength
again) and permanently weak/victimized ones (that require exclusion for the
group to become stronger). In the course of history it has been a sign of
civilization for the latter group (branded 'criminals', 'barbarians',
'heretics' etc.) to have become smaller and for the scale of mutual
temporary support of weak/victimized individuals/groups to have become
larger (from family groups, to clans, to tribes, to empires, to
international cooperation). Meanwhile (as another measure of civilization)
the need for inter-group competetion to guarantee relative quality of 3rd
level patterns of value (survival of the fittest group) has gradually been
taken over by 4th level patterns of value 'guiding' migration of 3rd level
patterns of value towards DQ.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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