From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun May 25 2003 - 00:21:08 BST
Steve and all MOQers:
Steve said:
Wilber suggests (and I agree) that the best distinguishing factor between
liberals and conservatives is answers to the the question, "why is Joe
Anybody suffering?"
The conservatives say that Joe is lazy and suggest that our social and
economic policies should offer better incentives to get Joe off his ass...
The liberals say that Joe is oppressed by society. It's not Joe's fault...
Only after making this external/internal causation political dichotomy can
the MOQ help us understand why the liberals cringe at the idea of internal
causation and can't stomach talking about internal development....
dmb says:
Well, as a liberal who often talks about internal development, I object. But
seriously, I think you've misread this a bit. Consider what you reported
about the same author on the 15th....
Steve said to Matt:
"Some people are stuck in an egocentric understanding of the world while
others have reached a higher ethnocentric understanding. Still others like
you are able to see that what their own culture says is right and wrong is
not absolute. They have a world-centric view. Is none of these
perspectives better than any other? I see these as stages of development."
Or the Wilberism you shared with Matt the day before...
Steve said to matt:
Isn't being able to take the perspectives of others (understanding different
contexts) better than only being able to see things from your own? Another
ahistorical hierarchy? Being able to take the perspective of others
includes and transcends your own. No?
dmb continues:
See, all these views belong to the same author and may very well come from a
single book. You gotts see the example of Joe in this light to read it
right. I mean, it seems that he's saying that the difference is one of
scope in vision, not so much an inside/outside thing. The conservatives
blame Joe because the complex social forces that shape our lives are all but
invisible to common sense and so complaining about it just sounds like a
bunch of nonsense to social level people. One with a limited perspective who
has nothing much to complain about just figures if he and his friends can do
it, then everybody should be able to. He doesn't know what its like to NOT
be born on third base. The liberal will try to address broader forces like
racism or sexism because these factors really do effect whether or not Joe
is limited in his opportunities. They see that some people are born in the
bleachers. Its about a broader perspective. The liberal doesn't endorse
laziness or claim that there are no lazy people, she just says there are
many others reasons for poverty and such.
I'll try to look it up. There is a chart in one of his books that spells the
whole thing out quite succinctly, where he correlates political ideologies
with the levels of cognitive development, which in turn correspond to wider
and wider perspectives. But it is as you might imagine. Fasism is not on the
far right in Wilber's chart, but near the bottom and associated with
undeveloped, narrow perspectives. Various Lefties and then Greens are near
the top, etc. Liberal and Conservatives are pretty close to each other and
the difference between them represents a pretty narrow range of ideologies.
How's that for poverty?
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