From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Jun 23 2003 - 18:08:42 BST
Dear Wim,
> I'm not so sure if our main differences are our amount of 'faith in
> universal collective action, such as through the U.N., to attain good ends'
> or the strength of our 'belief ... in the brotherhood of man and the
> feasibility of cooperation among all sects to achieve good ends'. I may be
> just as sceptical and at times cynical about collective action and
> cooperation as you and realistically assess that it is always very little
> and very late what they achieve and NEVERTHELESS see that they are needed
> for any way forward. As you wrote: 'look where mankind has come in a few
> thousand years in spite of war, famine, pestilence and all the other
> horrors inflicted by man and nature alike'. Would the achievements of
> mankind have been possible without collective action and cooperation?
To repeat what has been pointed out before, Pirsig says cooperation
without coercion is a devastating fiction. Most of the achievements of
mankind have been possible through the actions of individuals, documented
in two great books David J. Bornstin entitled "The Creators" and "The
Discovers." Accordingly, I looked up how Quakers got their start and found
that an individual by the name of George Fox was the founder.
> 'Experiencing the experience of the others'
> is rhetoric exaggeration in one direction; calling experience ONLY personal
> and private would be rhetoric exaggeration in the opposite direction; the
> possibility (and unavoidability in the face of poverty and powerlessness)
> of 'empathy' and 'sympathy' is where we -I think- can meet in the middle.
Yes, but on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 the highest degree of sympathy for
the plight of others, you would probably score and 8 to 10 while I would
come in somewhere around 2 to 3. My instinct is not to interfere in other
people's lives, trusting in their natural abilities to extricate
themselves. No one is completely helpless against the Giant.
> I already wrote about my non-subscription to victimology. The word
> 'oppression' was not essential in what I wrote. Given your allergy for the
> word, let me translate: '[empathy and sympathy in the face of poverty and
> powerlessness] motivate me to do something. I don't know to what extent
> their pain and suffering is a result of individual bad choices and should
> be neglected to enable them to learn from it, but I'm sure you'll agree
> that this is only partially the case. There are situations in which
> people's pain and suffering is predominantly due not to their own bad
> choices, but to bad choices by others, which they can't undo without
> outside help.' Most Iraqis were NOT able to flee. Those that fled did not
> make the situation better (except for themselves, IF they weren't turned
> away at the entrances of Europe and the U.S.). A relatively large
> percentage of Iraqis WERE admitted (at least in the Netherlands), but
> millions of others (from other Godforsaken countries) were not or
> discovered (after being admitted or after entering illegally) that the
> 'better life' they expected was outside their reach (however hard they
> worked for it) or rather disappointing. The lucky ones that fled and
> achieved a better life often only worsened the situ ation for those they
> left behind. A country that has been 'drained' of its most resourceful
> members and only longs for a 'better life' elsewhere (often unjustified, to
> the extent that it is out of reach for them even if they would be
> resourceful enough to get there) will not easily develop a 'better life'
> for its inhabitants. We can't expect individuals in a lot of Godforsaken
> countries to beat the social and intellectual patterns of values there on
> their own. But they are THEIR social and intellectual patterns and we will
> often not be able to help them either. The only way to help them is through
> the social and intellectual patterns we share.
With the last two sentences above I completely agree.
> You disagreed with my:
> '"Individual autonomy and responsibility" are meaningless if you "let go,
> let God"' You replied: 'By responsibility I mean to suffer the consequences
> of my own choices. To "let go" is one of those choices.'
> Yes, but isn't it a choice to give up individual autonomy and
> responsibility in a sense? In other words: once having made that choice
> (well, I manage to do so temporarily only) don't 'individual autonomy' and
> 'responsibility' for what God is doing through us feel 'suspended'?
So long as I'm willing to suffer the consequences of my "giving up"
autonomy I don't see a contradiction. It's when I give up and then blame
somebody else for what happens that I'm being dishonest. One should never
let go of being responsible for the consequences of his decisions if he
wants to preserve his integrity and self-esteem.
Platt
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