From: Ian Glendinning (ian@psybertron.org)
Date: Sun Dec 14 2003 - 10:31:38 GMT
Wim said, and Mark agreed ...
[Quote]
It is as pointless to call
Europeans 'more intellectual' than Americans (or vice versa) as it is
pointless to call a baboon 'more biological' than a rhino. Contrary to
Pirsig in some of his writing I don't consider it useful either to ....
[Unquote]
Interesting that the argument is purely pragmatic - ie pointless, not-useful ...
We must be careful though, not to create a PC taboo, preventing such comparisons.
Clearly evolutionary cultural speciation between Americans and Europeans is quite different to the evolutionary biological speciation between baboons and rhino's. There is much less cross-communication (cultural or biological) between the latter pair for a start.
I think we all recognise that generalised statements comparing "Americans" with "Europeans" are just short-hand, but without such metaphorical generalisations, we have to write much longer sentences - which actually get in the way of communication unless we're allowed to use convenient labels like "American" without everyone taking offense. By American we simply mean a culture of ways of thinking and acting which we have found it convenient to label "American". The trick is to remember that fact, and not to strangle the language by making it non-PC to use the terms.
By the way I'm note sure whether I prefer Mark the grovelling apologist to Squonk the shock-jock :-)
Ian Glendinning
----- Original Message -----
From: Valuemetaphysics@aol.com
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2003 2:32 PM
Subject: Re: MD Intellect attacks free speech
Platt wrote 11 Dec 2003 21:28:52 -0500:
'Don't Europeans consider themselves more intellectual than Americans?'
Mark replied 12 Dec 2003 15:21:38 EST:
'Yes! ;-p But is this so? Probably not.'
In MoQish terms you are both talking nonsense. It is as pointless to call
Europeans 'more intellectual' than Americans (or vice versa) as it is
pointless to call a baboon 'more biological' than a rhino. Contrary to
Pirsig in some of his writing I don't consider it useful either to speak
about Europeans (or Americans) as 'consisting of a set of inorganic,
biological, social and intellectual patterns' about which you could say that
intellectual patterns dominate to a greater or lesser extent. According to
me a 'European' (or 'American') is a symbolic representation of (part of)
my/your/our experience that is presented as an object (and occasionally as a
subject) and that participates in the inorganic, biological, social and
intellectual patterns that can also be distinguished in my/your/our
experience. What we could discuss, is whether a specific intellectual
pattern of value (with relatively high/low intellectual/Dynamic quality) is
participated in by more 'Europeans' or by more 'Americans'. Because of the
confusion of SOM-based and MoQ-based terminology (e.g. 'intellectuals' and
'intellectual patterns of value') we won't come very far with such a
discussion.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
Hello Wim,
I agree with your comments and apologise for making a nonsense statement.
Mark
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