From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Mar 28 2004 - 02:14:46 BST
Sam, Matt, DM, Leland and all MOQers:
dmb says:
Let me begin by saying how interesting this thread has been. There are
dozens of points that are compelling enough to require a response, but, for
the sake of brevity, I've decided not to do the point by point thing this
time. Instead I'd like to take a step back and do a big picture in broad
strokes kind of thing. By way of introduction, as a way to get you in the
mood, here is a snippet of one exachange between Matt and David M...
Matt said to DM:
You are right to wonder, (if views like being kind to each other or avoiding
cruelty may in fact prove to be shallow and uninspiring.) but Rorty and I
hope not because those thin kinds of views are the only types of things we
can see a culturally diverse population agreeing on. One's reasons for being
kind may differ, but we take the view that cruelty is the worst thing you
can do as the least common denominator of the type of people we want running
around.
...So, when we are talking politics, we need a vocabulary we can agree on,
and in the face of diversity it's going to end up being thin. The only
strategy we've come up with so far to help us stick to a vocabulary we can
agree on is secularization.
David M replied:
...problem is, as Rorty accepts, things are not looking very good for
liberalism. Problem is real solutions are not on the agenda, the call is to
arms, and we've got millions of them! We continue with a lesser of many
evils approach, is there a path to something that is actually good? Can we
just walk away from the edge of the abyss? ...the result of us letting the
oil go? Can the US do without the world's resources? ...all those
anti-democracy regimes we propped up from the cold war ...Iraq? Can
something good be achieved? I
think we may be in more trouble than hanging or to liberalism can handle,
because we are probably are going to be able to hang on to it.
dmb says:
I'd go even further - or is it just bigger and broader? - and say that some
of our problems are NOT ONLY too much for liberalism to handle, some of our
most serious problems are intimately tied in with those problems. The more
vulgar aspects of materialism and the benefits of liberal democracy are both
part of the same package. Modernity has its good and bad sides and it seems
that Matt and David aren't really making mutually exclusive cases. They can
both be right...
Ken Wilber in his INTEGRAL PSYCHOLOGY:
"Modernity, it is said, marked the death of God, the commodification of
life, the leveling of qualitative distinctions, the brutalities of
capitalism, the replacement of quality by quantity, the loss of value and
meaning, the fragmentation of the lifeworld, existential dread, polluting
industrialization, a rampant and vulgar materialism - all of which have
often been summarized in the phrase made famous by Max Weber: 'the
disenchantment of the world'. ...But clearly there were some immensely
positive aspects of modernity as well, for it also gave us the liberal
democracies; ideals of equality, freedom and justice, regardless of race,
class, creed, or gender; modern medicine, physics, biology and chemistry;
the end of slavery; the rise of feminism; and the universal rights of human
kind. Those, surely, are a little more noble than the mere 'disenchantment
of the world'."
dmb says:
If I understand the problem, its all about 'the disenchantement'. Along with
a scientific world view we also get the death of God, the loss of value and
meaning, existential dread, or in Pirsig's terms, "a terrible secret
lonliness", "a culture of millions of isolated people living and dying in
little cells of psychic solitary confinement" The process of trying to free
politics from religion and science from both has produced wonderful liberal
principles like the seperation of church and state, freedom of speech and
all the rest, but it has also gone too far in that process of
differentiation so that the domains are divorced, alienated and
disassociated to the point of hostility. I mean, its good for both science
and religion to have independence, but why should they be hostile to each
other and at odds? This is only the most conspicuous example of the problem
of Modernity. And its no accident that liberal democracy, as a child of
Modernity, hasn't done a very good job of dealing with this. I wouldn't
suggest we tear down the wall of seperation, but it strikes me as a glossing
over, a sweeping under the rug. I have no good answers, nothing better than
this ancient bandage, but it is becoming increasingly clear that we need
something better. I mean, when fundamentalism is in a pitched battle with
vulgar materialism its hard to get behind either side. We all lose no matter
who wins that one.
Ken Wilber, again from INTEGRAL PSYCHOLOGY:
"..the major philosophers of the Enlightenment were committed to what we
would recognize as an empirical-scientific outlook, in any of its many
forms; sensationalism, empiricism, naturalism, realism, materialism. And
there was good reason for this empirical slant. ... But the inherent
downsides of this approach are perhaps obvious: All subjective truths
(introspection, consciousneess, art, beauty) and all intersubjective truths
(morals, justice, substantive values) were collapsed into exterior,
empirical, sensorimotor occasions. Collapsed, that is, into dirt. Literally.
The great nightmare of scientific materialism was upon us (Whitehead), the
nightmare of one-dimensional man (Marcuse), the disqualified universe
(Mumford), the colonization of art and morals by science (Habermas), the
disenchantment of the world (Weber) - a nightmare I have also called
flatland. ...The spiritual dimension, it was solemnly announced, was nothing
but a wish-fulfillment of infantile needs (Freud), an opaque ideology for
opressing the masses (Marx), or a projection of human potentials
(Feuerbach). Spirituality is thus a deep confusion that apparently plagued
humanity for approximately a million years, until just recently, a mere few
centures ago, when modernity pledged allegiance to sensory science, and then
promptly decided that the entire world contained nothing but matter, period.
The bleakness of the modern scientific proclamation is chilling."
dmb concludes:
In the long term, I'm not sure if a nation that operates upon the "thin"
views of the "lowest common denominator" with "technocratic language" can
long endure, achieve any real greatness or act as a moral force in the
world. Surely we can't go backward in history and we do not want theocracy
or anything that puts the state behind a sectarian religion view. But
provided the assertions can stand up to intellectual scrutiny, I don't see
why political philosophers, political scientists, or even actual politicians
should be barred from openly considering spiritual values in their work. I'm
convinced that the seperate domains can be reintegrated at a higher level of
discourse. I mean, it seems that Pirsig's levels crack the problem open much
better than describing it a differing vocabularies. If the level of debate
is raised to the intellectual level, disscussing the values that are common
to all religions or the mystical core of all religions for example, we can
talk about God on the Senate floor without violating the constitution or
wasting people's time. I mean, I agree with Sam's point - on steroids. I not
only think we need to talk about what is most worth doing, and not just how
best to do them, I think we need to talk about some deep issues and make
some global decisions. Don't you think its time the liberal democracies grew
up, especially the United States? And if we had a more rational and mature
public conversation about spiritual matters, don't you think there would be
far fewer fundamentalists - who very much insist on talking about God on the
Senate floor - in this country? I do. I really think it would help. The only
problem is, no one really knows how to do it yet. I think the language is
just now being invented.
Thanks,
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