RE: MD the metaphysics of free-enterprise

From: Paul Turner (paul@turnerbc.co.uk)
Date: Tue Jul 27 2004 - 10:42:24 BST

  • Next message: Paul Turner: "RE: MD the metaphysics of free-enterprise"

    Hi Platt

    Platt said:
    Both DMB and Paul narrowly define success as fame and fortune.

    Paul:
    Not so, I suggested that fame and fortune are currently, in western
    culture, the *dominant* measure of success, and highlighted that they
    are social quality measurements. The reason I did this was to
    demonstrate that your idea of individual success being a purely 4th
    level goal is incorrect.

    Platt said:
    I doubt if they would apply that definition to themselves as
    individuals, but rather use the term's primary meaning of "favorable or
    desired outcome."

    Paul:
    That's irrelevant. Once again, I suggested that fame and fortune are
    currently, in western culture, the *dominant* measure of success.
    Therefore, when you say that individual success is the highest good you
    may first need to point out that you are talking about success in the
    sense of "achieving favourable and desired outcomes," and not
    necessarily making money or becoming famous, and when you've done that
    you might want to qualify this with "except if that desired outcome is
    flying an aircraft into a skyscraper, torturing a child, running a scam,
    shooting the president, selling crack........"

    Or, to make things easier, you could say that there is a natural
    evolutionary moral order of things, and we can categorise the behaviour
    of individuals according to this framework to show that an individual
    should not be free to achieve every desired outcome they can think of.

    In other words, I think that when you wave the flag simply for
    "individual success," you are right back in the soup and fundamentally
    uprooting the structured morality of the MOQ.

    Platt said:
    Once the weakness of DMB's premise that success is a social pattern is
    made clear, the rest of his critique of my position regarding the
    individual level disintegrates into little more than an anti-Randian
    rant.

    Paul:
    From my point of view, I was countering your claim that individual
    success is a 4th level pattern by showing that this success occurs at
    other levels. If there are narrow definitions being made, the idea that
    the individual is a purely 4th level pattern tops them all.

    Cheers

    Paul

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