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Henry_Cowell
Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 3352
Location: Berkeley
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 Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 5:36 am Post subject: |
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| rusmeister wrote: |
| ...I'm still waiting for someone to show me all of the societies that have been successful without the traditional family. |
All of them? So that you can call them unsuccessful? Or exceptions?
Okay, here are a few that come to mind and that any cultural anthropologist can tell you much more about: Traditional societies throughout much of Africa, Native America (North, Central, and South), the Southeast Asian highlands, Polynesia, and Melanesia. Add certain societies in Central and South Asia. Mix in many rural societies throughout Europe and Asia, especially before the Industrial Revolution.
What's that? You say that many of these societies don't follow the Big Three monotheistic religions? And they are thus suspect in your view and you will add them to what you have already called the "exceptions"? What a surprise!  |
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dmb
Joined: 12 Feb 2003
Posts: 8397
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| Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 8:14 am Post subject: |
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| denise wrote: |
| dmb wrote: |
Thanks for all the congrats guys.
btw Is our marriage the first Daves marriage? We met on the Turkey forum so I guess I should be thanking Dave. |
Wasn't there talk a couple of years ago (geez, I've been here too long!) about some sort of match-making scheme here at Dave's? Were you the pioneer?
d |
I think I might have been Denise. i've also been here a while and my memory isn't what it used to be. |
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rusmeister
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 867
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 10:17 am Post subject: |
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| Henry_Cowell wrote: |
| rusmeister wrote: |
| ...I'm still waiting for someone to show me all of the societies that have been successful without the traditional family. |
All of them? So that you can call them unsuccessful? Or exceptions?
Okay, here are a few that come to mind and that any cultural anthropologist can tell you much more about: Traditional societies throughout much of Africa, Native America (North, Central, and South), the Southeast Asian highlands, Polynesia, and Melanesia. Add certain societies in Central and South Asia. Mix in many rural societies throughout Europe and Asia, especially before the Industrial Revolution.
What's that? You say that many of these societies don't follow the Big Three monotheistic religions? And they are thus suspect in your view and you will add them to what you have already called the "exceptions"? What a surprise! |
Hmm. Even if we grant that they all operate/d WITHOUT having traditional families at all (something highly debatable), I would call them examples of unsuccessful societies, that have neither grown nor developed, but for the most part have gone to extinction (that was my stipulation). None of them reached a point where they could philosophize the way you and I are doing or obtain information to be able to do so. If you talk Greece, Rome, the Chinese dynasties (what on earth made them 'dynasties'?), feudal Japan, all European societies, never mind the highly successful American civilization, and all of the significant nation-states period are or were built around traditional families. None of them are based on polygamous spouse or child sharing, or free movement from spouse to spouse - on the contrary, it's striking how their sexual morality is similar to ours; the very fact that across the entire world and well outside the bounds of Christendom you find the same ideas of one husband, one wife and children and laws/taboos against free changing of spouses ('partners', if you will).
I didn't say anything about what you call 'The Big Three' - that's your insertion, although they certainly did make a difference in the manner and extent to which the societies developed. It was the preservation of knowledge by those 'evil' Christians in monastaries when the Roman empire came crumbling down, for example, that enabled the later scientific growth that allowed Europe to outstrip everybody else.
In any event, it's clear that this can go around and around - you won't convince me and I won't convince you. I hope my original point that the difficulty around the word 'partner' in English arises from the abandonment of traditional families remains uncontested, at least. |
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Henry_Cowell
Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 3352
Location: Berkeley
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| Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 4:49 pm Post subject: |
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| rusmeister wrote: |
| ...I would call them examples of unsuccessful societies, that have neither grown nor developed, but for the most part have gone to extinction (that was my stipulation). None of them reached a point where they could philosophize the way you and I are doing or obtain information to be able to do so. |
Ah. The nineteenth-century ethnocentric moralist. I knew that'd be your pathetic -- and certainly unverified -- answer.
So this is the continuation of your previous thread, "The place of philosophy [sic] in education," eh? Do you bring your pulpit and clerical collar into the classroom?  |
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rusmeister
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 867
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 2:24 am Post subject: |
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| Henry_Cowell wrote: |
Ah. The nineteenth-century ethnocentric moralist.
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One thing worth commenting on - when you say '19th century' you reveal a thinking that has an (probably unexamined) implicit belief, or operating assumption that mankind is somehow getting better and better; that we are improving as a race (the myth of Star Trek). The main thing that generally gives that illusory support is technological progress, which has nothing whatever to do with moral behavior. The horrors committed by mankind in the 20th century (and now in the 21st) are not less horrible than those of the 1st or 10th - indeed, technology has increased the scale of horror, if not the nature. The Holocaust was not kinder and gentler than the French Revolution, September 11th was not an improvement on the Crusades, and humans are not less disposed to rape, murder, betray than they were then - the idea that moral behavior can be primitive or evolve is a fallacy - in this case thinking that human relations can and will become better and better.
That was what Shaw and those like him believe/d, and shapes the thinking of a great many people today (helped along by what IS taught in our schools, so I wouldn't say that people are 'at fault' for holding those hidden assumptions, but if you have been indoctrinated and don't know it, it would be good to find it out. A great many people are unaware of the beliefs underlying their thinking. At least I am consciously aware of the ideology that illuminates my world.
For some reason, people still respect Aristotle and Socrates, John Chrysostom and Thomas Aquinas, Confucius and Omar Khayaam.
If you wish to prove that modern thinking is superior to 19th, 10th or what-have-you century, you should use reason rather than emotional attacks. |
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Henry_Cowell
Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 3352
Location: Berkeley
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| Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 3:46 am Post subject: |
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| rusmeister wrote: |
| (probably unexamined) implicit belief |
Oh, it's not at all unexamined or implicit in my thinking. Let me be quite clear: It was in the nineteenth century that the most virulently ethnocentric and racist philosophies got their start. We see the effects of them still.
THAT'S what I meant.  |
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rusmeister
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 867
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 7:49 am Post subject: |
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*shrugs his shoulders*
Hope you can tell the difference between ethnocentrism and being culturally centered.
In any event, it's clear that you are quite as dogmatic about your beliefs (including historical ones) as I am about mine, if not more so; we won't convince each other, so let's not. |
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Henry_Cowell
Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 3352
Location: Berkeley
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| Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 7:49 pm Post subject: |
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| rusmeister wrote: |
| Hope you can tell the difference between ethnocentrism and being culturally centered. |
Is that how you describe yourself?
To me, being "culturally centered" would mean being secure enough in your own identify and life that you don't have to put down or devalue other ways of living. But, of course, that's just me. |
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furiousmilksheikali
Joined: 31 Jul 2006
Posts: 1660
Location: In a coffee shop, splitting a 30,000 yen tab with Sekiguchi.
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| Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 1:13 am Post subject: |
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| rusmeister wrote: |
| One thing worth commenting on - when you say '19th century' you reveal a thinking that has an (probably unexamined) implicit belief, or operating assumption that mankind is somehow getting better and better; that we are improving as a race (the myth of Star Trek). |
Mankind has made no progress?
Okay then, where did the traditions you talk of come from? They must have existed from the very origins of the species then. Either they evolved as humans did (if you believe such ideas) in which case that could be considered progress of a sort, or they occurred on the sixth day when God created man. If you believe the latter then you are are no doubt bound to believe that human beings were murdering each other and thieving from each other until Moses found out on Mount Sinai that it was wrong to do so.
So rusmeister, I think you have found yourself making the contradictory statements that man has developed traditions which are for the betterment of mankind and yet not progressed at any point. How do you resolve that? |
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Henry_Cowell
Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 3352
Location: Berkeley
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| Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 2:20 am Post subject: |
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| And all that talk about "unsuccessful" traditions?? Maybe they were unsuccessful because they wouldn't -- or couldn't -- follow the better societies into the abyss that was the 20th century! |
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furiousmilksheikali
Joined: 31 Jul 2006
Posts: 1660
Location: In a coffee shop, splitting a 30,000 yen tab with Sekiguchi.
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| Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 2:22 am Post subject: |
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| Henry_Cowell wrote: |
| And all that talk about "unsuccessful" traditions?? Maybe they were unsuccessful because they wouldn't -- or couldn't -- follow the better societies into the abyss that was the 20th century! |
Well unsuccessful societies and successful societies are of course no different from each other as neither has progressed in any manner. |
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rusmeister
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 867
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 6:44 am Post subject: |
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| furiousmilksheikali wrote: |
| rusmeister wrote: |
| One thing worth commenting on - when you say '19th century' you reveal a thinking that has an (probably unexamined) implicit belief, or operating assumption that mankind is somehow getting better and better; that we are improving as a race (the myth of Star Trek). |
Mankind has made no progress?
Okay then, where did the traditions you talk of come from? They must have existed from the very origins of the species then. Either they evolved as humans did (if you believe such ideas) in which case that could be considered progress of a sort, or they occurred on the sixth day when God created man. If you believe the latter then you are are no doubt bound to believe that human beings were murdering each other and thieving from each other until Moses found out on Mount Sinai that it was wrong to do so.
So rusmeister, I think you have found yourself making the contradictory statements that man has developed traditions which are for the betterment of mankind and yet not progressed at any point. How do you resolve that? |
*Sigh*
No, I am not making such statements.
If you would carefully read my posts, you would see that I have not been speaking about traditionS, but about a particular tradition, and that my reference to progress is that there is no betterment of human nature, even if we do make technological progress.
| Quote: |
| The main thing that generally gives that illusory support is technological progress, which has nothing whatever to do with moral behavior. |
Many 'advances', such as women's participation in things traditionally requiring strength, are due to tech advances, not any improvement in human nature, and as such are not world-wide changes. A disaster (a la Deep Impact or Lucifer's Hammer) that plunged us 'back to the stone age' (in that since) would quickly strip us of this veneer of artificially supported equality of ability.
But what the idea that '19th century thinking' betrays is the very idea that man somehow 'thinks better' over time, and that he is evolving into something better and better that can think better and more correctly. One of the main follies of modern thinking is that it is superior simply because it is modern; because it fits the society shaped around us.
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� "Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative." - Chapter 2, Heretics, 1905
� "Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision." - Orthodoxy, 1908
� "My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday." - New York Times Magazine, 2/11/23
� "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around." - Orthodoxy, 1908 |
So my resolution is that the general understanding of what progress is is incorrect. I'll offer this, too, from Chesterton, in the hopes that you can understand it:
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| The case of the general talk of �progress� is, indeed, an extreme one. As enunciated today, �progress� is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative. We meet every ideal of religion, patriotism, beauty, or brute pleasure with the alternative ideal of progress � that is to say, we meet every proposal of getting something that we know about, with an alternative proposal of getting a great deal more of nobody knows what. Progress, properly understood, has, indeed, a most dignified and legitimate meaning. But as used in opposition to precise moral ideals, it is ludicrous. So far from it being the truth that the ideal of progress is to be set against that of ethical or religious finality, the reverse is the truth. Nobody has any business to use the word �progress� unless he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals. Nobody can be progressive without being doctrinal; I might almost say that nobody can be progressive without being infallible � at any rate, without believing in some infallibility. For progress by its very name indicates a direction; and the moment we are in the least doubtful about the direction, we become in the same degree doubtful about the progress. Never perhaps since the beginning of the world has there been an age that had less right to use the word �progress� than we. In the Catholic twelfth century, in the philosophic eighteenth century, the direction may have been a good or a bad one, men may have differed more or less about how far they went, and in what direction, but about the direction they did in the main agree, and consequently they had the genuine sensation of progress. But it is precisely about the direction that we disagree. Whether the future excellence lies in more law or less law, in more liberty or less liberty; whether property will be finally concentrated or finally cut up; whether sexual passion will reach its sanest in an almost virgin intellectualism or in a full animal freedom; whether we should love everybody with Tolstoy, or spare nobody with Nietzsche; � these are the things about which we are actually fighting most. It is not merely true that the age which has settled least what is progress is this �progressive� age. It is, moreover, true that the people who have settled least what is progress are the most �progressive� people in it. The ordinary mass, the men who have never troubled about progress, might be trusted perhaps to progress. The particular individuals who talk about progress would certainly fly to the four winds of heaven when the pistol-shot started the race. I do not, therefore, say that the word �progress� is unmeaning; I say it is unmeaning without the previous definition of a moral doctrine, and that it can only be applied to groups of persons who hold that doctrine in common. Progress is not an illegitimate word, but it is logically evident that it is illegitimate for us. It is a sacred word, a word which could only rightly be used by rigid believers and in the ages of faith. |
If you don't understand or don't read that, we can't really talk further. I'll try to demonstrate that people who disagree with you can also be rational, but I won't go around in circles forever. As long as we keep it civil and respect what the other person is saying (even if we think them wrong), we can have dialog.
I've been trying to say all along that philosophy shapes how we see everything in our lives, and that as such it cannot be divorced from the specific topics without removing the foundation that the ideas are built on.  |
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denise
Joined: 23 Apr 2003
Posts: 3419
Location: finally home-ish
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| Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 6:47 am Post subject: |
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Can't you gentlemen just agree to disagree, and stop there? Or take your debate to the PM realm? PLEASE!!!!!!
d |
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Henry_Cowell
Joined: 27 May 2005
Posts: 3352
Location: Berkeley
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| Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2007 3:37 pm Post subject: |
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denise,
Thanks, partner! We needed that. |
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Justin Trullinger
Joined: 28 Jan 2005
Posts: 3110
Location: Seoul, South Korea and Myanmar for a bit
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| Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 1:05 am Post subject: |
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Howdy Partners!
I'm on vacation, but just popped in here to see what was going on. Seems to have gotten a little heated in my absence...
I think I'll be going on with the "partner" label for a while, which was the original purpose of the thread. I've been testing it in many circumstances, and have come to the conclusion that, although a certain percentage of the people I run into will probably think I'm gay, and a higher percentage will think I'm weird, I can't come up with an alternative. And what's wrong with being gay and/or weird?
I've enjoyed reading this whole thread, including the Chesterton bit, though I feel we're a bit off topic...
But since we're here- what do you all think about the idea that marriage and inheritance are interlinked? Historically, societies without much by way of inheritance have looser conceptions of family structure. Maybe the original purpose of marriage was that a man might know that his children were his? Prior to the development of property to pass on, he may not have cared. But until near the end of the 20th century, he could only ever be sure to the extent that he could be sure of his wife's (or wives') fidelity.
It's interesting to me that humans, in many situations, are socially monogamous. (Meaning that many of our social conventions are built on single partner relationships.) But we do not seem inherently so, in the way that some animals are. Many birds mate once, for life, and never copulate except in that pairing. Some humans do this as well (and more power to them) but it seems to be done out of a commitment to certain vows and ideals, rather than our very nature. (Animals, if monogamous, don't seem tempted by other partners. Most humans, as I understand it, sometimes are.) Interesting that we are the only monogamous primate. (Or at least, the only one that tries to be.)
Best,
Justin |
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