We've gotten into some fairly philosophical musings here - which is just
fine, I guess (though I'm sure some of us are going to start getting
antsy). I've changed the subject line again to let us follow this thread
if we want as a separate subject. If we want to debate the issue, I'd
like to keep it close to the question of interactions between indigenous
and colonially-derived societies, though we'll probably need to explore
some more general ground as well. I also want to make it easy for those
of us who do not have the time or interest to involve themselves in this
discussion to discard these articles.
On 24 April, astingsh@ksuvm.ksu.edu (Kerry Miller) writes:
>...
> G, <who I think must be severly tempted sometimes to develop a split
>personality, so that he can join in this sort of fray, and still have a place
>to hang his moderator's hat> might have said "P, if you don't answer the
>question, you're gonna get in trouble," but he didn't, and thus incurred some
>of the ire, too.
Well, I surely do have opinions, but they usually tend to be rather
tentative and are almost always subject to change. In this discussion,
I have generally found myself talking mostly about the matter of what
people mean by certain statements. With regard to the question asked
of Peshewegunzh, it appeared to me that his hesitancy to answer the
question as it was put had mostly to do with his finding it too hypo-
thetical, in that it left out certain necessary contextual details. I
saw him saying that to answer the question as it was posed was to accept
an abstracted context as being a legitimate basis on which to discover
real meaning, which he apparently does not. The question seemed to me
to have possibly been an attempt to establish a matter of ideology in
the fashion of a so-called "litmus test" which leaves out considerations
pertaining to culture that seem to provide the very basis for the dis-
cussion we're having.
I want to let Peshewegunzh defend himself, but I suspect he doesn't
mind "getting in trouble" on this issue if it only means standing out-
side the approval of a system of logic and meaning which he apparently
rejects. I don't feel I'm taking sides with him by making this obser-
vation or by failing to point out to him the fact that certain people
will censure him for his refusing to play their game. If I become a
target for my agreement that the question is too hypothetical to have
real meaning, then so be it. (I suppose one could ask Peshewegunzh
"Could you imagine yourself ever, under any circumstances, approving
the decision of a Native woman to seek an abortion," so as to let him
select his own conditions, but I don't think we should expect him to
suggest that we ask him that question.)
As to any split I might be feeling in myself due to a desire to avoid
stating an opinion, it's not really too much of a strain, since I don't
have that many firmly-held opinions anyway. I am content to try to help
ferret out meaning that we can all use to come to a better understanding
of the real issues involved in complex questions and to a more refined
sense of our own feelings about the subjects these questions represent.
> To further confuse the issue, now we are supposed to imagine that theres
>validity in the concept of "society," but not in there being a "typical"
>member of it, to which I have a couple of responses:
> a) if society is metaphorical, then typicality surely is too;
> c) G, why isn't it a matter of personal individual responsibility?
>Whether it's <called> genocide or not, somewhere this great societal metaphor
>meets the road: I suggest individuation is a pretty reliable spot. One's
>contribution may only be a drop in the bucket, but that's what makes the
>ripples.
Well, I think this is a very slippery question, and we could go on for
quite some time debating all the fine points, which is quite an exercise
in itself. One of the issues relates to the topic of whether a given
society really acts in accordance with the will of its members, and, if
and to the extent that it does not who bears responsibility for that fact.
Maybe it's mostly a matter of responsibility for the results of the activ-
ities of a society being some function of the degree of real power of the
individual members thereof. I did indicate in my earlier article that I
feel this whole subject of the responsibility of the individual within a
society is very complex. I feel that individual victims are easier to
locate than individual perpetrators of injustice when they are acting to
carry out the policy of the society they represent. As I said before,
I find it easier to hold people responsible for their failure to examine
their potential to work for change within their society than I do for
their lending tacit approval to certain misdeeds of that society, though
I do recognize that in some ways the latter collapses into the former.
In other words, it is by our failure to come to terms with the fact of
our lack of ability to influence the course of our society that we can
become in what I think is an important sense culpable for its wrongs.
Personally, I find that my society does many things of which I do not
approve. The fact of my not having given explicit consent frees me from
feelings of overt responsibility for these things being done, but it does
not free me from a profound sense of unease, of from a feeling of a need
to struggle with some amount of energy to register my displeasure as well
as to persuade others similarly inclined to do likewise. Clearly, though,
having limited resources, all who share these perceptions find ourselves
with the dilemma of how to exercise what we may perceive to be our re-
sponsibilities to ourselves and to our societies and yet maintain our own
survival needs (both materially and psychologically).
I feel these to be important questions of ethics, but I'm not sure this
is the best forum in which to debate them.
>... it seems to this benighted soul, we are thus held responsible for
>*stopping* things whereof we knew not, but not for their *continuation*.
Well, it seems as if these two are just variations of one another. If I
left the impression that we need to distinguish between them for purposes
of talking of personal responsibility, one of us was mistaken. The question
for me remains one of degree - just *how responsible* can the individual be
held for something done by his or her society in the name of the common good,
and what are appropriate remedies which the individual member of a society
can realistically exercise in response to a sense of distress in thinking
that the policies of the society are severely out of line with his or her
own sense of ethics and good policy. Perhaps the reason for my having at
least given the impression that I feel the individual member of society is
not to blame for policies can be traced to a personal sense of powerless-
ness that I sometimes feel when contemplating the disparity between my own
standards and ideas about good government and those which inform the admin-
istration of policy and justice in the United States.
>Finally, to look at this constructively, I would point out that, if anything
>characterises a "European perspective," it is *science*, by which I mean the
>propensity to deal in generalizations.
I would humbly point out that our "science" is based on one particular defi-
nition of the term, which systematically excludes certain items that one we
might formulate as a thought experiment might choose to incorporate within
itself, such as the positive value of subjective awareness which does not
interfere with the reproducibility of certain kinds of results in certain
kinds of cases. (We have another really big and complex subject here, folks!)
As for dealing in generalizations, I think we've come back to the question I
commented on a couple of days ago about forests and trees...
>Specifically, "society" is a kind of
>shorthand for "social organization"; it implies there are not only activities
>to be organized, but patterns to those activities. In trying to deal with
>"how society as a whole functions" before we see clearly the activities of the
>individuals is getting the cart well ahead of the horse.
Well, I suspect it may be an artifact of our own peculiar culture and its
definition of science and knowledge that it even occurs to us to look at
such things as the activity of societies in terms of those of its members.
For me, the "chicken and egg" metaphor seems as apt as that of the "cart
and horse" in that it is not entirely possible to see either individual or
society without some awareness of the other, so no matter where we start
our examination, our attention is immediately forced to a consideration of
the other area. Though I recognize it to possibly be something of an
oversimplification and a pandering to a certain "New Age" kind of audience,
I find what Fritjof Capra has to say in his _The_Turning_Point_ (~1982) to
be of some value. He speaks about the legacy of the thinking of Newton and
Descartes of mechanism and reductionism, and suggests alternative ways of
conceiving problems and their solution based on organism and holism. Again,
we encounter a subject area that could be debated independently for quite
some time, and I feel as if I've spilled enough electronic ink for a while.
> A recent post on another list offers a prime example of how
>this confusion shows up in the language:
> "In their phenomenal rush for growth over two centuries, the
> consumption patterns of many people in the U.S. and other northern
> countries have threatened global ecosystems and despoiled huge areas
> in and beyond the northern hemisphere."
>You may wish the problem were only semantic, but it sounds to me like it's
>definitely time for a paradigm shift; for learning to live with our
>individuality -- and with each other.
According to Capra, at least, a paradigm shift is already occurring, and it
seems to be going in the other direction. I don't think the argument stands
or falls on the way Capra talks about the subject, however. Personally, I
am encouraged by the thought of such a paradigm shift, because, for one thing,
it would seem to give us a better chance to reconcile ourselves with one
another by recognizing our commonality more easily, and feeling more incen-
tive to do so. At the possible risk of expounding a fuzzy and overly-roman-
ticized notion of indigenous societies, my admittedly cursory impression is
that most such societies have a better-developed understanding of what it
means to "live in harmony with nature," by which I mean both the physical
world and the essence of our own inner life, experienced as a social reality
of a kind most members industrialized societies seem to lament the loss of
more than to experience.
Perhaps to indicate my own agenda a bit better, I feel (especially having
recently recently watched a tape I made of Bill Moyers' "Spirit and Nature"
program) that societies which can be characterized as driven by notions of
material progress and expansion being somehow linked to their prosperity
and survival may be able to learn a lot from those which are not, and that
this education may be essential for any restoration of balance to our world
and to our experience of the world. All of the questions we've been con-
sidering recently seem to me to be hinting in these directions, and I would
be glad to see them face this subject more squarely - possibly in the con-
text of a project of reading some books together and talking about them.
I've gotten a few responses to this suggestion which I made recently. Any
more takers?
> |{hm kerry miller <ASTINGSH@KSUVM.KSU.EDU>
Gary
--
Gary S. Trujillo gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst