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> From: E. Taborsky <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: definitions
> Date: Tuesday, April 29, 1997 12:55 PM
>
> Just a few comments, in reaction to the comments on my posting.
> Let's see if I can be any clearer (I doubt it, but I'll try; my
> writing can be a bit dense, I know).
>
> First, I feel that homo sapiens is the only species on earth whose
> ability to live is primarily conceptual rather than genetic. By this
> I mean that human adaptive systems are learned rather than
> genetically stored. This gives an enormous amount of adaptive
> flexibility to this particular species. A deer must grow a coat of
> fur for protection vs the cold; the human can learn to make a coat,
> to make a house, to make fire. An animal will die if its food (green
> herbiage in this instance) are not available; the human can move to
> another area (let's say, to a rainforest - where that deer's hooves
> would never survive the moisture) - and above all, the human can
> develop artifacts, technology - to change their interactions with the
> envt and so create food.
> It is this necessity/strength of conceptual rather than strictly
> genetic adaptive interactions with the envt - that gives the human
> species its tremendous expansive flexibility...to move into all
> biomes all over the world. What other species does this? I am NOT
> privileging or promoting the human species - just commenting on its
> bioconceptual reality.
It's WHAT???
> Certainly, at the same time as having this 'gift' of flexible
>adaptation - the human species is 'cursed' by it.
> Because our knowledge-base is so heavily conceptual - then, we become
> trapped in the 'truths' that we develop.
THIS is where I get a little foggy...please provide more detail, or proof,
or something.
> So, we come up with a life-style - and think it is
>the Truth, that it is the best - when it
> is only one of a number of possibilities.
>
> Because our interactions with the envt are heavily conceptual
> constructions, this means that we must store our knowledge. We, as a
> community, develop skills of knowing which plants are healthy, which
> animals to hunt (Hunting and Gathering)..and agricultural skills (if
> the terrain is suitable for such)..and etc. These skills are
> certainly organized and accepted as valid within the community. They
> have to be - or the society would be unable to 'reproduce' itself
> both physically and conceptually.
Well... this needs more work. Would you like to discuss this more?
> DDeBar mentions that it is possible for a society to be
Not exactly. I suggested the possibility...
> non-hierarchical, with a democratically operated library system.. I
> have my doubts about that. First - I consider that in order to
> preserve the knowledge base of a society, that knowledge must be
> privileged
?!?!
> and preserved. These terms are not meant to be understood
> in a 'nasty' sense, but in a functional sense. Even in a small,
> seemingly open and non-hierarchical society (eg, a hunting and
> gathering band, with a population of about 30 people) - there will be
> authority of knowledge. Not from within the population - but
> abstract. The knowledge-base of the group will be given an
> authoritative force by the group considering its origin as 'coming
> from the gods', as coming from the Dreamtime (Aboriginal).
Well, yes, this has happened, but not always.
> This will in itself, 'censor' and limit the nature of the knowledge
> considered 'truthful' in the group. Knowledge that comes from a
> non-abstract source (eg, a human - whether a member of the band or a
> colonizer) will be considered of lesser value and validity than that
> coming from the gods, from the Dreamtime.
Excuse my asking it this way, but what the ehll are you talking about?
> They will censor and therefore limit their knowledge-base
> to maintain continuity of their social type. They will mock and demean
an
> agricultural knowledge - even if it will produce more food for them!
> That is what I mean by both 'organization' and 'storage' of
> knowledge. In the case of this H&G band, their knowledge is organized
> within all their daily actions, validated by their ideology,
> prevented from entropic dissolution by their daily actions of
> carrying it out, and by their firm commitment to that life-style.
There is something going on here that you are not sharing with us...
> The 'library' of knowledge will not be 'open' in the sense that it
> admits and stores all knowledge. First - let's say that this
> Alexandrian utopia did exist - a 'library', whether of oral or
> literate data - that permitted all expressions, and that stored all
> expressions. I think that this is a description of the cognitive
> nature of the human mind - that we are able to think of, and explore,
> any and all thoughts. So, our individual minds must be open, must
> have the freedom always to come up with both unicorns and quarks.
???
> But - the group, the communitas - is the opposite. It has a requirement
> for stasis, for stability, for continuity and most certainly, for
> little deviation.
No requirement for survival? for progress?
> Therefore, our society's library will limit what it considers
>as valid knowledge, and denigrate what it considers as
> invalid. It will consider the industrial technology better than the
> hunting technology; it will consider an atheist better than a
> theistic society.
Except for the USSR &c, when has THAT happened?
> I am not making any judgments - just commenting
> that a society must limit its viabilities of belief in order to
> maintain continuity of its particular adaptation.
At the risk of sounding redundant, or stuck, or something - WHAT THE HELL
DOES THAT MEAN?
> Let's say that it doesn't..then that could
> mean, that in a given geographic area.. people would
>use any and all technologies. So..we could have people
> who say agriculture is best, and others industrial and others
> hunting..and etc. But - the terrain can't deal with all these
> different attempts to extract sustencance. If you want to have plough
> agriculture..then you must have a certain population size, and
> sustenance to make the required tools..and therefore, must farm a
> large plot..which will get rid of the open fodder for the deer and
> the wild animals...which will mean no food for the hunters ..and so
> on. See what happens in the various societies around the world, when
> 'modern' technologies move in..and the older methods fall apart
> because the land cannot sustain all types. So..a society limits its
> particular adaptation. (In many cases, the 'new' technologies brought
> ecological disaster - agriculture dried up the lands, leading to
> deserts..Ethiopia, Somalia0.
>
> I am therefore, setting up two forces in our lives - the open,
> flexibility of the human individual, who must always be 'a rebel'
> (Camus), who yet can only live within the society..and the group is
> always operative within restirctions and limitations on the
> flexibility of knowledge. These 'two realities' are our greatest
> challenge - and burden. They are bonded to each other.
>
> Again, all organization requires 'authority'. I don't mean the
> authority of the 'single boss' - the external shout; I mean the
> authority of the inner infrastructural logic..which permits that
particular form of
> behaviour and not another. This inner logic can be, in genetic
> format, the DNA; conceptually - it can be compared with Chomsky's
> competence vs performance; with Aristotle's syllogistic logic vs
> actual demonstration. The inner logic is the socialized norms within
> which we live. It is Popper's Third World and no individual exists
> apart from it but within its authority or constraints.
>
>
> Therefore, I consider that truth exists within ourselves - most
> certainly not without. I don't feel that truth exists, in a pure
> Platonic Form, shining brightly out there..and we attempt to reach
> it. I know that philosophically, this is one analysis of 'truth' -
> that locates it as intact and external. I simply don't accept that
> version (Platonic, Cartesian). Rather, I tend to the Aristotelian
> analysis which locates truth 'in re', as a logic within the entity,
> continuous, stable..and yet, capable of transformation (which can be
> catastrophic).
>
> And hey - what's wrong with Nietzsche's ubermensche? I don't mean the
> denigration of that term as was done via his sister and the Nazi's. I
> mean his original analysis - which was of a human being, who was both
> free in thought, and yet - aware of the restraints on behaviour from
> being a member of the group. That is - there are two forces in
> dialogic interaction - the flexible openness of the human mind and
> the restrictive systemic operations of the society. An ubermensche is
> one who is aware of, and operates within these two seemingly
> contradictory interactions.
>
> So- have I made it worse?
Edwina -
Consider this:
We are already at a point where some choose to grow food and others to make
widgets. At some point(s) in the "business cycle", this is done more
efficiently than ever before in history (without regard for sustainablity,
perhaps, or (real) demand, etc., but...)
What is needed now is not to try to figure out how to break out of medieval
agriculture to a new, "green", futurrisitc technology, but how to take all
the tools we have developed to date and apply them to our needs! I fear
you are spending all your time studying the "classics" and neglecting the
study of the present that you, and we, need desperately.
> Edwina Taborsky
> Bishop's University Phone: (819)822.9600
> Ext. 2424
> Lennoxville, Quebec Fax: (819)822.9661
> Canada JIM 1Z7
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