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Do we really need these people?

02:57 / 04.09.01

An example. Say you think war is damned important, and you are a military man. You don't support pacifism. You know it doesn't work and you think these people are nuts.

or

Say you're a big environmentalist. You think the human race needs to protect the world resources, and you think that these big buisnesses are going to bring us all down if things don't change fast.

or

Say you agree with Ayn Rand about something.

Now, of course, war is bad. Big buisnesses => jobs => food on the table, without which we may not even have time to pay any attention to the environment. Take, for example, the gret depression, in which the American Chestnut trees went extinct. This was possibly the worst ecological disaster in history, and most people don't even know about it. And Ayn Rand is, well, y'know...

Are these extreme opposite viewpoints programmed into us by the culture? I mean, often, the best solution is some kind of middle ground. But maybe the larger social organism finds it more efficient to balance the views by giving many of us extreme viewpoints. So even though both Ayn Rand and the communist are both wrong, they may both be necessary.

What would be the advantages of having a culture with two wrong and opposing groups rather than one right, united group. Would this lack of competetion cause progress to slow? Or do you think that if people truly believe what you believe, we could really get some work done?

We each take on roles in culture. We are the trash man, the president, the architect, the poet, the scientist, and the priest. Are we also filling the roles of holding particular philosophies?

10:30 / 04.09.01

Examine the general situation (and I assume the same occurs in the US) when one political party takes on the ideas of another. There's a tendency towards outrage - 'you can't belong to this party and....'

Same thing within religion - any group wide ranging enough to take on board the views of all but the most extreme 'probably isn't a real religion'.

Like you suggest, the competition inherent between two opposed ideologies does tend toward both conflict and progress in certain cases (I would imagine that there are examples to the contrary).

I think the best example of how compromise works can be seen right here in Barbeland - for the most part, unless someone is espousing a view I take exception to, I'm not going to flex my fingers. I'll just absorb (and probably forget).

I like my clearly defined areas of black and white thinking - look too close and you go all foggy and start having to use words like 'subjective' and opinion'. That's when you lose a bit of the belief.

deletia

10:38 / 04.09.01

quote:Originally posted by SMatthewStolte:
An example. Say you think war is damned important, and you are a military man. You don't support pacifism. You know it doesn't work and you think these people are nuts.

or

Say you're a big environmentalist. You think the human race needs to protect the world resources, and you think that these big buisnesses are going to bring us all down if things don't change fast.

or

Say you agree with Ayn Rand about something.

Now, of course, war is bad. Big buisnesses => jobs => food on the table, without which we may not even have time to pay any attention to the environment. Take, for example, the gret depression, in which the American Chestnut trees went extinct. This was possibly the worst ecological disaster in history, and most people don't even know about it. And Ayn Rand is, well, y'know...

And as for votes for women. Or those uppity negros who want to sit on our buses. Or those quaint but lunatic beliefs in the Christless universe espoused by those funny Humanist chaps...

These are, or were, surely, all "extreme" beliefs. Why not use them as examples? Did anything good really come of them? And were they striving against their ideological opposites, or the mainstream, or are the two indistinguishable.

And how can one ascribe rightness or wrongness? F'rexample, it is not entirely surprising that we have an American arguing that big business is good for the environment, but I suspect that many here would not cavil at the statement the human race needs to protect the world's resources, and you think that these big businesses are going to bring us all down if things don't change fast.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

11:21 / 04.09.01

quote:So even though both Ayn Rand and the communist are both wrong, they may both be necessary.Or you may be wrong, and they may both be right.

Always possible.

quote:Are we also filling the roles of holding particular philosophies?Yes.

Or do you mean that everything we do is structural? Straight back to the "free will" thread.

In answer to the topic heading, it's noetic diversity. We don't know what we'll need, so we need all of it.

14:15 / 04.09.01

quote:Originally posted by The Haus of Willow:

And as for votes for women. Or those uppity negros who want to sit on our buses. Or those quaint but lunatic beliefs in the Christless universe espoused by those funny Humanist chaps...

These are, or were, surely, all "extreme" beliefs. Why not use them as examples? Did anything good really come of them?[/b]

I actually was going to wait until someone defended one of the two sides in one of the three cases. And then I was going to say something about racism and the like.

I wasn't really talking about this on a moral level. Even at that, it seems like some of the things you mentioned would not make our culture more efficient. But maybe it would.