From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Tue Apr 08 2003 - 02:00:10 MDT
Lee Corbin wrote:
> Samantha writes
>
>
>>A country is only as good as its guiding principles. I don't
>>love the country just because I happen to be in it.
>
>
> This is getting to the core idea. Suppose that you had been a
> member of a small Indian tribe, say the Menominee, to be specific.
> You grow up noticing that many people have a peculiar loyalty
> to the Menominee, and even join in raids that you had opposed
> against other tribes. You moreover note that many seem to value
> the *existence* of the tribe in a way that transcended the particular
> people of the tribe---that is, they value the traditions and mores
> of the Menominee, and that it was *not* though any allegiance
> to various abstract principles that command their loyalty to the
> tribe. Rather they feel that way about Menominee as members of a
> *group*.
>
> Do you think that you would have found this alien to your way
> of thinking?
>
>
Now, yes. Hypothetically in some other then and there? Who can
say? I can only speak from with a more modern here and now
where I grew up with the ideals of liberty and a lot of
self-determination in mulitple areas of life. I did not grow up
in one small tribe with little knowledge of other possibilities
and little incentive to think more abstractly and to choose.
But you might say I have similar depth of loyalty to
philosophies, groups, circumstances that are copacetic to people
like me and tend to produce and promote people like me. So on
an abstract level, that is a similarity to the member of the
small tribe.
- samantha
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