From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Apr 08 2003 - 09:15:12 MDT
Ron writes
> [Lee writes]
>
> > It's perhaps hard to credit, but a lot of history was created by
> > people who acted as a part of something larger than themselves;
> > who believed that they were a part of a nation, or who believed
> > that they had a people. I understand that this does not resonate
> > with some very strong individualists, for whom practically all
> > communal feeling is alien.
>
> The writer John Taylor Gatto in his book Dumbing Us Down devotes a lot
> of time to discussing the differences between traditional communities with
> strong families and modern communities where the families are weaker and the
> community is more mobile.
> I feel very uncomfortable with the content of the book. Not that Mr.
> Gatto doesn't present his thoughts convincingly but that I haven't heard any
> discussion of his subject. That makes me so uncomfortable because I think
> those differences are extremely important and imminently debatable.
> When I was in Grad School I had one of the national experts for my
> professor in sociology -- that was forty years ago and his name is long since
> forgotten. He spent some time detailing the characteristics of the northern
> middle class family.
> As I recorded all his lectures I took the tape home and shared them
> with my wife. That sparked one of the most intense discussions of our
> marriage. In fact it may have ultimately ended our marriage.
> You see, we were middle class southerners and that is very different
> from the middle class northerner. Because of the considerable inducements
> involved we found ourselves becoming northerners and weren't sure at all that
> we liked that.
Okay, we have to distinguish the out of sort feelings that people
from extended family structures might feel as they become less
extended, and vice versa. (Though I have to admit that Yankees
suddenly immersed in southern extended structures are usually
gratified by the experience---though they might react eventually
and yearn for more of their previous privacy.)
> Briefly the northern family is not nearly so much an extended family
> as the southern one. The northern family is also much more mobile. It
> doesn't not have the support structure of the southern family.
> When I read what you wrote above, " who believed that they were a part
> of a nation, or who believed that they had a people" I hear the essence of
> what Gatto is saying of the stable traditional society.
> When you write, "I understand that this does not resonate with some
> very strong individualists, for whom practically all communal feeling is
> alien" you are simply describing a person without roots. They are
> individualists because they have no community or a strong family.
Yes, and that is the direction that most people have been headed in
most developed countries in the past century. We observed that when
we moved to southern California from Nebraska in the 1950s that people
had much less neighborhood life than before. The Californians were
much more into fences, and didn't even have porches.
What is germane to this discussion is which kind of life is more of
an ESS (evolutionarily stable strategy). If a nation or a tribe or
just a group of people is to have a group identity that lasts longer
than a decade or two, or that outlasts the individual life times of
its members, then I do not believe that what you call the "northern"
or I'd call the more modern structures are ESS's. That is one reason
why poorer peoples from around the world are demographically replacing
more "modern" ones.
> Mr. Gatto also maintains that experts devising rules cannot construct
> a community that has the closeness of the traditional society.
Well, this is well-known. The record of the social planners from
Mr. Owen in the early 1800's all the way to Fidel Castro in the
2000's is clear. The most black and white examples are from the
War on Poverty. (Poverty, of course, won.)
> But let me go a step further. I think this subject is particularly
> appropriate to Extropians. The central question is shall we have a strong
> community that achieves our goals or a weak one that is among the first to
> crack when the singularity approaches?
A "strong community"? Extropians? You have got to be kidding.
These are intellectual acquaintances for the most part, with
maybe a friendship here or there. Only in fantasies can one
imagine extropians (or any other kind of anarchist/libertarian)
really prepared to make severe individual sacrifices for the
sake of the group.
Patriotism, on the other hand, is exactly capable of that, and
that's why patriotism is an ESS for cultures, nations, and
peoples.
Lee
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