From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri May 16 2003 - 16:53:48 MDT
James writes
> On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 12:55:26PM -0400, Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
> > ... conservative ...
> > ... liberal ...
>
> I don't mean to address this to you in particular, Ron, but can we all
> stop talking about The Left and The Right, now? It's worse than TV.
It is interesting that TV began openly talking about left vs. right---
in a way that superficially put them on an equal par, and gives its
entire (and insidious) endorsement to the objective existence of such---
only during the last decade or so!
I have to admit that I kind of liked that. For it had been an objective
part of reality for me since age 12, and so I had the same feeling as I
do now when people finally freely admit that the universe is infinite.
(Yay Bruno.)
But polarization can be damaging, and so your point is interesting.
> Somebody's already pointed out how extropians should be (indeed,
> used to be?) above this kind of egregious false dichotomy.
But is it really false? Now yes, it's true that *extropians* don't
fit easily onto the usual left right continuum, and so that's why
the Nolan chart exists. Though wordier, and more complicated, it
gives a better picture of the reality, it seems.
> Political issues can be relevant, but we're just spiraling
> further down into the pit of entrenched and polarised
> mainstream debate where the very structure of the argument
> guarantees no progress will ever be made.
I have the feeling that you are just very sad to be learning
about the entrenchments that do exist, and are in most ways
in my opinion, quite inevitable. This is the same feeling I
get when young people I know are filled with dismay upon
learning that our universe is just atoms in the void---cold,
empty, with no moving Spirits and souls to guide things.
You also hark after a "progress" that can be made. In my
opinion, progress will only be made when the *reasons* for
political differences are better understood, and it can be
fathomed how it is possible for highly intelligent people
who have approximately the same Western values to systematically
disagree. Even then, I fear, the main progress will not be in
*resolving* these differences (unlike in science, where ultimately
all that may be needed often for the new generation is for a more
powerful piece of apparatus to be built).
Thus, IMO progress will arise as we come to understand how
it is that a person with dispositions {X} growing up in
environmental conditions {Y} at a time T in history starts
to lean left or right, or becomes a libertarian, or
"progressive", or whatever.
So I fear that the answer to your question "can't we do better
than this?" may sadly be "no".
Lee
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