Comments | steve_hamster: They're Fresh Out of Batteries, But They're Still Making Noise

steve_hamster

They're Fresh Out of Batteries, But They're Still Making Noise

Aug 18, 2005 21:15

I had an interesting conversation with Nate last night, as is often the case whenever we do manage to talk. However, I dominated the conversation. So I'm hoping that by introducing this conversation into a forum that both welcomes feedback and forces me to eventually shut up, an actual dialog could emerge. That doesn't mean that only Nate's ( Read more... )

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Utopia spearofsolomon August 19 2005, 19:38:49 UTC

I like this idea. I think it raises a lot of questions, but many of them are more logistical than problematic. For instance, what economic models arise from a non-atomistic and self-worshipping culture ( ... )

Re: Utopia steve_hamster August 21 2005, 03:04:17 UTC

I've had to think about these powerful arguments, so I hope my responses and rebuttals bear that out to some extent.

you believe that for each person, the right upbringing and social influence will result in a well-formed human beingI don't personally believe this, but I wondered if maybe it was foundational to the idea at hand. There are perhaps a few ways to defend my idea without admitting to this. First, it seems patently true that society is extremely effective at creating people whose behavior is parallel to social norms. Imagine a society rooted in hunting and gathering where subsistence living is important and not dying of severe sabretooth tiger bites is a commendable accomplishment. Do you think that people would be plagued by stress and bipolar "disorders" the way they are now ( ... )

Re: Utopia spearofsolomon August 21 2005, 20:34:29 UTC

I think it's interesting that you have completely avoided mentioning the ideas of right and wrong, developing instead the idea of norms as guidelines to behavior. Is that because you don't believe in these concepts, or because you don't think one person, or a group of people, should enforce his/their understanding of these ideas onto people who aren't interested in them ( ... )

Thomas More can eat my shorts steve_hamster August 23 2005, 15:35:20 UTC

you have completely avoided mentioning the ideas of right and wrong, developing instead the idea of norms as guidelines to behavior

It's not that I don't believe in right and wrong, but it seems like it would be impossible to say that these communities would somehow shape themselves voluntarily around my idea of right and wrong. So I think people within a community ought to have the expectation of respect for their particular moral code (or normative system), but that expectation simply can't be extended into other communities realistically.

I find the "admittedly wussy" folks in Community A on the right path, except that they chose to have this discussion with Rod after he chose to murder Todd.Do we expect people to behave perfectly, even according to their own internal moral code. No, because people aren't rational or consistent. To simply administer punishment with no regard for a difference between a fallability that represents a reparable break in the social code and a malice that actually threatens social integrity seems ( ... )

Re: Thomas More can eat my shorts spearofsolomon August 23 2005, 20:51:18 UTC

I think you are right about society as a whole, and I would like to it much closer to your system than to ours. I don't think small improvements in ours are ever going to amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

I think, and I see that we will remain at odds about this point, that one solution to the problems we are discussing is to group communities with relatively comparable values into larger groups that agree to be policed by the laws they all agree are their most important norms. Let's call these groups, oh, I don't know, "nations." Then when an outsider comes into this "nation" he must learn and agree to abide by the "laws" while he is within the nation. Thus nations can be responsible for maintaining the norms that its inhabitants agree to. People with mutually exclusive norms can thus be geographically separated from either, and people who find their norms differ from their peers' can drift around until they find a community that suits them.

a difference between a fallability that represents a reparable break in ( ... )

Re: Thomas More can eat my shorts steve_hamster August 24 2005, 05:43:57 UTC

It seems acceptable to me that we could disagree on the effectiveness and necessity of a criminal justice system. I think that if you are interested in understanding my view on this better than I can elaborate, check out literature on truth and reconciliation commissions (especially in Haiti and South Africa). Not all the literature concludes my way, but it at least fleshes out the idea that our system of retributive state violence is not the only possible method of social justice (and that a lack of said violence makes wrong acts "consequence-free").

I'm not willing to admit that nations are a logical next step that offers negligible costs. The entire point of small communities is establishing real personal connection to others. It's not only about common norms; it's also about be(long)ing collectively ( ... )

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